February 8, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The people of Egypt today mark 14 days of nonviolent uprising against a brutal military regime that has ruled with near total power for 30 years. The peaceful protests are an astonishing coalition of educated and working-class, Muslim and Christian, secularist and religiously driven, old and young, male and female, and yet they are in fact a peaceful citizen-driven revolution against tyranny. The Mubarak regime has waged a brutal assault on peaceful demonstrators, human rights monitors and international press, and now there is concern the international attention may turn away.
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February 6, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
On Tuesday, more than one million Egyptians turned out for mass demonstrations in cities across the country. On Friday, crowds massing in central Cairo and Alexandria were reported to be even larger than the Tuesday crowds, despite brutal and bloody assaults by pro-Mubarak militia on Wednesday and Thursday. It is now day 13 of the Egyptian transition to demonstrations, and opposition leaders are reportedly negotiating with the government to shape an orderly and peaceful process of transition.
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February 4, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Over the last two days, Hosni Mubarak has made Cairo the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. After Mubarak’s new prime minister issued an “apology” for the lethal violence waged by pro-Mubarak gangs on Wednesday and into Thursday’s pre-dawn hours, the government appeared to be engaged in an even more intense campaign of violent assaults on unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators and journalists.
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February 1, 2011 :: The Editors :: 5 Comments
Judge Roger Vinson, a federal judge in Florida, has ruled the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 “unconstitutional”, accepting without trial the argument put forward by 26 states’ attorneys general that the “individual mandate” requiring that Americans purchase insurance or face penalties was not only unconstitutional but was “unseverable” from the rest of the law. Judge Vinson’s ruling is fraught with fictions and distortions and appears to be designed to help insurers avoid facing any new regulation.
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January 26, 2011 :: The Editors :: Comments Off
Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House budget committee, gave a vague and meandering response to Pres. Obama’s address, first saying Republicans want to work with the president, then defaming him as a spendthrift socialist bent on destroying American prosperity. He laced his remarks with Republican talking points from the 2010 election cycle, repeating key distortions that have been discredited in the mainstream press.
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January 23, 2011 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
Glenn Beck has once more taken extremist hate-speech to a new extreme, calling for the murder of liberals and progressives, whom he alleges are revolutionaries who are plotting an armed struggle to overthrow the United States government. It is the most unfounded and absurd of his conspiracy theories to date, and is clearly aimed at inciting a violent emotional reaction from people who are susceptible to the language of combat and armed intervention in the political realm.
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January 15, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Democratic Congressman Heath Shuler and Republican Jason Chaffetz have responded to the rampage in Tucson by calling on staffers to obtain concealed-carry firearms permits and weapons training. Chaffetz has said he will carry a weapon himself when in his home district, implying he will be armed when visiting with constituents. While the emotion behind the [...]
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January 11, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: 5 Comments
George Will today has written a vicious criticism of any attempt to examine whether political rhetoric over the last election cycle was too violent, too full of vitriol and hostility. He flippantly leads with the remark that “It would be merciful if, when tragedies such as Tucson’s occur, there were a moratorium on sociology.” Will argues that conservatives who used inflammatory distortions and thinly veiled threats of violence should not be scrutinized for demonizing others, then leads with a demonization of the entire field of sociology as made up of “half-baked explanations”.
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January 11, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The United States Congress should honor the value of human life and the service of Rep. Giffords and her aides, those who showed uncommon valor and those who lost their lives, by taking up legislation to reinstate the national Assault Weapons Ban, and to make it permanent. There is no sane or defensible reason for allowing people to purchase weapons designed to kill large numbers of people in seconds or minutes. There is no way to justify such a reckless policy as somehow being written into the Constitution.
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January 10, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who has been targeted by opponents and conservative critics who have put her in gunsights in campaign advertisements and talked of taking her out, has raised ire across the nation for the mounting campaign of extremist rhetoric that over the last four years has seen repeated violent threats against members of Congress, candidates for public office, minority groups and people favoring healthcare reform. Now, the Tea Party Express is raising money, using the shooting and its aftermath as motivation, saying it will not allow anyone to tone down this extremist rhetoric.
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January 9, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
In the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 other people, six of whom have already, tragically, died from their injuries, the national political establishment (media, pressure groups and elected officials) has turned its attention to the perils of extremist and vitriolic rhetoric. We are being asked to consider whether the use of metaphorical violence (putting Rep. Giffords in the crosshairs, which both Sarah Palin and her 2010 opponent did) leads to actual violence, and while direct responsibility is not being alleged, the ethical obligation to honor our democracy with civil discourse must be considered.
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January 6, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Justice Antonin Scalia, long considered one of the most right-wing justices to sit on the United States Supreme Court during the last century, has outraged Constitutional scholars and civil rights advocates by saying the Constitution provides no protection against discrimination for women or for gay Americans. He specifically targeted the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment, arguing that the intent of the words “any person within its jurisdiction” was not to include women or people of homosexual orientation.
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January 4, 2011 :: Denver Lessing :: Comments Off
Capping a season of lavish fundraising events where Republican members of Congress raised huge sums from lobbyists, corporate donors and special interests, one Republican freshman is holding a major bash, at $2,500 per person, complete with live performance by Leigh Ann Rimes, $50,000 all-inclusive package deals and luxury suites at the W hotel. Despite Tea Party opposition to corrupt corporate-interest politics, Rep. Jeff Denham is openly positioning himself to be the go-to rainmaker for fellow Republicans.
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January 3, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The 112th Congress will be officially sworn in on Wednesday, and its work will be fraught with challenges and controversies from the very first. On Wednesday, for instance, the House of Representatives will vote on a rules change that will allow Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan to dictate spending priorities and caps to the entire House and Senate, by disallowing any revision of his rewrite guidelines, should the two chambers fail to reach agreement on a budget resolution. Issues like raising the debt ceiling, implementing START, mortgage and foreclosure reform and expanding medical coverage, will all pit liberal against conservative in a split Congress.
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December 31, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC is guaranteed to be controversial long after the shock of its meaning fades from public consciousness. The ruling effectively gave multinational corporations free rein to spend unlimited sums of money with the specific intent of distorting the public discourse and swaying the democratic process in their favor. Some say it amounts to the death of real democracy in the United States.
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December 30, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
With a new wave of elected officials coming to Capitol Hill next week, there is talk of a shift, at least in the House, to a so-called “all-of-the-above” or “let’s-do-everything” approach to energy policy. The idea sounds reasonable at first glance, because it suggests the maximum available energy will be made available to consumers, which should mean more choice, lower prices, less risk. The truth is: “all-of-the-above” is under-thought, ignores major costs associated with certain resources, and is, therefore, a risky economic strategy.
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December 30, 2010 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
There is much controversy over attempts to defend Henry Kissinger in the wake of revelations that he said the use of gas chambers to exterminate Jews was not “an American concern”. He was not just making a statement about past atrocities, and the ethical underpinnings of what should motivate diplomatic or military action; he was in fact suggesting to Pres. Nixon that if the Soviet Union, from which Jews were emigrating in large numbers, were to commence a new genocide, it would be of no concern to the US.
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December 12, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
David Cameron, who campaigned as a rights-focused, green-conscious Tory, claims a steep rise in tuition fees will be good for Britons educational aspirations; but his plan to triple tuition fees for average British citizens seeking a university education initially led to nationwide protests, student rallies and sit-ins at the Conservative party headquarters. Now, the political crisis has escalated as passage of the tuition fee hikes has provoked violent riots in the streets of London.
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December 7, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The media storm surrounding the personal story of Julian Assange, reputed founder of WikiLeaks, is in many ways a sad commentary on the state of our security policy. The malice directed at Assange, and the coincidental pursuit of him on accusation of sexual assault in Sweden, appear to fit into a campaign designed to dissuade the general public from taking seriously anything produced by WikiLeaks. The fact is: there would be no use for WikiLeaks and no controversy whatsoever, if democratic governments did not rely so heavily on secrecy.
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November 24, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Glen Beck has always had a penchant for the outrageous, the egregious, the outright lie. He has made a career of smears, distortions, even verging on hate-rhetoric. His absurd assertion that his white followers should “take back the civil rights movement”, a phrase whose meaning no one could claim to fully understand, was perhaps a sign of near psychotic hubris. But his most recent “Puppetmaster” series, obsessively defaming George Soros, Holocaust survivor, billionaire philanthropist and democracy activist, as a ‘Nazi’ is a sign that Fox News has left all semblance of morality behind.
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November 14, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The United States government is facing historic budget deficits. A wave of new Republicans are going to Washington, DC, with the idea in mind they will slash “spending”, “shrink the federal workforce” and reduce benefits for “entitlements”, i.e. social programs. What they do not have a way to understand is that the entire budget deficit crisis is a direct result of specific policies enacted by former president George W. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress of 2001-2006.
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November 13, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The lame duck Congress, with enormous Democratic majorities in both houses, will have to decide what to do about the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire on the first of January. The Republicans will not take control of the House of Representatives until after the deadline on the Bush tax cuts. The Democratic plan is devoted to two things: the middle class and fiscal responsibility. The Republican plan is devoted to one thing: delivering as much free cash to millionaires as possible, all while ballooning the deficit enormously.
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November 10, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
An incoming Republican member of the House of Representatives, Alan Nunnelee of Mississippi, has said he would hold the U.S. government hostage in order to make sure millions of Americans are stripped of their health insurance and their healthcare rights. The Affordable Care Act, the most important reform to the health insurance markets since Medicare, and the most comprehensive reform in 100 years, bars insurers from denying coverage or treatment due to “pre-existing conditions”, it reduces the federal budget deficit and incentivizes the training of 20,000 new primary care physicians.
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November 8, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
I am not a runner. And I don’t (have not yet) run marathons. But I feel a need to comment on the New York City Marathon, a true celebration of human potential and of the can-do spirit. In a time of economic malaise, when media and politicians alike are trying desperately to reduce expectations and perpetuate the myth that some things are just too hard, even when they are morally right, the New York City Marathon clearly demonstrates how much force and commitment there is behind the idea that “Yes, we can!”
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November 4, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell today spoke to the Heritage Foundation, and called on Pres. Obama to compromise by doing what the Senate minority wants. His speech was at intervals irrational and in turn smelled of sour grapes (McConnell did not get to take control of the Senate, so he proposes his party empower him by continuing to obstruct every proposal made to benefit the American people). But perhaps worst of all, McConnell proposed the Republican majority in the House of Representatives misuse its Constitutional authority to control the purse and violate federal law by undermining provisions of the Affordable Care Act designed to ensure sick Americans are not denied care.
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November 2, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The United States of America is the “wealthiest country in the history of the world”. We hear this repeated so often, it’s almost as if it has become the national slogan. Economists tend to agree that it’s the truth, but that wealth is relative: tens of millions of Americans live in abject poverty, unable to obtain basic sustenance, medical care, adequate education or even basic public safety. One in five children in the United States now live in poverty. Among African American and Hispanic children, the rate is 30 percent.
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October 28, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The political battle over immigration reform is in many ways a shameful commentary on the state of our democracy and the core of our political discourse. We have well over ten million people living in our midst who lack basic access to fundamental rights and protections and who are being vilified and even further marginalized by voices from both sides of the political spectrum. This suggests a shameful, and hypocritical hold-out against living up to the founding ideals of American democracy.
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October 27, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, writes: “Every variation of public service, including elective office, should be anchored by one complete and overriding truth and objective—to make a better world,” as part of a powerful statement urging civility and good-will from all who seek to involve themselves in the work of public service. Hagel’s open letter to the political world comes at a time when many election observers say the campaign of 2010 is the most degenerate and ill-intentioned in memory, where lies are prevailing over evidence and the ability to commit to effective and relentless distortion has become the most sought-after weapon of campaigners.
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October 25, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Amid disclosures that many of the nation’s major banks not only participated in, but engineered and propagated a system by which the legal paperwork review process was skipped, cut short or literally forged, Bank of America and others now say they “had a right to foreclose”, because borrowers had not been keeping up with payments. They may now resume the foreclosures process, promising that all mistakes “will be corrected”, even as critics say nothing has been done to prevent the same mistakes from occurring.
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October 21, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
David Cameron, the Conservative party leader who heads a coalition UK government in partnership with Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, is forcing record cuts to social spending, slashing the military budget and plans to lay off 500,000 Britons. In an atmosphere where private investment and new hires are both stagnant, such cuts could undermine any economic recovery, however stunted. Critics say the move is ideological and may be intended to consolidate his support among the conservative base.
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October 17, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The accusations, which have emerged from court cases, private and public investigations and internal reporting from the banks themselves, that mortgage lenders have been hastily foreclosing on homeowners without proper review suggests a far deeper problem than previously thought. When reformers talk of fixing the banks or healing the lending industry, they may now have to consider how grossly the nation’s major banks have overcalculated their own worth.
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October 17, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Cable malice merchant Glenn Beck has been targeting specific groups for a campaign of libel, by which he appears to be attempting to rally conservative supporters through fear and intimidation. Numerous media groups have observed that Beck has been engaged in a consistent pattern of unfounded verbal abuse against specific progressive organizations working to create a more fair democratic society, and now at least one plot has been uncovered in which Beck was cited as the inspiration for a hate-motivated assassination.
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October 13, 2010 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
Karl Rove is a professional liar who has made it his priority to worship at the feet of billionaire corporate interests and those among the wealthy who prefer to avoid doing their part to repay the society that made them wealthy. His modus operandi is: formulate a series of falsehoods which will be repeated by as many individuals, media outlets and sources of propaganda as possible, and support that campaign with money from anyone with enough vested interest that the money will not stop flowing.
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September 26, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
“One person alone cannot push an elephant.” The proverb tells us a great deal about how this film explores the crisis in human connection that comes with conflict. How pervasive, how multifaceted, how horrifying, to find that all sense of community has unraveled in the worst assaults and intensities of a save-no-soul total war. But from there, from the aftermath of this horror, even in the midst of it, Rose Mapendo would tell us we can plant the seeds of something better, nobler, more generous.
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August 31, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The founding charters of the United States of America were designed to create a system of democratic government in which terms and structures linked to historical exclusions and injustices could be redefined in order to serve a more democratic, more tolerant system of civil government. The argument regarding civil marriage services, provided by government, and the consequent legislative and fiscal benefits assigned to married couples, that traditional “definitions” of marriage should have a bearing on the ruling of the courts do not apply, because they do not allow for the specific Constitutional role of the judiciary: to interpret laws as applied to citizens equally and without prejudice.
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August 26, 2010 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
The American right has been relentless in its assault on the character, talents and leadership qualities of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter since the Republican campaign against him in the 1980 presidential election cycle. Their attacks have rested on the assertion that his altruistic politics, his emphasis on responsible governance, and his wariness of handing public services to private profit-makers, were a general failure of leadership. In fact, their attacks on Carter are rooted in a rhetorical sympathy for the fundamentalist clerics who took power in Iran.
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August 16, 2010 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
Republican House minority leader John Boehner, of Ohio, said last Sunday on Meet the Press that, whether or not tax cuts are paid for, Pres. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans must not be allowed to expire. He refused, in increasingly heated and defensive language, to say whether or not tax cuts are paid for. His refusal was as good as an admission that there is no way to pay for the tax cuts and that his party does not, in fact, believe the trickle-down theory behind the Bush tax cuts will actually work.
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August 1, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
SB1070 is a threat to the freedom and quality of life of all Americans, but first to Arizonans. The law’s draconian anti-immigrant provisions, —which not only include random stops based on “reasonable suspicion” (clearly an indication that visual profiling is required) but also a form of domestic “extraordinary rendition”, or prisoner transfer out of jurisdiction with no judicial oversight— are an attack on basic Constitutional freedoms that protect all U.S. citizens.
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July 24, 2010 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
Fox News has adopted an all-campaign, all-the-time approach, in which it hires Republican politicians to pose as “reporters” and “anchors” and pushes mystical assumptions about market philosophy that have nothing to do with markets and everything to do with making it easy for those on top to stay there. Fox is steeped in a battle with its own intellectual values, fighting to portray itself as populist, while pushing the most elite-inducing economic philosophies and arguing consistently against actions that would defend ordinary people against unaccountable power.
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July 23, 2010 :: Riga Listin :: 4 Comments
Andrew Breitbart —a fake journalist whose overt political bias is not only self-declared, but is seething with bile and contempt— is defending his use of rigged reporting and character assassination in a deliberate attempt to distort the truth and sow racist hate. Breitbart posted a clip of a video on his blog, in which USDA official Shirley Sherrod, explained how she came to see beyond race and transcend the temptation to judge people’s character or motives based on the color of their skin.
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July 21, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The story of Shirley Sherrod illustrates how injustice and prejudice will flood the scene whenever we give in to a pathological aversion to nuance. Our media culture, our politics, the headline-obsessed pseudo-reporting that passes for “mainstream journalism”, allow loud-mouthed bigots and propagandists like Andrew Breitbart to pervert our free press and ruin lives. Fortunately, the media picked up the mistake, and the White House responded to Sherrod’s resigning with a call for a thorough investigation of the facts surrounding the incident.
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June 28, 2010 :: Webb Tisch :: One Comment
A group of Republican senators today suddenly took a shift to the extremist right when they launched one after another attack on the legendary Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, widely considered to be one of the wisest and most responsible justices ever to sit on the Supreme Court. They attacked him as a quintessential “activist judge”, mainly to paint Elena Kagan, who clerked for him, as somehow opposed to “American values”.
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June 16, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
There is nothing ideological about the issue of renewable energy resources. Proponents tend to care about the health of the natural environment, which motivates their wish to see renewables replace high-polluting resources like oil and coal, but the technologies, the fact of their economic viability and their usefulness for society at large, are not in any way a matter of ideology.
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June 4, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev has said Israel will attempt to intercept the MV Rachel Corrie, a ship carrying humanitarian cargo and aid workers into the Gaza Strip. Tensions with Turkey are reaching fever pitch, as Turkey’s prime minister vows the killing of Turkish nationals by the IDF will never be forgotten, and there is now heated political discussion in Turkey about whether to send warships to escort the next flotilla of aid-bearing ships that sail for Gaza.
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May 31, 2010 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
Glen Beck is a menace to the integrity of the American media. His fabrications and falsehoods are a deliberate and immoral attempt to distort the American political mind, to create visceral divisions and to force hostility to undermine productive progressive action to make the country more just and more egalitarian. His lies are shameless and his relentless attempts at character assassination of anyone not in agreement with his fringe politics are an insult to all people everywhere.
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May 31, 2010 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long been known as “hawkish” on security. He has long been a staunch defender of Israel’s right to use force to defend its interests, even preemptively. He defended and justified the two aggressive, and ultimately counterproductive, aggressive campaigns waged by his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, first against Lebanon, then against Gaza. Now, after a commando raid killed 9 unarmed aid workers, there are questions about whether Netanyahu’s radicalism may be eroding, not promoting, Israel’s security.
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April 29, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
El estado de Arizona —antiguamente parte del territorio español que vino a ser México, y uno de los estados de mayor población de ascendencia hispana— ha legalizado el perfilamiento racial y la persecución sistemática de los inmigrantes. La ley denominada como propuesta SB1070 no sólo permite, sino exige, a los agentes de policía estatales y municipales pedir los documentos migratorios a cualquier individuo que se les parezca “razonablemente” sospechoso de ser indocumentado.
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March 22, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The healthcare reform process has taken a full year of agonizing, sometimes gut-wrenching debate, or something popularly referred to as debate, but not properly qualifying. At times, the consensus of media punditry appeared to be leaning toward the notion that the healthcare reform process had already derailed Barack Obama’s young presidency. Cries of “socialism!” and “kill the bill!” never really died down, and Democratic leaders appeared at a loss for how better to explain the legislation than to explain it as it was and as its aims were.
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March 21, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
If the healthcare reform legislation currently going through the House of Representatives, in an effort to forge a unified House-Senate bill the president can sign, does not include a provision that immediately bans any and all discrimination based on “pre-existing conditions”, people will die. This is an undeniable and tragic fact of life in our country, and the United States Congress has to take far more seriously the real-world ramifications of the timelines they build into the legislation.
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March 21, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Today on Meet the Press, Republican strategist Ed Gillespie asked why has the United States Senate become so polarized, when Pres. Obama “ran as a post-partisan”. The association was deliberately disingenuous; there is nothing about Pres. Obama’s 1st year in office that suggests the climate should be brutally, relentlessly partisan, except the Republican party’s collective vow to oppose him everywhere they can, to undermine his presidency and the credibility of the Democratic majority.
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