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1.  “Shame: The ‘Antiwar’ Democrats Who Sold Out

In a vote that should go down in recent histories as a day of shame for the Democrats, on Tuesday the House voted to approve another $106 billion dollars for the bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and increasingly Pakistan). To put a fine point on the interconnection of the iron fist of U.S. militarism and the hidden hand of free market neoliberal economics, the bill included a massive initiative to give the International Monetary Fund billions more in U.S. taxpayer funds.

What once Democrats could argue was “Bush’s war,” they now officially own. In fact, only five Republicans voted for the supplemental (though overwhelmingly not on the issue of the war funding). Ron Paul, who made clear he was voting against the war, was a notable exception.

This vote has revealed a sobering statistic for the anti-war movement in this country and brought to the surface a broader issue that should give die-hard partisan Democrats who purport to be anti-war reason for serious pause about the actual state of their party. Only 30 Democrats voted against the war funding when it mattered. And these 30 did so in the face of significant threats to their political future from the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That means that only 30 out of 256 Democrats are willing to stand up to the war and the current president presiding over it.”

http://original.antiwar.com/scahill/2009/06/17/shame-the-antiwar-democrats-who-sold-out/

2.  “Had Bush pushed for more military funds at this stage, the antiwar movement (if you can call it that) would have been organizing opposition weeks in advance, calling out the neocons for wasting our scarce tax dollars during a recession on a never-ending, directionless war. But since Obama’s a Democrat, a beloved one at that, mums the word.

Certainly a few progressive Democrats are dismayed by what the Obama administration is up to, but how many of these Democrats that are upset now will be willing to break rank and oppose their party when it matters most, like during the midterm elections coming up next year? Obama had the majority of antiwar support shored up while he ran for the presidency, with absolutely no demands put on his candidacy. And not surprisingly, antiwar progressives have little to show for their fawning support.

All this begs a few questions: If not now, when exactly will Obama’s policies be scrutinized with the same veracity that Bush’s were?”

http://original.antiwar.com/joshua-frank/2009/06/17/these-are-obamas-wars-now/

3.  “Mr. Obama, Tear Down This Empire

According to economist and historian Robert Higgs, real U.S. defense spending is around $1 trillion. This accounts for over half of the world’s military-related spending. The United States is also the world’s chief arms dealer, as the residents of Gaza recently discovered.

But instead of all of this being an example of imperialism, empire, and foreign policy on steroids, we are told by neoconservative intellectuals that the United States is merely exercising “benevolent hegemony,” that America “has been the greatest force for good in the world during the past century,” and that the invasion of Iraq was “the greatest act of benevolence one country has ever done for another.”

With troops in about 100 countries and territories, the U.S. empire was firmly in place soon after World War II. But the “Good War” was not the beginning. Between the two world wars, U.S. troops were sent to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Russia, Panama, Honduras, Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Turkey, and China. But World War I was not the beginning either. Before the “Great War,” U.S. troops were sent to Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, China, and Mexico. And although we might begin the U.S. empire with the seizure from Spain of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam during the Spanish-American War of 1898, we can actually go back a few years earlier to U.S. intervention in Hawaii before we deposed the monarch and annexed the territory.

U.S. foreign policy can only be described as aggressive, reckless, belligerent, and meddling. Its fruits are the destabilization and overthrow of governments, the destruction of industry and infrastructure, the backing of military coups, death squads, and drug traffickers, imperialism under the guise of humanitarianism, support for corrupt and tyrannical governments, brutal sanctions and embargoes, and failed attempts to police the world. U.S. foreign policy results in nothing but discord, strife, hatred, and terrorism toward the United States. U.S. foreign policy is also very arrogant. What would Americans think if some country—any country—stated its intention to construct a naval base in Key West, Florida? They would be outraged. So why the double standard? Does might make right? What gives the United States the right to encircle the world with bases?”

http://www.takimag.com/article/mr._obama_tear_down_this_empire/

4.  “Terror law used to stop thousands ‘just to balance racial statistics’
Thousands of people are being stopped and searched by the police under their counter-­terrorism powers – simply to ­provide a racial balance in official statistics, the government’s official anti-terror law watchdog has revealed.

Lord Carlile said in his annual report that he had “ample anecdotal evidence” of it happening, adding that such a practice was “totally wrong” and constituted an invasion of civil liberties.

“I can well understand the concerns of the police that they should be free from allegations of prejudice,” he said. “But it is not a good use of precious resources if they waste them on self-evidently unmerited searches.”
He said there was little or no evidence that the use of section 44 stop and search powers by the police could prevent an act of terrorism.

“While arrests for other crime have ­followed searches under the section, none of the many thousands of searches has ever resulted in a conviction for a terrorism offence. Its utility has been questioned publicly and privately by senior Metropolitan police staff with wide experience of terrorism policing,” said Carlile. He added that such searches were stopping between 8,000-10,000 people a month.

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, the ­”section 44 stops” allow the police to search anyone in a designated area without suspicion that an offence has occurred.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/17/stop-search-terror-law-met

5.  “Senator Slams General’s Torture Testimony

Obama’s new pick to oversee U.S. forces in Afghanistan misled Congress about his role in the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation” by U.S. Special Operations forces in 2003 and 2004, a senior Democratic senator has charged.

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI) said late last week that then-Special Operations commander Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal was not direct with lawmakers at his confirmation hearing regarding his approval of harsh interrogations by personnel under his control. “

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7855749&page=1

6.  “Dodd: Giving the Fed More Power is like Awarding a Son a “Bigger, Faster Car Right after He Crashed the Family Station Wagon”The chairman of the senate banking committee – Christopher Dodd – quoted a critic of the plan to expand the Federal Reserve’s powers as being:

like awarding a son a “bigger, faster car right after he crashed the family station wagon.” He added that he hadn’t made a conclusion on the issue.

The critic is correct.

The Fed caused the Great Depression, according to Bernanke himself. The Fed largely caused the current financial crisis. The Fed creates new “money” out of thin air, and then charges massive amounts in interest to the federal government, impoverishing the nation and stealing its natural wealth. And the Fed has refused to tell Congress or the American people where the trillions of dollars in bailout money are going (see this, this, this, and this).

However, Dodd’s statement that he hasn’t yet made up his mind about expanding the Fed’s powers is just for show. In fact, Dodd and House banking committee chair Barney Frank were involved with Summers and Geithner every step of the way in drafting the plan to give the Fed more power.”

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/06/dodd-giving-fed-more-power-is-like.html

7.  “The Washington Post fires its best columnist. Why?

One of the rarest commodities in the establishment media is someone who was a vehement critic of George Bush and who now, applying their principles consistently, has become a regular critic of Barack Obama — i.e., someone who criticizes Obama from what is perceived as “the Left” rather than for being a Terrorist-Loving Socialist Muslim.  It just got a lot rarer, as The Washington Post — at least according to Politico‘s Patrick Gavin — just fired WashingtonPost.com columnist, long-time Bush critic and Obama watchdog (i.e., a real journalist) Dan Froomkin.

What makes this firing so bizarre and worthy of inquiry is that, as Gavin notes, Froomkin was easily one of the most linked-to and cited Post columnists.  At a time when newspapers are relying more and more on online traffic, the Post just fired the person who, in 2007, wrote 3 out of the top 10 most-trafficked columns.  In publishing that data, Media Bistro used this headline:  ”The Post’s Most Popular Opinions (Read: Froomkin).”  Isn’t that an odd person to choose to get rid of?

Following the bottomless path of self-pity of the standard right-wing male — as epitomized by Pete Hoekstra’s comparison of House Republicans to Iranian protesters and yet another column by Pat Buchanan decrying the systematic victimization of the white male in America — Charles Krauthammer last night said that Obama critics on Fox News are “a lot like [Hugo Chavez'] Caracas where all the media, except one, are state run.”  But right-wing polemicists like Krauthammer are all over the media.

In addition to his Rupert Murdoch perch at Fox, Krauthammer remains as a regular columnist at the Post, alongside fellow right-wing Obama haters such as Bill Kristol, George Will, Jim Hoagland, Michael Gerson and Robert Kagan — as well as a whole bevy of typical, banal establishment spokespeople who are highly supportive of whatever the permanent Washington establishment favors (David Ignatius, Fred Hiatt, Ruth Marcus, David Broder, Richard Cohen, Howie Kurtz, etc. etc.).   And that’s to say nothing of the regular Op-Ed appearances by typical Krauthammer-mimicking neoconservative voices such as John Bolton, Joe Lieberman, and Douglas Feith — and the Post Editorial Page itself.  ”Caracas” indeed.

Notably, Froomkin just recently had a somewhat acrimonious exchange with the oh-so-oppressed Krauthammer over torture, after Froomkin criticized Krauthammer’s explicit endorsement of torture and Krauthammer responded by calling Froomkin’s criticisms “stupid.”  And now — weeks later — Froomkin is fired by the Post while the persecuted Krauthammer, comparing himself to endangered journalists in Venezuela, remains at the Post, along with countless others there who think and write just like he does:  i.e., standard neoconservative pablum.  Froomkin was previously criticized for being “highly opinionated and liberal” by Post ombudsman Deborah Howell (even as she refused to criticize blatant right-wing journalists).

All of this underscores a critical and oft-overlooked point:  what one finds virtually nowhere in the establishment press are those who criticize Obama not in order to advance their tawdry right-wing agenda but because the principles that led them to criticize Bush compel similar criticism of Obama.  Rachel Maddow is one of the few prominent media figures who will interview and criticize Democratic politicians “from the Left” (and it’s hardly a coincidence that it was MSNBC’s decision to give Maddow her own show — rather than the endless array of right-wing talk show hosts plaguing television for years — which prompted a tidal wave of “concern” over whether cable news was becoming “too partisan”).   In general, however, those who opine from the Maddow/Froomkin perspective are a very endangered species, and it just became more endangered as the Post fires one if its most popular, talented, principled and substantive columnists.

In a post entitled “The WaPo’s Best Blogger Is Fired,” Andrew Sullivan writes:

A simply astounding move by the paper – getting rid of the one blogger, Dan Froomkin, who kept it real and kept it interesting. Dan’s work on torture may be one reason he is now gone. The way in which the WaPo has been coopted by the neocon right, especially in its editorial pages, is getting more and more disturbing. This purge will prompt a real revolt in the blogosphere. And it should.

The single most transparent and damaging myth in American political discourse is also one of the most unquestioned:  The Liberal Media.

…

Every time new revelations of illegal government spying arise, the same exact pattern repeats itself:  (1) euphemisms are invented to obscure its illegality (“overcollection”; “circumvented legal guidelines”; “overstepped its authority”; “improperly obtained”); (2) assurances are issued that it was all strictly unintentional and caused by innocent procedural errors that are now being fixed; (3) the very same members of Congress who abdicate their oversight responsibilities and endlessly endorse expanded surveillance powers in the face of warnings of inevitable abuses (Jay Rockefeller, Dianne Feinstein, “Kit” Bond, Jane Harman) righteously announce how “troubled” they are and vow to hold hearings and take steps to end the abuses, none of which ever materialize; (4) nobody is ever held accountable in any way and no new oversight mechanisms are implemented; (5) Congress endorses new, expanded domestic surveillance powers; and then: (6) new revelations of illegal government spying emerge and the process repeats itself, beginning with step (1).

A similar pattern occurs each time Congress enacts new laws to increase even further the Government’s surveillance powers — the  Patriot Act of 2001, its full-scale renewal in 2006, the Protect America Act of 2007, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.  Each time, warnings are issued that the new law will not only permit, but will ensure, massive abuses and unchecked domestic spying.  Those issuing those warnings are dismissed as fringe civil libertarian extremists and hysterics.  The Serious mainstream of both political parties and the establishment media class unite to insist on the need for greater spying powers.  Shortly after passage, new spying abuses are revealed, and proponents of the increased spying powers strut around expressing how shocked and troubled they are by these revelations.  As Kagro succinctly put it yesterday:  ”We’ve had 2 presidential & 3 Congressional elections since the NYT found out we were being illegally spied on. And they’re still finding it.”
…
UPDATE:  Perfectly encapsulating this little game of lawlessness they play, just watch this unbelievably revealing exchange between Russ Feingold and Eric Holder from yesterday, during which Holder not only refuses to say that Bush’s NSA spying program was ”illegal,” but does the opposite:  invoking standard, still-not-withdrawn Bush DOJ executive power theories, Holder suggests that — though the spying program was “in contravention” of FISA – it was not “illegal.”  As Marcy Wheeler put it (h/t Kitt):  ”It’s bad enough that Holder’s trying to weasel out of statements he made a year ago. But I just saw the Attorney General all but suggest that contravening a law does not constitute breaking it“:

In the update to Marcy’s post is Feingold’s statement condemning Holder’s answers.  Of course, it would be rather odd for Holder to acknowledge that Bush’s NSA spying program was “illegal” given that his DOJ is telling courts that this very program is a “state secret” and courts are therefore barred from ruling on its legality.”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

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