Does anyone remember Mr. Obama? The man who ran on a program of “change?” Who abhorred torture and Gitmo? Who kinda, sorta, hinted that he would end the endless wars in the Middle East? Does anybody know what happened to him? Where he went?

How did we wind up with another Cheney/Bush clone in the White House? Since his election, still more billions have been given to the banksters, the Wall Street speculators who caused the current melt-down, and above all to the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) and the Pentagon. Every piece of “Gone with the Wind” sized legislation is held up until every special interest, every bankster and insurance group is completely protected, at the expense of We the People. Continue reading →

This alternative vision sees America’s past as a series of betrayals by political leaders of all major parties, in which the liberal ideals on which this country was founded have been gradually abandoned and replaced by precisely the sorts of illiberal ideals that America officially deplores. In effect, say Howard Zinn and a growing chorus of others, we have become the people our founding fathers warned us (and tried to protect us) against. FULL ARTICLE

Featured Post for 05/01-05/07
CommonDreams reports:

62 Americans, dressed in the orange jumpsuits and black hoods that have become the symbol of Guantanamo detainees, were arrested in front of the White House in a nonviolent demonstration this afternoon.

The First Amendment to the Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Continue reading →

The premise behind collecting the federal income tax is a complete farce. The IRS claims the tax is voluntary, whereas any sane American realizes that she or he will go to jail if the tax is not paid. This is evident from not only the legal code, but even from the latest 1040 instructions to the taxpayer!   FULL ARTICLE

A “right” that requires “government” permission is not a right, but a government-granted privilege. A “right” that legislation can negate is not a right. And yet most of the pro-freedom movement goes to great lengths to ASK those in “government” to please not violate our rights. FULL ARTICLE

The drug war is based on a repugnant assertion: that you do not have ownership over your own body; that you don’t have the right to decide what you’ll do with your body, with your property and with your life. The position of the drug warriors is that you should be in jail if you decide to do something with your body that they don’t approve of. FULL ARTICLE

Featured Post for 04/17-04/23: When sports fans are asked to come out and “root for the home team”, there is an unspoken benefit for those who have an economic stake in the team’s existence. We recognize this benefit but regard it as their “fair share”, our share being the vicarious enjoyment of “our” team. Our enthusiastic participation in this rooting example is a local form of jingoism. Continue reading →

The US has the highest incarceration rate and the biggest prison population of any country in the world.  With 5 percent of the world’s population, the US has 25 percent of the world’s prison inmates.  Recent research by the Pew Center concludes that one in every 31 Americans is in prison or jail or on probation or parole.  FULL ARTICLE

The costs of the Great War were truly astronomical. As with the number of stars, the final accounting is in God’s hands. The slaughters, the treasure, the faith in some kind of order of society – all of these were costs of the war. As Wilfred Owen suggested in his terrible poem “Strange Meeting,” the culture of Europe seemed hell-bent on trekking away from progress toward something that literary historian Paul Fussell would later call the troglodyte world: a kind of Hobbesian vision, one might say, rendered in pen and ink by Otto Dix. Costs indeed. FULL ARTICLE

After all the ghastly statism of the Bush years, you might think that the left would back off from using power to achieve its aims. Instead, they have learned nothing. The left has been lying in wait for its chance. As the Obama people entered the White House, it’s as if they found a closet labeled “failed ideas of the past.” They opened it and the contents spilled everywhere. They started grabbing things and putting them in the regulatory books and in legislation. FULL ARTICLE