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HOW RUMSFELD MICROMANAGED TORTURE!

* Real-time grilling of Lindh by satellite
* "Put a bra and panties on this guy's head"
* His "Do This" List for Abu Ghraib
* Driving Jose Padilla Insane

Read Andrew Cockburn's devastating report in Our New CounterPunch Newsletter. PLUS: Robert Bryce on Frank Gaffney, Halliburton and Iran. Still available: WHAT DID ISRAEL KNOW IN ADVANCE OF THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS? At last, the answers. Read Christopher Ketcham's exclusive expose in CounterPunch special double-issue February newsletter. Plus, Cockburn and St. Clair on how this story was suppressed and ultimately found its home in CounterPunch. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now

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Cockburn in San Francisco

Today's Stories

March 5, 2007

Greg Moses
Holding Suzi Hazahza for Profit

March 3 / 4, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Persecution of Sami Al-Arian

Corporate Crime Reporter
"No Fingernails, No Good:" Al-Arian Prosecutor's Anti-Muslim Bias

Jeffrey St. Clair
Glory Boy and the Snail Darter: Al Gore, the Origins of a Hypocrite

Patrick Cockburn
War Reporting in Iraq: Only Locals Need Apply

Ralph Nader
Hillary, Inc.: Sen. Clinton and Corporate America

M. Shahid Alam
American Mamlukes

Gilad Atzmon
From Esther to AIPAC

Fred Gardner
It's Official!: Cannabis Reduces Pain

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Fourth World War Started in Venezuela

Rock & Rap Confidential
Do the James Brown!: "No One Could Speak More Authoritatively for Blacks"

Gillian Russom
The Court Martial of Agustín Aguayo

Michael McPhearson
My Small Act of Civil Disobedience

Kevin Zeese
The Democrats and the Peace Movement: Who Owns Whom?

Sunsara Taylor
Four Years of an Unjust War

Wendy Thompson
Re-Organizing the UAW

Kenneth Rexroth
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall"

Missy Beattie
Regarding Cheney

Don Monkerud
Jesus Turned Away at US Border

Tina Louise
Stuffed with Terror, Starved of Dreams

Poets' Basement
Richards, Landau and Davies

Website of the Weekend
John Prine: Flag Decal

 

March 2, 2007

Roger Morris
Cheney's Bagram Ghosts

Phil Gasper
Prisoners of Ideology

Mike Roselle
Buffalo Gore: The Blood-Stained Snow of Yellowstone

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scam

John V. Walsh
Who is He This Time?: Kerry's Strange Call to Filibuster the War

Sherwood Ross
Bush and Walter Reed Hospital: Praise the Care, Slash the Budget

China Hand
Who Let North Korea Get the Bomb?

David Rosen
To Cut or Not to Cut?: the Politics of Circumcision in America

Chris Genovali
Connecting the Dots

Peter Harley
The Wall, Apartheid and Mandela

Website of the Day
Courage to Resist

 

March 1, 2007

Laura Carlsen
Return to Sender: Migrants as Globalization's Junk Mail

Paul Craig Roberts
The Tragedy of a Dozen Evil Men

Ray McGovern
How Far is Iran from the Bomb? Who the Hell Knows?

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Theater of the Absurd

Najum Mustaq
America's Musharraf Dilemma

Brent Bowden
The War on Terror and the Terror of War

Tina Richards
Demoralizing the Troops? The Mother of an Iraq War Vet Responds

Ethan Nadelman
Mexico and the Drug War

Mike Stark
"Tough on Crime" is the Problem, Not a Solution

Wadner Pierre / Jeb Sprague
Haiti's Poor Under a State of Siege by UN

Mike Whitney
Market Meltdown: the Dead Hand of Greenspan

Website of the Day
Dylan Hears a Who

 

February 28, 2007

Peter Linebaugh
An Amazing Disgrace

Tao Ruspoli
A Conversation with Francisco Letelier

China Hand
The Shanghai Crash: Take the Money and Run

Marjorie Cohn
Why the Boumediene Case on Gitmo Detainees and Habeas Corpus Was Wrongly Decided

Sarah Olson
Is Lt. Watada an Isolated Case of Military Dissent?

Susan Van Haitsma
Mark Wilkerson: Standing for a Soldier's Right to Conscience

Nicole Colson
License to Torture

Harvey Wasserman
The Sham of Nuclear Power

William S. Lind
The Non-Thinking Enemy

Nicola Nasser
US Turnabout?: Engagement and Confrontation in the Middle East

Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn on Rumsfeld

 

February 27, 2007

Tariq Ali
The Khyber Impasse: the Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Tom Barry
America's Crusaders: Santorum and Lieberman

Uri Avnery
The Next War

Antonia Juhasz / Raed Jarrar
Oil Grab: the Secret Scheme to Split Iraq

Jeff Nygaard
Howard Hunt and the National Memory System

Hugh O'Shaughnessy
Grenada: an Invasion Revisited

Mitchell Kaidy
Israel's Cluster Bombs: Made in USA, Ground-Tested in Lebanon

Carl Finamore
Airline Bankruptcies, Mergers and Profits

Anne McElroy Dachel
The Really Big Lie About Autism

Ramzy Baroud
Who is Really in Control?

Andrew Rouse
The Queen, Her Apothecary and the War on Iraq

Website of the Day
New York City Skyline

 

February 26, 2007

Franklin Lamb
US Israel Lobby Targets Lebanon's Jihad al-Bina

Bill Quigley
The Right to Return to New Orleans

Greg Moses
Suzi Hazahza in Haskell Hell

Col. Dan Smith
Calling All Carriers

Ralph Nader
The Bush Administration is a Threat to Our National Security

Paul Buchheit
The Income Gap

Jeff Leys
How Democrats Are Buying the Iraq War

Dave Zirin
Bojangling for Bigots: an Open Letter to Jason Whitlock

Mike Whitney
Doomsday Dick and the Plague of Frogs

Michael Dickinson
Free Kareem Amer!

Website of the Day
Beware the Chickenhawks!

 

February 24 / 25, 2007

Jeffrey St. Clair
Frightening Tales of Endangered Species

R. T. Naylor
Inside Islamic Charity

Gary Leupp
AIPAC Demands "Action" on Iran

Saul Landau
Modern Day Miracle: Rev. Haggard Cured! Thank You, Jesus!

Ron Jacobs
Missile Defense Redux

Jeffrey Blankfort
A Debate on the Israel Lobby

Chris Sands
Afghanistan in Winter: Where Death Comes Cheap

Gary Freeman
The N-Word and Black History Month

Larry Portis
Zionism and the United States: the Cultural Connection

P. Sainath
Two Million People in "Maximum Distress"

Lee Sustar
What Next for the Immigrants' Rights Movement?

Kevin Wehr
Liberal vs. Radical Enviros: the Thrill isn't Gone, It's Just Moved

Ken Couesbouc
The African Card

Soffiyah Elijah
FBI Hunting Dead Panthers: Can John Bowman Ever Rest in Peace?

Kathlyn Stone
Iraqi Labor vs. Big Oil

Dave Lindorff
Breaking the Dam in Olympia

Jason Kunin
Criticizing Israel is Not an Act of Bigotry

Kevin Zeese
Can Hillary be Trusted?

Remi Kanazi
All Roads Lead to Checkpoints

Missy Beattie
Five Words That Change Lives

Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt and Rodriguez

Website of the Weekend
Caught on Tape: an Anti-War Movement Finding Its Feet?

 

February 23, 2007

Franklin Spinney
Top Gun vs. the Axis of Evil: Is This What We Have Become?

Jonathan Cook
Watching the Checkpoints

Patrick Cockburn
The True Extent of Britain's Failure in Basra

Kathy Kelly
Do Something Good

Chris Dols
Islamophobia at Urban Outfiters: the Case for Keffiyehs

Evelyn Pringle
The Neurontin Suicides: Risks Kept Hidden for Years

Stephen Pearcy
If Bush is a War Criminal, What About the Troops?

Dan Brook
Making Poverty History

Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Police Commit Rapes

Website of the Day
A Citizens Arrest of Patty Murray

 

February 22, 2007

Robert Fantina
Repeating History

Tariq Ali
Prodi's Soap Operatic Fall: Neoliberalism and War in Italy

Michael Shank
An Interview with Noam Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, the Democrats and Climate Change

John Ross
Calderon's War on Drugs

Christopher Brauchli
Stockcars on Dope: How NASCAR and the Tour de France are Bring the World Together

Cindy Litman
Paying for the Damage Done to Iraq

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Mr. Jefferson's Inheritors: Caution, Calculation and Cold Feet

Kevin Zeese
Finally, a Populist Antiwar Candidate for President

Aseem Shrivastava
The New Indian Way?: a Developer's Model of Development

Reza Fiyouzat
A Letter to the Israeli People: We are All Led by Mad Men

Illinois Students Against the War
Why We Protested at Obama's Speech

Website of the Day
An Interview with Mike Gravel

 

February 21, 2007

Maass / St. Clair
The Clintons: the Art of Politics Without Conscience

Sharon Smith
Inside the Imperial Budget

Greg Moses
Showdown Over Texas Immigrant Prisons

Margaret Kimberly
America the Stupid

Ralph Nader
Making Cancer Cool: Tobacco and Hollywood

Nicola Nasser
Evasive Diplomacy: Bush Adm. Shuns Middle East Peace Talks

Mike Whitney
The Second Great Depression

Tao Ruspoli
Revolutionary But Gangsta: a Conversation with Stic.Man of Dead Prez

Byeong Jeongpil
Beyond the "Protection Facility", Another Prison

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Hillary, Obama and Edwards Oppose Single-Payer Health Care

Josh Mahan
The Lost Art of Shattuck: a Good, Old-Fashioned Drinking Story

Website of the Day
Time to Free the Puerto Rican Nationalists


February 20, 2007

Sgt. Martin Smith
Structured Cruelty: Learning to be a Lean, Mean Killing Machine

Werther
How to be a Washington Expert

Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing SAIC

Carl G. Estabrook
Common Sense About the Recent Past

China Hand
Setting Sun: The Diverging US-Japan Relationship

Joshua Frank
Cleaning Up Exxon's Greenpoint Oil Spill

Megan Boler
The Daily Show and Political Activism

John Feffer
People Power vs. Military Power in East Asia

Daryll E. Ray
What's Inside the New Farm Bill

Alan Gregory
Midwest Wolves Fall Prey to Slob Hunters' PR Scam

Website of the Day
"Not a Target Rich Environment?"

 

February 19, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Economists in Denial: Blind to the Consequences of Offshoring

Gary Leupp
"A Genocidal, Suicidal Nation:" Mitt Romney Joins Iran's Hysterical Accusers

Ron Jacobs
The Mecca Agreements: the Future Remains Bleak

Michael F. Brown
The Peace Process Industry

Robert Jensen
Liberal Icons and War: Bi-Partisan Empire-Building

Roger Burbach
Ecuador Stands Up to US

Monica Benderman
America, Where Are You Now?

Sonja Karkar
Apocalyptic Archaeology: Israel's Provocations Threaten Jerusalem

John Walsh
Some Good News from Beantown

Talli Nauman
Colorado Delta Blues: Challenging the Law of the River

Website of the Day
"The Best Place to be in Town"

 

Feburary 17 / 18, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Sold to Mr. Gordon, Another Bridge!

Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: a Conversation with Patrick Cockburn, Part Two

Gary Leupp
Iran: A Chronology of Disinformation

Jeffrey St. Clair
Dark Mesas in an Ancient Light

Roger Morris
The Undertaker's Tally: the Tragedy of Donald Rumsfeld

Uri Avnery
Facing Mecca

James Brooks
Palestinians and the "Diplomatic Horizon"

Sen. Russell Feingold
Congress Must Defund the Iraq War

Linn Washington, Jr.
"Death Row is a Web That Catches Only the Poor"

Michele Brand
Iran: the Proxy War?

Fred Gardner
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Music and Basketball in the Harlem Renaissance

Mitchel Cohen
Storming the Pentagon: Lessons from 1967

Mike Ferner
Democrats Keep Ohio Refugee Free: "No Iraqis in Our Backyards!"

David Swanson
Memo to Don Young: What Lincoln Really Said

P. Sainath
In the Theater of the Jungle Belt

Mike Stark
GoreAid: Gore Plans Concert with Musicians He and Tipper Betrayed in the 80s

Missy Beattie
The Object of My Disaffection

Jonathan Franklin
Carnival: Where Dance is Hope

Website of the Weekend
The Godfather and the Tenor: "It's a Man's World"


February 16, 2007

Marc Levy
Turning Point: Veterans' Voices Trigger Response

Andrew Cockburn
In Iraq, Anyone Can Make a Bomb

Glen Ford
Powell, Rice and Obama: Putting Black Faces on Imperial Aggression

Greg Moses
The Terror of Suzi Hazahza: Why Her Family Must Be Freed

Ron Jacobs
Marching on the Pentagon: Then and Now

John W. Farley
Hook, Line and Sinker: The Press and Stephen Hadley

James Marc Leas
Vermont Legislature Says: "Bring Them Home Now!"

Tim Rinne
The Most Dangerous Place on the Face of the Earth?: StratCom and the Coming War on Iran

Albert Wan
Star-Cross'd Lovers?: The Strange Romance of Hillary and David Brooks

Website of the Day
Did Wal-Mart Murder Tweety Bird?

 


February 15, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Muqtada al-Sadr?

Saul Landau
How to Obsess Your Enemies

Stephen Lendman
The Rules of Imperial Management

Evelyn Pringle
More Zyprexa Postcards from the Edge

Michael Simmons
Is the Joke Over?: an Evening with Ralph Steadman

Kevin Zeese
A Congressional Kabuki Show

Dave Lindorff
The Co-Dependent Congress

Pete Shanks
They Want You to Eat Cloned Meat--And They Don't Want You to Know It

Peter Rost
The Michelle Manhart Affair: the Air Force Listens!

Lenni Brenner / Gilad Atzmon
An Exchange

Website of the Day
Barack Obama vs. Huey P. Newton

 

February 14, 2007

Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: A Conversation with Patrick Cockburn

Dick J. Reavis
War Without a Name

Margaret Kimberly
Medical Apartheid in America

Christopher Brauchli
The Perils of Charity: You Can be Prosecuted for Funding Terror Even If the Designation of the Group as a Terrorist Organization was Wrong!

Paul Craig Roberts
Cracks in the Pentagon

John Ross
The Plot Against Mexican Corn

Michael F. Brown
The Democrats and Palestine: New Chairman, Old Rules

Dave Lindorff
The Press Bites, Again: a Word of Caution on Those Iranian Weapons

J.L. Chestunut, Jr.
Texas-style Injustice in Black and White

Don Fitz
Hybrids, Biofuels and Other False Idols

Michael Donnelly
Give Love, Give Life

Dr. Susan Block
The Chemistry of Love

Website of the Day
Code Pink Drops By Hillary's Office

 

February 13, 2007

Uri Avnery
Three Provocations: the Method in the Madness

Patrick Cockburn
Targeting Tehran

Ralph Nader
When Wall Street Whines (You Know They're Making a Killing)

Marjorie Cohn
Fool Us Twice? From Iraq to Iran

Col. Dan Smith
Iran Bashing Goes Prime Time

Col. Douglas MacGreagor
Empty Vessels: Gen. Patraeus and Other Hollow Men

Thomas Power
Coal Ambivalence: Mining Montana

Nicola Nasser
The Politics of Archaeology in Jerusalem

David Swanson
Iran War Talking Points

Columbia Coalition Against the War
Why We Are Striking

Website of the Day
Our Friends at Antiwar.com Need Your Help

 

February 12, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Scapegoating Iran

Paul Craig Roberts
How the World Can Stop Bush: Dump the Dollar!

John Walsh
A Splintered Antiwar Movement: Nader and Libertarians Not Welcome

Dr. John Carroll, MD
What Next for Haiti's Cite Soliel?: a Journey Through the World's Most Miserable Slum

Greg Moses
An Outrageously Sickening Immigration Policy

Nicole Colson
The Frame-Up That Fell Apart: Jury See Through Another Botched Federal "Terrorism" Case

Dave Lindorff
Acting in Bad Feith: Inappropriate Behavior and Impeachment

Ray McGovern
The Kervorkian Administration: Are Bush and Cheney the Biggest Threats to the Existence of Israel?

Doug Giebel
Rampant Cyncism

David Swanson
Twisted: Sex and Torture in America

Website of the Day
The Texas Model: Executing Women in Iraq

 

February 10 /11, 2007
Weekend Edition

Alexander Cockburn
Will They Nuke Iran?

Gabriel Kolko
Israel, Iran and the Bush Administration

Patrick Cockburn
Now It's War on the Shia

Jeffrey St. Clair
Till the Cows Come Home: How the West was Eaten

Kevin Alexander Gray
Barack Obama: Not a Bold Bone in His Body

M. Shahid Alam
The Pacification of Islam

Greg Moses
The Words of Mohammad: an 11 Year-Old Prisoner

Paul Craig Roberts
Brzezinski's Damning Indictment

George Ciccariello-Maher
Coups and Democracy in Venezuela

Kevin Zeese
"You Can't Oppose the War and Fund the War:" a Conversation with Anthony Arnove

Turner / Kim
The World's Factory: China's Filthiest Export

George Duke
Has Jazz Lost Its African-American Core?

Walter Brasch
A Dream Still Unfulfilled: America Remains Divided

Shepherd Bliss
Veterans' Love Story

Missy Beattie
Fear and Diversions: Anna Nicole, Wolf Blitzer and the Missing Body Count in Iraq

Peter Harley
Mr. Hyde and Uncle Sam: Reading Stevenson in an Age of Shock and Awe

Pat Wolff
Oprah's Strange Endorsement of "The Secret"

Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt, Engel and Louise

Website of the Day
The 25 Most Corrupt Members of Bush Administration


February 9, 2007

Conn Hallinan
The Najaf Massacre: an Annotated Fable

Gary Leupp
Charging Iran with "Genocide" Before Nuking It

Lee Sustar
An Interview with Patrick Cockburn

Nikolas Kozloff
Bombing Venezuela's Indians

Newton Garver
Politics and Apartheid

Yitzhak Laor
Under the Steamroller

Dave Lindorff
Truth or Consequences: Some Questions for Bush

David Swanson
The Politics of Self-Congratulation: Democrats Change Gas, Claim It's a New Car

Website of the Day
Why Corporate Social Responsibility is Not Working for Workers

 

February 8, 2007

John V. Walsh
Filibuster to End the War Now!

Marjorie Cohn
Watada Beats Government

Trish Schuh
The Salvador Option in Beirut

Ron Jacobs
The Case of the San Francisco 8

Laura Carlsen
Mexico at Davos: the Split with Latin America Widens

Ramzy Baroud
Countdown for Iran

Brenda Norrell
"Leave It in the Ground": Indigenous Peoples Call for Global Ban on Uranium Mining

Bryan Farrell
The Splinter and the Beam: Violence in the Eye of the Beholder

Judith Scherr
BP Beds Down with Cal-Berkeley

Website of the Day
Peace TV

 

February 7, 2007

Daniel Wolff
"The Road Home is a Joke": Playing Politics with the Recovery of New Orleans

Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: A Conversation with Oliver Stone on Art, Politics and the Future of Cinema in Bush's America

Tony Swindell
The Looming Shadow of Nuremberg

Sharon Smith
Why Protest Matters

Ken Couesbouc
Delenda Est Baghdad: Why Republics End Up as Empires

Jeff Cohen
Jonah Goldberg's Gambling Debt

Col. Dan Smith
The Self-Destructive Logic of War

Tom Kerr
McCain to Wounded Soldiers: When Words Fail Fundamentally

Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran

Adam Elkus
Surging Right Into Bin Laden's Hands

Stephen Fleischman
The Good News About War on Iran

Website of the Day
Vote Vets: Battling Escalation

 

February 6, 2007

Diana Johnstone
Frenzy in France Over Iranian Threat

Gregory Wilpert
Did Chavez Over-reach?: Venezuela's Enabling Law Could Enable Opposition

Norman Solomon
A Kangaroo Court Martial: Making an Example of Ehren Watada

Dave Lindorff
Borat Goes to Washington: Don't Experiment with the Economy?

William Blum
Space Cowboys: Full Spectrum Dominance

Mike Ferner
War Opponents Occupy Congressional Offices

CP News Service
Nader's CNN Interview: "Hillary's a Panderer and a Flatterer"

Evelyn Pringle
Eli Lilly and Zyprexa: Even the Insurance Companies are Bailing

Christopher Brauchli
Corporate Advice from the Office of Detainee Affairs

Alan Cabal
How Charles Manson Kept Me Out of Vietnam

Website of the Day
Free Josh Wolf: the Longest Jailed Journalist in US History


February 5, 2007

Dave Zirin
Super Bore: When Hawks Cry

Uri Avnery
The Fatal Kiss: Wars and Scandals

Ron Jacobs
The Looming War on Iran: It's Not About Democracy

Paul Craig Roberts
The Real Failed States

Newton Garver
Bush and the Old Hands: Decider vs. Negotiator

Bruce Anderson
The Genocidal Namesake of the Hastings School of Law

Saul Landau
The Golden Globes After a Mud Bath

Ralph Nader
The Good Fight of Molly Ivins

James T. Phillips
Road Outrageous: Tailgating and Iraq

Mike Whitney
Quarantine USA: Bird Flu Panic and Profiteering

Kenneth Rexroth
Clowns and Blood-Drinking Perverts: Imperial History According to Tacitus

Website of the Day
Richard Thompson's Anti-War Song: "'Dad's Gonna Kill Me"


February 3 /4, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Who Can Stop the War?

Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: a Conversation with Dr. Susan Block on Sex, Censorship and Liberation

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Thrill is Gone: the Withering of the American Environmental Movement

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqis on the Run

P. Sainath
They Take the Early Train

Sen. Russell Feingold
A Symbol of a Timid Congress

Diane Christian
Dying Well: Why Killing Saddam Backfired on Bush

Brian Cloughley
Space Missiles Away!: the Irony of Bush's Indignation

Diana Barahona
How to Turn a Priest into a Cannibal: US Reporting on the Coup in Haiti

Timothy J. Freeman
The Iraq War Hits Hawai'i: the Stryker Brigade and the Watada Case

Conn Hallinan
The Vishnu Strategy

John Ross
Felipe's First Fifty Days

Greg Moses
The Government Blinks: Freedom for the Ibrahim Family

Missy Beattie
No More Rebukes or Non-Binding Resolutions

Joshua Frank
Unsafe in Any Seas: Cruising with Ralph Nader?

Evelyn Pringle
"These Drugs are Poison to Some People"

Stephen Fleischman
Let's Hear It for Chuck Hagel!

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Iraq in Fragments

Poets' Basement
Holt, Engel, Ford and Saavedra

Website of the Day
Flamenco Dali


February 2, 2007

Chris Kutalik
The Meanest Industry

R. Gibson / E. W. Ross
Cutting the Schools-to-War Pipeline

Pam Martens
America's "Money Honey" as Corporate Matchmaker: Maria Bartiromo and the Co-Branding of CNBC and Citigroup

John Feffer
Picturing the President

Daryll E. Ray
Why the Family Farm is Good for Rural America

Ronald Bruce St. John
Apartheid By Any Other Name

Mitchel Cohen
Listen Gore: Some Inconvenient Truths About the Politics of Environmental Crisis

Website of the Day
The Real Issue is Empire


February 1, 2007

Diane Farsetta
An Army Thousands More: How PR Firms and Major Media Military Recruiters

Marjorie Cohn
Bush Targets Iran: Cruise Missile Diplomacy

Mark Scaramella
Our Founding War Profiteers

Ranni Amiri
Senator Prejudice: the Day Joe Biden Threatened to Kick My Ass

Christopher Ketcham
Die, TV!

Winston Warfield
Art Panic Hits Boston!

Corporate Crime Reporter
Jailing the Artists, Not the Executives: the Great Boston Art Panic, Turner Broadcasting and the AG Who Won't Pursue Corporate Crime

Thomas P. Healy
Adios Molly Ivins: Populist Journalism and Never Dull

Website of the Dau
The Ordeal of Gary Tyler

 

January 31, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Waco of Iraq?: US "Victory" Cult Leader was a "Massacre"

Jean Bricmont
What is the Decisive "Clash" of Our Time?

Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: a Conversation with Dr. Susan Block on Sex, Politics and Liberation

James T. Phillips
Flashbacks de Jour: Photographing War

William Johnson
Worker Reistance at Smithfield Foods

Tim Wilkinson
A Hawk in Drag: Dershowitz and the Iraq War

Evelyn Pringle
The Judge, the Reporter and the Secret Zyprexa Documents

Joshua Frank
What America Really Needs to Hear

Ramzy Baroud
Shameless in Gaza

Mickey Z.
Nader Still in the Crosshairs

Website of the Day
What's Goin' On?

 

 

 

 

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March 5, 2007

Where the Constitution Still Matters

It's the People of Washington vs. Pelosi, et al

By DAVE LINDORFF

In the State of Washington, it is the people versus Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party leadership.

At issue is a bill, S8016, submitted in the state's senate by freshman state Senator Eric Oemig, which would call on the U.S. Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against President George Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors against the Constitution and the people of the United States and of the State of Washington.

The measure, which would take the form of a joint resolution by the two houses of the Washington state legislature, accords with the instructions laid out by Founder Thomas Jefferson, who, in his Manual of the Rules of the House of Representatives laid out state joint resolutions as an alternative route for initiating presidential impeachment proceedings in the House in addition to the more usual route of a member submitting a bill of impeachment.

Jefferson's prescient thinking was that if Congress, by reason of political cowardice or inattention, ever proved unwilling or unable to initiate impeachment when it was called for, state legislators, far from Washington and closer to the people, could do it for them.

But two unprincipled and devious Democratic members of Washington's congressional delegation, Sen. Pat Murray and Rep. Jay Inslee, are undermining Jefferson's carefully designed fail-safe system by pressuring Democratic state legislators to kill Sen. Oemig's bill. The Seattle Times in a March 2 article, reports that Murray and Inslee are telling Democrats in the state senate to kill the impeachment bill on the grounds that it would lead to "divisiveness" in Washington, and that it would impede the "Democratic agenda" in Congress.

Forget grave spinning! This wholly inappropriate interference in state affairs by the state's two leading national political figures must have Jefferson shitting in his mouldered pants!

Clearly, Murray and Inslee have decided to abandon their constituents in the state of Washington, a majority of whom want this criminal president impeached, and are instead doing the bidding of US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who have completely lost touch with the nation's voters and with their own sense of principle.

But this battle is not over. The grassroots movement in Washington that has led to Sen. Oemig's bill getting as far as a hearing in the Senate's Government Operations and Elections Committee, is growing rapidly. The Citizens Committee for Impeachment in Olympia, with almost no money and no press coverage, brought 900 people to a rally a week before the committee hearing, and hundreds more to the capitol building on the day of the hearing. A massive phone and letter-writing campaign to committee members and state senators is now underway to insure that the bill goes to a vote in the full Senate.

If Democratic state legislators know what is good for them, they will send Murray and Inslee packing back to Washington and will vote to defend the Constitution and their constuents by approving Sen. Oemig's bill in both houses and sending his resolution to the House, forcing Pelosi to put impeachment back on the House agenda where it belongs.

After all, what is this supposed concern about "divisiveness"? The nation is mired in a criminal war that has killed 3200 American troops and injured another 52,000, many of them from Washington state. The president has trashed the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and is bankrupting the nation, wasting money that could be helping Washingtonians and other Americans. Washington today is not too divisive; it is not divisive enough!

As for that Democratic agenda, just how do Murray and Inslee expect anything passed by the current Congress to make its way into law if the President is free to continue, in direct violation of Article I and II of the Constitution, to invalidate the laws passed by the Congress through his use of what he calls "signing statements"?

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His n book of CounterPunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's newest book is "The Case for Impeachment",
co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.

He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com

 

 

 

Coming in March from
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The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained!


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CounterPunch Books!
Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal


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"The Case Against Israel"
Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz

WHAT'S INSIDE
Grand Theft Pentagon:
Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror

by Jeffrey St. Clair

 

 


The Occupation
by Patrick Cockburn

 


Bruce Springsteen On Tour
By Dave Marsh

The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"