Truthdig tips its hat this week to Baron Davis, not just because he played a crucial role in steering the Golden State Warriors to their first NBA playoff victory in 16 years, but, more important, because he has used his celebrity status to draw attention to key issues such as the underrepresentation of African-Americans at top-notch universities.
Presidential candidate Mike Gravel’s performance in the first Democratic debate took him from off the radar to Truthdigger of the week. Naturally, we just had to pick his brain. The former senator from Alaska, who helped end the draft, tells Truthdig why he’s running, why there are so few mavericks in politics these days and why war makes him angry.
Republicans once preached compassion, but then went off to war. Democrats waged a war on poverty, but then lost some elections. They decided the middle class is where it’s at.
Palestinian intellectual, political figure and former PLO official Sari Nusseibeh (above) talks with Jon Wiener, historian and contributor to The Nation, about Nusseibeh’s new memoir, future prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and the 2006 July War in Lebanon—a war, he says, that “both sides lost.”
The markers of a mushrooming student loan scandal are identical to so many of the rest: The Bush administration, determined to turn the federal government into a favor bank for its corporate cronies, ignored every indicator that the $85-billion-a-year student loan industry was rife with corruption.
While the natural human fascination with gossip and backbiting among our rulers guarantees media coverage and best-seller status for George Tenet’s new memoir, the former CIA director cannot achieve absolution in print or on television.
Abstinence advocate and Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias had to resign after admitting to $300 “massages” furnished by the “D.C. madam,” but the real scandal is the administration’s support—to the tune of billions of dollars—for a faith-based AIDS prevention philosophy that simply doesn’t work.
Steve Kornacki, community outreach director of Unity08, the online independent party, speaks with Truthdig about his organization’s vision for a third way in the coming election, why our political system is broken and how he intends to fix it.
The three short sentences at the beginning of Chapter 17 of former CIA Director George Tenet’s memoir, “At the Center of the Storm,” tell it all: “The United States did not go to war in Iraq solely because of WMD. I doubt it was even the principal cause. Yet it was the public face that was put on it.”
A group of American veterans from the Spanish Civil War recently gathered to commemorate their fight against fascism before it was a popular cause. They fought for freedom and civil liberties, and they have a few words to say about our current morass.
Niccolo Machiavelli, the 16th-century political realist and schemer, would relish the intricate calculations the three leading Democratic presidential candidates are required to make.
The author of “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” argues that the Democrats’ withdrawal plan—even if it ever gets past a veto—isn’t anything to write home about.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (above, right) is feeling the heat to come up with some answers to dozens of questions he evaded on April 19 as he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain his role in the firings of eight federal attorneys. Bill Boyarsky has an idea what Gonzales doesn’t want the committee—or the nation—to find out.
The satirist writes that, as part of a bold new strategy to confuse the enemy, the Pentagon announced today that it was sending comedian/impressionist Rich Little to Iraq to entertain the insurgents.
Truthdig tips its hat this week to former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, who commanded the stage at Thursday’s presidential debate with a fiery and candid performance, taking other Democratic candidates to task for their positions and policies and maintaining a fiercely antiwar stance throughout. Loud and clear, Mr. Gravel.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney cannot make the case that their Iraq policies have succeeded, so they are doing one thing they do very well: taking a serious argument over the future of American foreign policy and turning it into a petty partisan squabble.
Robert Scheer sits down with Gore Vidal to hear his take on the upcoming presidential campaign, religion and the future of the American empire in this first installment from Truthdig’s series of interviews with the iconic author and historian. Watch the clip
With his security barrier in Baghdad, a wall along the Mexican border and the provocative missile defense shield plan in Europe, President Bush’s interest in barrier-building is a betrayal of his conservative forebears that does not bode well for the spread of freedom and democracy.
By appointing corrupt and incompetent cronies to represent the United States, the Bush administration has damaged more than America’s reputation, weakening the international organizations the world depends on now more than ever.
Justice Kennedy’s opinion that a woman’s right to have an abortion should be limited because, in some cases, that decision is regretted harkens to a more primitive time and the Supreme Court’s sometimes ugly legacy on women’s rights.
The falsely accused Duke lacrosse players deserve their indignation, but so does Jerry Miller, who spent 24 years in jail for a rape he did not commit. It turns out there are many innocent men—too many of them African-American—who have done time they shouldn’t have, and there are probably many, many more.
Obama Will Back Israel
