By Paul Kiel, ProPublica —This week administration officials announced a $25 billion mortgage settlement reminiscent of another deal made three Februarys ago. Three years later, that program is widely considered a failure.
Just in time for a certain prefabricated, romance-related holiday that shall remain nameless, we offer a Truthdigger who brought the love in a federal appeals court, of all places.
The White House called for a health insurance rule change that will allow religious employers to avoid covering workers’ birth control costs. Also, Santorum’s surge; the $26 billion banking industry mortgage settlement; the 9th Circuit blows down California’s gay marriage ban; and new details about JFK and a White House intern come to light.
President Obama’s controversial mandate to require religious organizations to include contraception in their health care coverage has already become fodder for his conservative opponents’ campaigns as they round the bend to their final run on the White House.
American cultural historian and social critic Morris Berman shared the findings in his new book “Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline” with an audience at Seattle’s Elliot Bay bookstore last fall. Like much of the tidings brought to us by the best of our sober-eyed critics, his forecast for the future of the republic and the welfare of its coming generations is not hopeful.
As George Orwell pointed out more than half a century ago, the storehouse of the English language occasionally needs a good sweep. In the hands of excited, careless or tired writers, words and phrases that once were new or uniquely descriptive become so overused that they seem to threaten the integrity of the language itself. With a broom (or rather, cartwheel) in hand, CounterPunch editor Alexander Cockburn attempts a cleaning.
The cabaret’s women are half-naked so much of the time that they are, as it were, clothed in their own nudity. More significantly, I think, the show often presents them very abstractly. In particular, the lighting presents this or that aspect of their bodies in such a way that they lose all particularity. They are not, in these representations, “women,” but are “woman.”
Are voters as polarized as their elected officials? The question, which has serious implications in an election year, has put political scientists at loggerheads in several new and recent books.
This week administration officials stood alongside state attorneys general to announce a $25 billion mortgage settlement reminiscent of deal made three Februarys ago. Three years later, that program is widely considered a failure.
On the surface, the case of Knox v. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lacks blockbuster appeal. But in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, it has the potential to further rig the playing field in favor of big business and the right wing.
Just in time for a certain prefabricated, romance-related holiday that shall remain nameless, we offer you a little valentine (oops!) of our own with a Truthdigger winner who truly brought the love in one inspiring gesture he made in a federal appeals court, of all places.
Criticism of Mitt Romney for lacking a coherent message is grossly unfair. He has been forthright, consistent and even eloquent in pressing home his campaign’s central theme: Mitt Romney desperately wants to be president.
In throwing out California’s notorious Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage, appellate Judge Stephen Reinhardt showed the heart of a romantic and humor in a ringing defense of the often-scorned institution of marriage.
There can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistle-blowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge of the more disreputable things their government does.
As if there were any doubt, a two-hour Senate Budget Committee hearing on Thursday reported some alarming trends in income inequality, Mother Jones reported. (more)
After scrapping its own monitoring team, the Arab League on Sunday asked the U.N. Security Council to assemble a joint Arab-U.N. peacekeeping force to end the 11-month campaign of brutal repression by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that has killed more than 5,000 people.
Five senior journalists with The Sun newspaper were arrested early Saturday as part of an investigation into the alleged bribery of police officers and other public officials, bringing the number of arrests of current or former Sun employees to nine. Rupert Murdoch pledged his continued support for the British paper, which he owns.
A Syrian military general and hospital director was killed in an attack by three gunmen in a residential street in Damascus on Saturday in an assassination that marks a move away from the anti-government uprising’s nonviolent roots. The killing came ahead of a meeting of Arab League members in Cairo to consider a new response to the violence in Syria.
Chinese authorities demonstrated their continued disregard for free speech and human rights as they sentenced a democratic dissident to seven years in jail for sending a poem he had written and other messages over the Internet, the man’s son told reporters. The verdict cited Zhu Yufu’s online calls for a democratic political movement, the son said.
President Obama announced Friday a proposal he hopes will mollify conservatives who are irked about a rule that would require religious employers to provide free contraceptive products to workers under company health insurance plans. The proposal’s success banks on the generosity of insurance companies, which will be asked to pay for the services themselves.
Arab League Calls for U.N. Mission in Syria
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