contributions

by Wayne Besen
It is the 21st Century and the cover of Time Magazine has pictures of a chimpanzee and God under the bold headline, "Evolution Wars". I turn on the television and a non-descript talking head is promoting the bizarre idea that tax cuts for the rich lead to increased tax revenue. I flip the channel and an effeminate man is lisping about how he prayed away the gay.
How did such weird and scientifically bankrupt ideas find their way into mainstream culture?
The answer is at (…)

Dear Cindy - Seeing you camped this week at the gate
of George Bush’s Texas ranch in Crawford is a very
powerful statement to the world. Major change begins
often with a single person.
We are standing beside you as you stand your ground
and gain the sympathy of the world - as a grieving
parent - who has lost her only son because of a "Texas
longhorn" size pile of lies. Your courage and
unrelenting national and international campaign to
stop the Iraq war has made a big impact on (…)

— a message from Cindy Sheehan, Crawford, TX
Today started at 4am when I had to get up and get ready to be on Good Morning America. It was pouring down rain at Camp Casey. The wind was blowing and there was thunder and lightening. It was pretty exciting. The interview went very well. I haven’t seen it or read a transcript. Since it was taped, I am just wondering if they showed it when I said Bush doesn’t want to see me because he likes to surround himself with "sycophants." I also (…)

by Harvey Wasserman
And in that history, new, definitive evidence has finally surfaced that the atomic bombing there was completely unjustified.
More than 80,000 human beings perished in Nagasaki three days after at least that many died in Hiroshima.
The Bomb that destroyed this historic city was made of plutonium (Hiroshima’s was uranium).
Whatever the case for nuking Hiroshima, it was far weaker for Nagasaki.
The US had already shown it had this ultimate weapon. It showed it was (…)

by Leuren Moret
My grandfather, U.S. Army Col. Edwin Joseph McAllister, was born in Battle Creek in 1895. He does not know that his first grandchild is an international expert on depleted uranium. I have worked in two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, and in 1991 I became a whistleblower at the Livermore lab. Depleted uranium is very, very, very nasty stuff: Depleted uranium (DU) weaponry meets the definition of weapon of mass destruction in two out of three categories under U.S. Federal (…)

by Joe Garofoli
Anti-war activists are asking San Francisco radio station KMEL-FM to remove the U.S. Navy as a sponsor of the annual Summer Jam concert in Mountain View, saying the station is "using hip-hop to promote the military to young people of color."
The high-profile event, set for Aug. 21, usually sells out the 20,000- capacity Shoreline Amphitheatre.
San Francisco’s Global Exchange, the group Code Pink: Women for Peace and two dozen other organizations are leading a protest at (…)

By Andrew Stern
CHICAGO - The president-elect of the nation’s largest lawyers group on Monday said some of the federal government’s investigative powers included in the anti-terrorism Patriot Act are a threat to constitutional rights.
Michael Greco criticized aspects of the act, passed to bolster security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, at the American Bar Association convention, where U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urged the U.S. Congress to renew it.
"We support the (Bush) (…)

Tony Blair today came under fierce attack from a close friend of Robin Cook for not planning to attend the funeral of the former Foreign Secretary.
Channel 4 racing pundit John McCririck accused the Prime Minister of snubbing the family and the memory of Mr Cook.
Mr McCririck, a friend of Mr Cook for 20 years, will be among those speaking at the funeral service, which is expected to take place on Friday at Edinburgh’s St Giles Cathedral.
Details have not yet been officially confirmed (…)

The following letter, circulating around the Hill, was acquired by RAW STORY Tuesday afternoon. Sixteen Democratic House members are calling on President Bush to meet Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq and is protesting outside Bush’s Crawford ranch. #
Dear Mr. President:
We write to respectfully urge you to meet with Cindy Sheehan and other relatives of fallen soldiers who request a meeting to discuss their deep concerns about the war in Iraq. We also request that you help (…)

By Jonathan Weisman
Treasury Secretary John W. Snow acknowledged yesterday that the fruits of strong economic growth are not spreading equally to less educated Americans, as he and the rest of President Bush’s economic team prepared to meet today to discuss wages and income distribution in an otherwise surging economy.
The meeting at the president’s ranch near Crawford, Tex., will be convened amid evidence that the economy is gaining steam and that voters are dissatisfied with Bush’s (…)