I don’t doubt Oprah Winfrey’s marketing magic, although we don’t know yet whether she can do for politics what she’s done for publishing. Her endorsement of the candidate Obama may not be as successful as it was for the author Obama.
While Rupert Murdoch is as conscious of his image as any other legendary villain, he also seems to possess a sense of humor—or at least somebody around him does. Early in his ongoing bid to take over Dow Jones Publishing and The Wall Street Journal, a Murdoch spokesman said that the media mogul would reassure those who may fear for the paper’s independence and integrity with all of the “necessary promises.”
It is time to stop referring to the “fired U.S attorneys scandal” by that misnomer, and call it what it is: a White House-coordinated effort to use the vast powers of the Justice Department to swing elections to Republicans.
Relations between the U.S. and Iran are shifting as U.N. inspectors discover that Iran’s uranium enrichment program appears to be further along than previously believed. These new developments only underscore the increasing volatility in the very region the American invasion of Iraq was supposed to secure, and they put the Bush administration in a codependent relationship with Iran’s ruling regime.
The host of “Democracy Now” pays tribute to one of her most prolific and passionate forebears, Studs Terkel, who turns 95 this week. “Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things,” Terkel says. His life proves that fact.
In New York and Jalalabad, human life is valued differently by the U.S. government. A loved one lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack was worth about $1.8 million, according to the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. The life of a 16-year-old Afghan girl is set, by tragic contrast, at $2,000.
After trying to have it all ways and looking silly in the process, Rudy Giuliani finally came out and restated his support for a woman’s right to choose. If he sticks with his decision, Giuliani will end the free ride his party has enjoyed on an issue that’s supposed to be about morality, but has more often been used cynically to harvest votes.
Barack Obama doesn’t think anyone should cut his two daughters any slack when they apply to college—not because of their race, at least. In the unlikely event that the Obama family goes broke, then maybe.
The iconic author and historian speaks with Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer about his recent tour of Cuba, why he thinks the island has a bright future and why the United States, the world’s only superpower, has an inferiority complex.
In 1870, Julia Ward Howe responded to the horrors of the Civil War by issuing her “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” calling on women around the world to rise up and oppose war in all its forms. It would be decades before Americans officially began celebrating Mother’s Day, and much of the original spirit of the proclamation has since been lost.
The satirist reports that the World Bank president’s girlfriend no longer feels she can function effectively in that role and has decided to start seeing other banks.
Truthdig honors Mary Tillman this week, on behalf of all the mothers whose children have been lost or are risking their lives at war. Her brave search for the truth about the fate of her son and others sacrificed in the Iraq or Afghanistan war underscores the true significance of Mother’s Day.
The Bush administration says that its zero-tolerance policy against terrorism applies to all suspected evildoers, not just Muslims, and that its zero-tolerance policy against Cuba is a principled position, not just an exercise in pandering to the implacable anti-Castro exiles in Miami. On both counts, evidence suggests otherwise.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s announcement that he’s stepping down won’t quell the anger felt on so much of the antiwar left. But my own reaction is a deep sadness that he tarnished a formidable legacy.
The former Marine intelligence officer and author of “Waging Peace” takes on Alan Dershowitz, the American Legion and other advocates of the war who have equated “supporting the troops” with continuing the senseless and often brutal occupation of Iraq.
Sensing their own smallness, contemporary politicians often seek to puff themselves up by appealing to myth and legend. For Republicans, there is no mythology more appealing than that of Ronald Wilson Reagan, as the party’s presidential candidates eagerly demonstrated during their May 3 debate in the library that bears his name.
The “mommy wars” are a sad distraction from the rampant unabashed discrimination against working mothers. A recent study showed that just dropping the PTA bomb was enough to send employers into a paranoid mom-bashing tizzy.
Truthdig’s seasoned political reporter sizes up the Republican candidates in the 2008 presidential race, noting how their tributes to Ronald Reagan remind him of Walt Disney’s animatronic reconstruction of Abraham Lincoln.
It’s no wonder that an administration that celebrated and rewarded liars and opportunists would produce the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, who followed up the Iraq disaster with a scandal at the World Bank, and George Tenet, who held his tongue until the price was right. But how do they sleep at night?
All 114 on board were killed in the crash of Kenyan Airlines Flight 507, including Anthony Mitchell, a brave journalist who risked his life to shine a light on often ignored Africa. Shortly before his death, Mitchell had revealed America’s use of secret Ethiopian prisons.
Compared to the Democrats’ groundbreaking lineup of candidates, the 10 white men who gathered for last week’s Republican debate showed a determination to cling to the bad old days.
The announced Republican candidates for president did nothing in their first debate to discourage the unannounced Republican candidates—Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich, maybe Chuck Hagel—from wading in. The water doesn’t look very deep.
Is Europe moving right? Is the democratic left in trouble? The decisive victory of Nicolas Sarkozy over Socialist Segolene Royal in France’s presidential elections on Sunday was the most recent example of the battering that moderate-left parties are taking from the forces of globalization and discontent over immigration.
When it comes to abortion, the Christian right presents a false choice between self-condemnation and a life of struggle. Until the impoverished and imperiled, so frequently driven into the arms of demagogues, are truly cared for, the freedom of all women will be at risk.
PBS documentarian Ken Burns has created a new series about World War II veterans but, according to the author, Burns left out some important contributors in his latest narrative: Latino and American Indian troops who fought for the U.S. (and are doing so now in Iraq and Afghanistan) and deserve due recognition.
Obama Will Back Israel
