contributions

By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray
House Republican leaders were forced to abruptly pull their $54 billion budget-cutting bill off the House floor yesterday, amid growing dissension in Republican ranks over spending priorities, taxes, oil exploration and the reach of government.
A battle between House Republican conservatives and moderates over energy policy and federal anti-poverty and education programs left GOP leaders without enough votes to pass a budget measure they had framed (…)

by Molly Ivins
AUSTIN, Texas — I can’t get over this feeling of unreality, that I am actually sitting here writing about our country having a gulag of secret prisons in which it tortures people. I have loved America all my life, even though I have often disagreed with the government. But this seems to me so preposterous, so monstrous. My mind is a little bent and my heart is a little broken this morning.
Maybe I should try to get a grip — after all, it’s just this one administration that (…)

By Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan
LONDON - The House of Commons on Wednesday soundly defeated an anti-terrorism measure championed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, dealing him one of the most significant political setbacks of his eight years in office.
The lower house of Parliament voted 322 to 291 against a proposal to allow suspects in terrorism cases to be held for as many as 90 days without charge, up from the current 14. It was Blair’s first loss in a major vote in that house since he (…)

by William Greider
Amid the smoke and stench of burning careers, Washington feels a bit like the last days of the ancien régime. As the world’s finest democracy, we do not do guillotines. But there are other less bloody rituals of humiliation, designed to reassure the populace that order is restored, the Republic cleansed. Let the perp walks begin. Whether the public feels reassured is another matter.
George W. Bush’s plight leads me to thoughts of Louis XV and his royal court in the (…)

By Amir Oren
At the end of last month, Brigadier General Joseph Votel, a boyish-looking, tall and smiling American, made an urgent request to an old friend of his from Washington − also a brigadier general, but in the Golani Brigade rather than the Rangers − Nitzan Nuriel, the chief of the foreign liaison department of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. So urgent was the message that the Pentagon didn’t even update their military attache in Tel Aviv. Votel implored Nuriel to (…)

By Garrison Keillor
We Democrats are at our worst when we try to emulate Republicans as we did in signing onto the “war” on drugs that has ruined so many young lives.
The cruelty of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 is stark indeed, as are the sentencing guidelines that impose mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug possession-guidelines in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act that sailed through Congress without benefit of public hearings, drafted before an election by Democrats afraid to be (…)

By Rivers and Barnett
Today’s commentators say it’s a shame that Maureen Dowd should depend on such flaky research and flimsy evidence when writing about feminism. Dowd’s article, based on weak research, was the most e-mailed story from The New York Times yesterday.
Editor’s Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women’s eNews.
A growing media narrative over the past year says men do not like high-achieving (…)

by Robert Zeliger
Tuesday’s school board election in Dover, Pennsylvania, a quiet rural community near the Maryland border where churches seem to outnumber streetlights, was a fitting climax to a year of bitter division there. In a contest with national implications, Dover voters tossed an entire slate of Intelligent Design supporters, replacing them with backers of evolution.
The eight incumbents, calling themselves “Dover First,” were defendants in a lawsuit over a board decision last (…)

By DOUG THOMPSON
A confidential memo circulating among senior Republican leaders suggests that a new attack by terrorists on U.S. soil could reverse the sagging fortunes of President George W. Bush as well as the GOP and "restore his image as a leader of the American people."
The closely-guarded memo lays out a list of scenarios to bring the Republican party back from the political brink, including a devastating attack by terrorists that could “validate” the President’s war on terror and (…)

The sad reality is that many of the soldiers serving today in Iraq and Afghanistan will join the ranks of those who call the streets of America home.
by Nikos A. Leverenz
On this Veteran’s Day, Americans are serving abroad far away from their friends and loved ones. Hopefully, each of them will return home safely, finish their commitments to the military, and move on to rewarding civilian lives.
But the sad reality is that many of today’s service members, including those currently (…)