contributions

by Larisa Alexandrovna
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush issued an order to the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, and his cabinet members that severely curtailed intelligence oversight by restricting classified information to just eight members of Congress.
"The only Members of Congress whom you or your expressly designated officers may brief regarding classified or sensitive law (…)

Law Abiding Ohio Resident And Korean War Veteran Has Authorities Illegally Swarm On His Property Just Hours After He Called President Bush A Liar On A Local AM Radio Station
by Greg Szymanski
Although Doug Stout, 77, won’t pin illegal entry on his property to his harsh comments about Bush, but says one thing for sure "I don’t smoke pot and everybody in town knows it." After hovering over his property with a helicopter, officers then swarmed on his land, looked at some shrubbery and then (…)

By Daniel McGrory and Stewart Tendler
SCOTLAND YARD made “a series of catastrophic errors” that led to armed officers hunting the July 21 bombers shooting dead an innocent Brazilian, it was claimed last night.
Leaked witness statements from officers who took part in the botched operation reveal that Jean Charles de Menezes was restrained by one of Scotland Yard’s surveillance team before being shot eight times as he sat on a Tube train.
Documents and photographs from the Independent (…)

Cindy Sheehan has almost single-handedly launched an American antiwar movement. And in the process, she’s exposed a president’s feet of clay.
by Joan Walsh The smearing may continue, but it’s already too late: Cindy Sheehan has launched an American antiwar movement. Maybe, as Matt Drudge blared over the weekend, she’s said controversial things about Israel. Maybe the IRS will chase her for tax evasion, since she’s reportedly announced that she won’t pay taxes for 2004, the year her son (…)

WASHINGTON - As a young lawyer in the Reagan White House, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts concluded that a group’s memorial service for aborted fetuses was “an entirely appropriate means of calling attention to the abortion tragedy.”
Roberts wrote the advice in an October 1985 memo after he was asked to review a proposed telegram from President Reagan to the memorial service promoted by the California Pro Life Medical Association.
“The president’s position is that the fetuses were (…)

Found this great essay at Manuel Valenzuela’s new blog which contains every damn essay he’s ever written. This guy is prolific, and very, very good. Pay the blog a visit, click through the archives, read a couple of articles. Good for the soul.
www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com
The Evolution of Revolution, Part II: Where Flags Do Not Rise
by Manuel Valenzuela
Imagine
Imagine there’s no heaven, It’s easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, Imagine all the people, (…)

CINDY BERINGER and ERIC RUDER report from Cindy Sheehan’s antiwar vigil outside George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.
WHEN CINDY Sheehan boarded the Veterans for Peace Impeachment Tour bus August 6 and headed for Crawford, Texas, she had no idea that the vigil she had begun planning a few days before would turn her into a national symbol of the growing discontent with the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Today, her face is on the front pages of newspapers across the country and the world. (…)

Cindy Sheehan’s soldier son Casey was killed near Baghdad. Now her one-woman protest at the gates of the US president’s Texas ranch has become a metaphor for a nation’s increasing unease about involvement in an unwinnable conflict.
By Rupert Cornwell
Something strange is taking place deep in the heart of Texas, where the President of the United States is holed up at his Prairie Chapel ranch, a few miles from the town of Crawford. There, in the space of a few days, a middle-aged (…)

By Amira Hass
Omar had a reason to laugh: Good people from Tel Aviv are agitated that the Evacuation Compensation Law passed by the Knesset discriminates against Palestinian and foreign workers, on the one hand, compared to Israeli workers. The good people are the Kav La’Oved organization and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which gave up on the idea of petitioning the High Court of Justice because it expected the court would not get involved in this piece of legislation.
Omar (…)

Employee, Union Rights Not Protected, Judge Says
By Stephen Barr
The Department of Homeland Security, after more than two years of work on new workplace rules, may have to scrap the plan after a federal judge questioned whether it protects union and employee rights.
The rules were scheduled to begin today but were blocked by U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer in a ruling released Friday night. A spokesman for the department, Larry Orluskie, said officials are to meet today and (…)