Republican Party

By Juan Cole | The Republican Party is already conniving at ways to derail the US-Iran negotiations over Tehran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program. When they take over the senate in January, the GOP senators will be in a good position to deep-six the talks and deny President Obama a diplomatic breakthrough. Iran does not have […]

Bill of Rights

Congress has a Bill Ready to Curb NSA Snooping; if You care, Tell them to Pass it!

contributors

By Mark Jaycox (EFF) Congress continues its path towards becoming the least productive Congress in modern history while on its second vacation in as many months. During their first vacation, we ranked Congressional lawmakers on their support for NSA reform by reviewing bills like the Surveillance State Repeal Act, the USA Freedom Act, and the […]

Bush

ISIL Grew out of Bush’s Destruction of Iraq’s Socialist Economy

contributors

By Noah Bassil via The Conversation To explain the disaster befalling Iraq, as well as the rise of Islamic State (IS), you have to go back a century – before modern Iraq even existed. That’s not to discount the shared culpability of Iraq’s numerous leaders, from King Faisal I to Saddam Hussein and Nuri al-Maliki, […]

Militarization

Will GOP Senate Hawks Deep-Six CIA Torture Report, push Ukraine Intervention?

contributors

By Luke Johnson (RFE/RL) WASHINGTON — Republicans have captured control of the U.S. Senate for the first time in eight years, picking up at least seven seats in the November 4 Congressional elections. The shift means that Republicans will control the three top Senate committees dealing with U.S. foreign policy and national security: foreign relations, armed […]

Republican Party

If Orwell had had a “Ministry of Science” it would look Like GOP Science Committees

contributors

Cenk Uygur, The Young Turks: “”The Republican Party is widely predicted to win control of the Senate as a result of today’s midterm elections. In broadstrokes, that outcome portends a green light for the Keystone XL Pipeline, a blow to the Affordable Care Act and a push for corporate tax reform. But what would a […]

Barack Obama

Top 5 Reasons Obama is Seeking Congressional Approval for War on ISIL

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole President Obama said Wednesday that he would seek Congressional authorization for his war on ISIL or the “Islamic State” Group in Iraq and Syria. This statement comes after months of his administration maintaining that the AUMF of 2001 was still sufficient to underpin this effort. (In fact, it referred to war on […]

Inequality

How Secret Millionaire Donors Bought the Midterms with Dark Money Superpacs

contributors

by Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica In the final weeks before this year’s elections, a super PAC called Key Questions, Key Answers started buying TV ads across Pennsylvania attacking Tom Wolf, the Democratic candidate for governor. “Don’t vote for a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” the narrator says in one of the ads as a sheep with Wolf’s […]

Barack Obama

How a Republican Congress could Entangle the US further in the Middle East

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole The midterm elections in a president’s second term have historically been a time when the president’s party lost seats in both houses of Congress. Only a little over a third of the electorate typically votes in these elections, and they are disproportionately white, wealthy and elderly. In short, a different country voted […]

Republican Party

Shocking things a GOP Senate might do to Women’s Economic Rights (Reich)

contributors

Moveon.org: “Robert Reich explains how a Republican-controlled Senate would attack women’s rights in what adds up to an economic war on women — the third in a series of election videos produced in collaboration with MoveOn.org.” Moveon.org: “The economic war on women a Republican Senate would wage”