Friday, March 31, 2006
Did the President know he was lying about WMDs? Apparently so, Murray Waas tells us.NATIONAL JOURNAL: Insulating Bush (03/30/2006)
Monday, March 27, 2006
Tough questions about our failed war in Iraq. The Blog | Arianna Huffington: 20 Questions for President Bush About Iraq | The Huffington Post
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
The Iraqi government? What government? Robert Scheer explores the collapsing situation in the war.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
One key ingredient to withdrawing from Iraq: no more bases. The Blog | Suzanne Nossel: Khalilzad Says What Bush Won't: No Permanent US Presence In Iraq | The Huffington Post
Friday, March 10, 2006
Even if you're not talking to Al-Qaeda, the Bush Administration wants to know what you're saying.
PITTSBURGH - The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Pennsylvania will release conclusive evidence on Tuesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting investigations into peaceful and legal anti-war gatherings held by the Thomas Merton Center for Peace & Justice. Two documents to be released show for the first time that peaceful political activities are being targeted by the FBI solely because they express an anti-war sentiment.
In a national campaign to expose FBI spying the ACLU has filed Freedom of Information Act requests in 20 states on behalf of more than 150 organizations and individuals. As a result of these requests the government has released documents that reveal monitoring and infiltration by the FBI and local law enforcement, targeting political, environmental, anti-war and faith-based groups. More information is available online at www.aclu.org/spyfiles.
American Civil Liberties Union
PITTSBURGH - The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Pennsylvania will release conclusive evidence on Tuesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting investigations into peaceful and legal anti-war gatherings held by the Thomas Merton Center for Peace & Justice. Two documents to be released show for the first time that peaceful political activities are being targeted by the FBI solely because they express an anti-war sentiment.
In a national campaign to expose FBI spying the ACLU has filed Freedom of Information Act requests in 20 states on behalf of more than 150 organizations and individuals. As a result of these requests the government has released documents that reveal monitoring and infiltration by the FBI and local law enforcement, targeting political, environmental, anti-war and faith-based groups. More information is available online at www.aclu.org/spyfiles.
American Civil Liberties Union
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Welcome to Dubai: the haven for gangsters and terrorists. Did the Bush team really think the sleazy role of the UAE after 9/11 wouldn't get examined? USNews.com: An unlikely criminal crossroads
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Catch up on ethics reform, different plans to get out of Iraq, race relations. My recent Huffington Post columns: The Blog | Art Levine | The Huffington Post
Can you clean up Washington? Yes -- if you call your Senator. I'm helping to organize a talk Thusrday evening in Washington by Congress Watch's legislative representative for a social group called "Drinking Liberally." Here's my posting on the issues involved -and if you live in D.C, come on out. The Senate is voting on ethics reform, but they're backing away from supporting an independent public integrity office to do investigations and recommend action against legislators.
Friday, March 03, 2006
The right-wing's "Hollywood vs. the heartland" myth.Wolcott writes:
Anyway, the 'Hollywood doesn't reflect mainstream America' argument is one of the oldest and phoniest in the playbook, with Michael Medved making the same case that Catholic organizers did in the 30's to push for a decency code. The truth is that Hollywood has almost never reflected heartland values, from its birth it's reflected urban energy, cosmopolitan taste, social conscience, and pagan fascination, and when it's conformed to conventional pieties, as during the dreariest stretches of the postwar period, when disillusionment and subversion had to sneak in through the shadows of film noir as the topline product stayed shiny, bright, and chipmunk cheerful. Do you really think the racy, wisecracking, night-owl-edition, socially conscious crime dramas and comedies of Warner Brothers in the thirties reflected heartland values? Or those Lubitsch comedies with their flirty innuendos and musky intrigues so redolent of Paris and Budapest? Or the Astaire-Rogers "white telephone" musicals, with their French farce plots and Manhattan-skyline sparkle? MGM manufactured an enduring neo-Victorian mimicry of smalltown America in the Andy Hardy movies and others, but that didn't so much reflect heartland values as reflect the immigrant vision of what the white-picket-fence country they imagined lay east of the Hollywood hills.
Think of the movies now considered classic (or semi-classic) from the great grunge stretch of the late Sixties and Seventies, movies such as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, The Last Detail, Five Easy Pieces, Blazing Saddles, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, on and on--do these movies speak to the pieties and platitudes that William Bennett holds dear? Even back then during all the noise and excitement I remember sweet old ladies wondering why they didn't make nice movies like The Sound of Music anymore, and they're still asking that same question today. It may be the same old ladies, having gone through two generations of floral muu-muus. Get over it, grandma! They're not going to make movies like Sound of Music anymore, they barely made them back then.
James Wolcott
Anyway, the 'Hollywood doesn't reflect mainstream America' argument is one of the oldest and phoniest in the playbook, with Michael Medved making the same case that Catholic organizers did in the 30's to push for a decency code. The truth is that Hollywood has almost never reflected heartland values, from its birth it's reflected urban energy, cosmopolitan taste, social conscience, and pagan fascination, and when it's conformed to conventional pieties, as during the dreariest stretches of the postwar period, when disillusionment and subversion had to sneak in through the shadows of film noir as the topline product stayed shiny, bright, and chipmunk cheerful. Do you really think the racy, wisecracking, night-owl-edition, socially conscious crime dramas and comedies of Warner Brothers in the thirties reflected heartland values? Or those Lubitsch comedies with their flirty innuendos and musky intrigues so redolent of Paris and Budapest? Or the Astaire-Rogers "white telephone" musicals, with their French farce plots and Manhattan-skyline sparkle? MGM manufactured an enduring neo-Victorian mimicry of smalltown America in the Andy Hardy movies and others, but that didn't so much reflect heartland values as reflect the immigrant vision of what the white-picket-fence country they imagined lay east of the Hollywood hills.
Think of the movies now considered classic (or semi-classic) from the great grunge stretch of the late Sixties and Seventies, movies such as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, The Last Detail, Five Easy Pieces, Blazing Saddles, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, on and on--do these movies speak to the pieties and platitudes that William Bennett holds dear? Even back then during all the noise and excitement I remember sweet old ladies wondering why they didn't make nice movies like The Sound of Music anymore, and they're still asking that same question today. It may be the same old ladies, having gone through two generations of floral muu-muus. Get over it, grandma! They're not going to make movies like Sound of Music anymore, they barely made them back then.
James Wolcott
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Is there anything that they a) won't lie about? or b) screw up? Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina - Yahoo! News
