That’s what the N.Y. Times calls the conviction of Enron honchos Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. But Truthdig contributing cartoonist Mr. Fish has a different perspective (click here to see the full cartoon).
Truthdig editor Robert Scheer has written about the crooks from Texas in his new book, ”Playing President.” Click here to read some of those classic columns.
“Like many prophets, Gore has often been derided as an annoyance, an extremist and possibly a madman. Every great American mind of our time felt compelled to take a shot at him.”
“ ‘He wouldn’t have taken my phone call a year ago,’ Bush said Monday of the new Iraqi parliament speaker. ‘He’s now taken it twice.’ Wow, and it cost only $200 billion and thousands of maimed and dead American soldiers to get the president’s call returned.”
Bender, the producer of every Quentin Tarantino movie, describes how he produced the Al Gore global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” Check out:
Why he thought a guy nicknamed “The Robot” would a compelling documentary subject
His take on Gore’s inability to capitalize on global warming when he was in office
Bender’s recognition that climate change barely registers on most voters’ minds
Truthdig contributor Sunsara Taylor reports again from the front lines—a BattleCry Christian-fundamentalist rock music rally, where a “sexpert” claims that “condoms don’t work,” Navy SEALs stage mock assassination raids in the name of Christ, and evangelist Franklin Graham suggests that HIV/AIDS is a punishment from God.
(Third in a series. See: column 1, column 2)
“By all means, reform immigration with this deep obeisance to the Republican right-wing nut faction and their open contempt for ‘foreigners.’ But do not pretend for one minute that it is not a craven political bow to racism.”
Truthdig salutes New School University graduating senior Jean Rohe, whose commencement speech at Madison Square Garden on Friday preemptively struck against the address that Sen. John McCain was due to deliver directly after her.
Click here for links to the speech, biographical information on Rohe, and the instantly infamous response by one of McCain’s staffers in which he insulted Rohe’s graduating class and called her an “idiot” in print.
The satirist tells us that Bush, feeling low as he contemplates his public approval rating, has turned to a man who knows a thing or two about numbers.
“Bush has proved so incompetent as president that he lacks credibility. Sending thousands of troops southward now in an effort to appear tough only underscores his failure.”
“It is good news that the public is finally hip to Bush’s con, yet it is worrisome when surprisingly sensible proposals by the president on immigration are automatically rejected because of the source.”
Former New York Times Executive Editor Abe Rosenthal, who died this month, was a raging homophobe--a failing that proved tragic when the AIDS crisis erupted on his watch. Gay and lesbian studies pioneer Larry Gross explores what happened when America’s paper of record ignored one of the major civil rights stories of our time.
“Craziness would make a certain amount of sense. I mean, you announce you are going to militarize the Mexican border, but you assure the president of Mexico you are not militarizing the border.... It’s quite possible that lunacy and politics are closely related.”
One of the nation’s leading experts on immigration policy writes that Bush’s May 15 speech “had nothing to do with actual border policy and everything to do with domestic electoral politics.”
Instead of sending National Guard troops to the border, “Bush could have saved the taxpayers a load and sent a few battalions of Boy Scouts to do this job.”
In this summer’s most talked-about movie, “A Scanner Darkly,” Keanu Reeves stars as an undercover narcotics agent losing his grip on reality in an America that has lost the war on drugs. True, the film is a warning call, but might it also inadvertently channel us toward the very dystopia it is warning against?
This article ran in May, but we’re trotting it out again because the movie just hit theaters this week.
Go behind the scenes at a Christian fundamentalist youth rock show in Philadelphia, where hired goons shadowed a young activist, the author of this column, and where a letter of praise from President Bush kicked off the festivities. “This must have been what it felt like to watch the Hitler Youth,” writes Sunsara Taylor. (Second column in a series of three. First column here, Third column here.)
The political satirist reports: White House aides said that writing an 18-page letter to President Bush, who is known for his extreme distaste for reading, was the most provocative act Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could possibly have committed.
Truthdig salutes Leslie Cauley, the USA Today reporter who broke the blockbuster story about the NSA’s program to amass the records of every phone call made in America. Her scoop laid waste to President Bush’s assertion that his domestic spying targets only a handful of suspected terrorists living in the U.S. In the wake of her story, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter is calling for congressional hearings.
A young activist explores the frightening world of a Christian evangelical youth movement that is holding rock concerts and rallies at city halls nationwide this weekend.
“If youve been waiting to get alarmed until the Christian fascist movement started filling stadiums with young people and hyping them up to do battle in ‘Gods army,’ wait no longer.”
(First column a series of three. Second column here, third column here.)
If you’re disturbed by the thought of Internet service providers deciding which websites you can have access to, watch this short, entertaining and disturbing movie that crystalizes the battle now being waged over this issue in Washington and the blogosphere.
UPDATE: Michael V. Hayden, nominated by President Bush to head the CIA, is the man responsible for the most extensive attack ever on the privacy of U.S. citizens.
While head of the NSA, he oversaw the program that recorded the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans.
Want to take action? Check out StopHayden.org (includes video proof that Hayden is smugly incorrect about the privacy foundation of the Fourth Amendment).
President Ahmadinejad, in his somewhat rambling letter to Bush, encourages him to abandon democracy in favor of theocracy. (Sam Harris might observe that America wouldn’t have far to go in that respect.) The Iranian leader also criticized Bush’s use of secret CIA prisons, and mentioned the nuclear issue only indirectly.
“If you expect me to pass up a scandal involving poker, hookers and the Watergate building with crooked defense contractors and the No. 3 guy at the CIA ... you expect too much.”
Class Bigotry Mars Auto Debate
