Bill of Rights

By Mark Rumold | ( Electronic Frontier Foundation) | – – Reports today in the New York Times and ProPublica confirm what EFF’s Jewel v. NSA lawsuit has claimed since 2008—that the NSA and AT&T have collaborated to build a domestic surveillance infrastructure, resulting in unconstitutional seizure and search of of millions, if not hundreds […]

Bill of Rights

Brothers in Arms: Jeb Bush Won’t Say ‘No’ To Future Torture

contributors

By Jon Queally, staff writer | ( Commondreams.org | – – ‘This is what happens when you don’t prosecute officials for illegally torturing people.’ While also foregoing the opportunity to condemn the establishment of a torture program authorized and ordered by his brother, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has said he won’t rule out the […]

Bill of Rights

Top Cringe Worthy Foreign Policy Moments in GOP Debate

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Well we had the primetime GOP debate, so the 2016 election season has formally begun. Trump declared himself more or less an independent. When Megyn Kelly pressed him on his history of misogyny and putting down women, he threatened not to be nice to her any […]

Barack Obama

Top 5 Ways Obama’s ‘All of the Above’ Politics led to Sanders & Trump

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole – (Informed Comment) – It is said that one of the things President Obama wanted to talk to comedian Jon Stewart about was his occasional cynicism. “Obama scolded him for turning young Americans cynical.” But the approach to politics taken by Obama until recently — of promising genuine change but governing as […]

Bill of Rights

Revealed: The private firms tracking terror targets at heart of US drone wars

contributors

By Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black | (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism) | – – The overstretched US military has hired hundreds of private sector contractors in the heart of its drone operations to analyse top secret video feeds and help track high value terror targets, an investigation has found. Contracts unearthed by the Bureau […]

African-Americans

South Carolina removes the Physical Flag: Can it remove the Spiritual Illness of Racial Discrimination?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The South Carolina legislature has voted to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the statehouse. It was put there in 1961 as a show of defiance against the Civil Rights movement, i.e. against the demand that the system of legally-imposed segregation of African-Americans cease. […]

Barack Obama

Ghosts of King George III: Top 5 Things that threaten American Independence Today

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The things that irked the residents of the Thirteen Colonies about British rule have reemerged from other quarters to threaten American democracy. The colonists minded being ruled arbitrarily by British-appointed officials, some of them corrupt. They minded not being represented in parliament even though that body […]

African-Americans

Our reply to Dylann Roof’s Hate: Donate to “Mother Emanuel” AME Church

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – There are many essential responses to the racist terrorism that attacked Emanuel AME Church, which the state of South Carolina should take. It should stop flying the Confederate flag. It should undo the gerrymandering by the white Republican Establishment that keeps the one-third of the population […]

Arab Americans

Can the GOP live down Donald Trump’s Middle East “Policy”?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Comedians, bloggers, and pundits are ecstatic about The Donald throwing his toupee in the ring for the Republican nomination. The stories write themselves. But the Republican Party establishment is appalled, because Trump will create an image for the party that will hurt it in the general […]