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John Dean Knows How to Get Rid of Clarence Thomas

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By John Dean - Jun. 28 (Opinion) - For good reason, there has been serious hand-wringing over what to do about the ethical lapses of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The fact that Supreme Court justices are exempt from the code of ethical conduct which applies to the rest of the federal judiciary; the problem of bringing a sitting justice before the Congress to question the conduct of a constitutional co-equal; the reality that justices cannot easily defend themselves against news media charges; the defiant, in-your-face posture of Thomas—the list goes on but it need not. There is clear precedent for how to deal with the justice. Thomas could be forced off the bench. As the associate deputy attorney general in President Richard M. Nixon’s Department of Justice, I was there when Assistant Attorney General William Rehnquist outlined how to remove a Supreme Court justice who had engaged in conduct not quite as troublesome as that of Thomas. Rehnquist, of course, would later become chief justice of the United States. His memorandum providing the process for the Department of Justice to proceed against then Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas remains solid precedent and the way to deal with Clarence Thomas. But before looking at the solution, I should explain the problem.

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The New Corporate World Order

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Scheer - Apr. 22 (News Analysis) - The debate over Republicans’ insistence on continued tax breaks for the superrich and the corporations they run should come to a screeching halt with the report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal headlined “Big U.S. Firms Shift Hiring Abroad.” Those tax breaks over the past decade, leaving some corporations such as General Electric to pay no taxes at all, were supposed to lead to job creation, but just the opposite has occurred. As the WSJ put it, the multinational companies “cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million

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News at 11: How Climate Change Affects You

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Amy Goodman - Aug. 11 (News Analysis) - Meteorologist Jeff Masters defined for me the crux of the problem: “A lot of TV meteorologists are very skeptical that human-caused global climate change is real. They’ve been seduced by the view pushed by the fossil-fuel industry that humans really aren’t responsible ... we’re fighting a battle against an enemy that’s very well-funded, that’s intent on providing disinformation about what the real science says.”

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Why the Feds Fear Thinkers Like Howard Zinn

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Chris Hedges - Aug. 02 (Opinion) - Today I will teach my final American history class of the semester to prison inmates. We have spent five weeks reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” The class is taught in a small room in the basement of the prison. I pass through a metal detector, am patted down by a guard and walk through three pairs of iron gates to get to my students. We have covered Spain’s genocide of the native inhabitants in the Caribbean and the Americas, the war for independence in the United States and the disgraceful slaughter of Native Americans.

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Immigration Reform Is Good for Big Business

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Bill Boyarsky - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - Among the most powerful interests backing immigration reform are the conservative, capitalistic U.S. Chamber of Commerce, fast-food restaurant chains and big agribusiness firms.

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Americas War Disease

Mon, 10 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Bill Boyarsky - May. 10 (Opinion) - The Afghanistan war, along with Iraq, has become a chronic illness that America has learned to ignore. News of the sick economy, natural and human made disasters, along with momentary sensations flash across the cable news screens and the Internet, leaving hardly any space for the war.

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Is America 'Yearning for Fascism?'

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Chris Hedges - Apr. 02 (Opinion) - Fritz Stern wrote "In Germany there was a yearning for fascism before fascism was invented." It is the yearning that we now see, and it is dangerous.

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Israeli Crackdown Puts Liberal Jews on the Spot

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Chris Hedges - Mar. 15 (Opinion) - The Israeli government, its brutal war crimes in Gaza exposed in detail in the U.N. report by Justice Richard Goldstone, has implemented a series of draconian measures to silence and discredit dissidents, leading intellectuals and human rights organizations inside and outside Israel that are accused—often falsely—of assisting Goldstone’s U.N. investigators. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is attempting to shut down Israel’s premier human rights organizations, including B’Tselem, the New Israel Fund (NIF) and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. It is busy expelling or excluding peace activists and foreign nationals from the Palestinian territories. The campaign, if left unchecked, will be as catastrophic for Palestinians as it will be for Israel.

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The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

TruthDig - By Chris Hedges - Feb. 03 (Opinion) - Reporters who witness the worst of human suffering and return to newsrooms angry see their compassion washed out or severely muted by the layers of editors who stand between the reporter and the reader. The creed of objectivity and balance, formulated at the beginning of the 19th century by newspaper owners to generate greater profits from advertisers, disarms and cripples the press.

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Michelle Bachman: Welfare Queen

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthDig - By Yasha Levine - Dec. 23 (Special Report) - The anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.

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Unintended Consequences in Nuclear Pakistan

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Fred Branfman - Oct. 09 (News Report) - If U.S. military leaders are right that they cannot prevail in Afghanistan without escalating into Pakistan, this is the strongest possible argument for withdrawing from Afghanistan. For nothing, not even Taliban rule in Kabul, could justify allowing the tiny Afghan tail to wag a giant, nuclear-armed Pakistani dog whose stability is clearly America’s very top priority in the region. Further instability in Pakistan would only benefit al-Qaida, which has already made deep inroads into Pakistan and is unlikely to return to Afghanistan even if the U.S. withdraws from there. Former N.Y. Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer is right: “It should be engraved on the minds of every American diplomat: Do nothing that will further destabilize Pakistan” (from the “Rethink Afghanistan” video).

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What Will History Make of Colin Powell?

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Stanley Kutler - Jul. 12 (News Analysis) - How do we remember history? Time diminishes our memories of details and spear carriers. Thirty-five years ago, as Richard Nixon prepared to resign, we readily recited the real-life cast of all the President's men: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Dean, Kleindienst, Colson, Liddy, and Agnew. Today, their memory has all but vanished, except for the few still active in the public arena. For the Vietnam War, do we remember General William Westmoreland, or do we remember the ironic incantation of "light at the end of the tunnel?" South Vietnam's General Thieu rests in the ashcan of history. Khe Sanh and Hue are half-century ago battles now reserved for military buffs; more prominent in today's memory banks is our recognition and trade with Vietnam.

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Why So Scared of a Public Plan?

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Joe Conason - Jun. 11 (Opinion) - Within the coming weeks, Americans will begin to consider critical issues concerning the future of health care for themselves and their children, including universal coverage, taxation of benefits, computerized records and the controlling of costs. But before the debate commences in Congress and the media, big insurance and pharmaceutical companies are lobbying frantically (and spending millions of dollars) to foreclose the possibility of the most promising aspect of health care reform: a public insurance option.

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"Clean" Energy and Poisoned Water

Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Chris Hedges - May. 25 (Opinion) - Corporations in Colorado, Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and upstate New York have launched a massive program to extract natural gas through a process that could, if it goes wrong, degrade the Delaware River watershed and the fresh water supplies that feed upstate communities, the metropolitan cities of New York, Philadelphia, Camden and Trenton, and many others on its way to the Chesapeake Bay. "The potential environmental consequences are extreme," says Fritz Mayer, editor of The River Reporter in Narrowsburg, N.Y. His paper has been following the drilling in the Upper Delaware River Valley and he told me, "It could ruin the drinking supply for 8 million people in New York City."

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U.S. Intel Chief's Shocking Warning: Wall Street's Disaster Has Spawned Our Greatest Terrorist Threat

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthDig - By Chris Hedges - Feb. 17 (Editorial) - In plain English, something bureaucrats and the military seem incapable of employing, this translates into the imposition of martial law and a de facto government being run out of the Department of Defense. They are considering it. So should you.

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Cheney's Legacy of Deception

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

TruthDig - By Robert Scheer - Dec. 31 (Opinion) - But the hoary warmongering after 9/11 afforded a convenient distraction from the economic problems at home. As I asked in a column on June 26, 2002: "Has the war on terrorism become the modern equivalent of the Roman circus, drawing the people's attention away from the failures of those who rule them? Corporate America is a shambles because deregulation, the mantra of our president and his party, has proved to be a license to steal." That is the true legacy of Dick Cheney and the president he ill-served.

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McCain's Race-Baiting Scoundrels

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Eugene Robinson - Aug. 04 (Opinion) - On Sunday, the exceedingly thin-skinned Graham was still shocked, saddened and outraged over Obama's throwaway line, spoken days earlier, about not looking like previous presidents. Graham said on "Fox News Sunday" that "there's no doubt in my mind that what Sen. Obama is trying to suggest--that he's a victim of something." Graham later added: "We're not going to run a campaign like he did in the primary. Every time somebody brings up a challenge to who you are and what you believe, 'You're a racist.' That's not going to happen in this campaign." The key words are victim and racist--which Obama did not say. Graham puts them in Obama's mouth because of their power to alienate.

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Sexual Assault in the Military: A DoD Cover-Up?

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Col. Ann Wright - Aug. 03 (News Report) - The Department of Defense refused to allow the senior civilian in charge of its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) to testify in Thursday's hearing on sexual assault in the military. Rep. John Tierney, chair of the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, angrily dismissed Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Michael Dominguez from the hearing when Dominguez said that he, the DoD chief of legislative affairs and the chief of public affairs, had ordered Dr. Kaye Whitley, chief of SAPRO, to refuse to honor the subpoena issued by the subcommittee for her appearance.

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The Illusion of Saving Nations From Themselves

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By William Pfaff - Jun. 30 (Opinion) - It is an axiom of history that no government put in place by foreign troops, or needing to be maintained in place by them against internal opposition, can be considered a legitimate government.

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Wasteful Weapons and the Politicians Who Love Them

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Robert Scheer - Jun. 24 (Opinion) - Neither newspaper indicated why we needed $100 billion in tankers, other than in a revealing photo in the Times showing one of the airplanes refueling a B-2 bomber,

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The Hedonists of Power

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Chris Hedges - Jun. 23 (Opinion) - All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, and it is the job of the journalist to do the hard, tedious reporting to shine a light on these lies. It is the job of courtiers, those on television playing the role of journalists, to feed off the scraps tossed to them by the powerful and never question the system. In the slang of the profession, these television courtiers are "throats." These courtiers, including the late Tim Russert, never gave a voice to credible critics in the buildup to the war against Iraq. They were too busy playing their roles as red-blooded American patriots.

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John McCain's Chilling Project for America

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Elliot Cohen - Jun. 13 (Opinion) - John McCain has long been a major player in a radical militaristic group driven by an ideology of global expansionism and dominance attained through perpetual, pre-emptive, unilateral, multiple wars. The credo of this group is "the end justifies the means," and the end of establishing the United States as the world's sole superpower justifies, in its estimation, anything from military control over the information on the Internet to the use of genocidal biological weapons. Over its two terms, the George W. Bush administration has planted the seeds for this geopolitical master plan, and now appears to be counting on the McCain administration, if one comes to power, to nurture it.

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What Makes McCain Tick?

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Robert Scheer - Jun. 04 (Opinion) - Will the real John McCain stand up? Actually, I don't expect him to, now that he is the Republican presidential candidate, pandering to the irrationalities that drive his party. Nor is it likely that the fawning mass media will pressure him to the point of clarity. But I remain genuinely confused as to what makes him tick.

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Our Managed Democracy

Mon, 26 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Chalmers Johnson - May. 26 (Opinion) - The genius of our inverted totalitarian system "lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual. ... A demotion in the status and stature of the 'sovereign people' to patient subjects is symptomatic of systemic change, from democracy as a method of 'popularizing' power to democracy as a brand name for a product marketable at home and marketable abroad. ... The new system, inverted totalitarianism, is one that professes the opposite of what, in fact, it is. ... The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed."

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Citizen Journalism: In With the New

Sat, 24 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Bill Boyarsky - May. 24 (Opinion) - The model of a professional staff reading and fact-checking the work of amateurs is something that newspapers, with their increasingly small staffs and growing inability to connect with readers, should consider. When I was city editor of the Times, we had a hard time figuring out how to cover our huge area. I think something like this would have helped.

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