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By Chris Hedges
By David Sirota
$11.16
$23
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White House / Chuck Kennedy
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The president on Wednesday honored 16 do-gooders, big shots and champions, including Stephen Hawking (still alive despite Britain’s socialized medicine), Billie Jean King (G.O.A.T.?) and, oddly enough, the late former U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp, who was Bob Dole’s ’96 VP choice. Full list after the jump.
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U.S. Navy / MC1 Nicholas Lingo
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DynCorp International got caught charging the government $50 million over contract for providing living facilities in Kuwait. The company’s CEO told a congressional commission, “If we’re not competitive [in costs], it’s possible for the government to replace us.” But the opposite seems to be true when it comes to contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, where fraud, waste and abuse have been all too common for years.
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AP / Susan Walsh
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By Robert Scheer — “Was there some sort of ghost that performed these actions?” New York federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff demanded to know Monday in rejecting a deal that would let Bank of America off the hook in yet another banker bonus scandal.
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seeandavoid.com
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During a time when the term government spending (not to mention recession) gets quite a few hackles up, House Democratic bigwigs’ choice to scrap plans to purchase four posh planes to shuttle congressional leaders around is clearly wise, although the Senate vote may still pose a problem.
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By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet —
How the health care industry, the GOP and one media mogul made common cause with the anti-government fringe.
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USAF / Staff Sgt. Jeremy T. Lock
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“Fifty Afghans believed to be drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon target list to be captured or killed ... ,” The New York Times reports. That’s not quite targeted assassination, but it comes pretty close.
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White House archive / Oliver F. Atkins
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By Stanley Kutler — President Richard Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the revelations of his “abuses of power” and obstruction of justice. For his involvement in criminal activities, Nixon earned his unique epitaph: an unindicted co-conspirator.
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By David Sirota — Thanks to the Khaki Pants Offensive in the Great American Health Care and Tax War, finally, there’s no pretense. Finally, the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd’s ugliest traits are there for all to behold.
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Flickr / ThreadedThoughts
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The Senate is finally getting around to approving more money for the wildly successful “cash for clunkers” program, which seems to have saved the auto industry from the forces of recession and bankruptcy. With an additional $2 billion on the way, the administration hopes to transform 500,000 more clunkers into cleaner, smaller, more efficient vehicles.
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U.S. Army Signal Corps
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Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame writes that “official secrecy and deceptions about our nuclear weapons posture and policies and their possible consequences have threatened the survival of the human species.”
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Should this ever actually happen, The Onion gets credit for its prescient mock-up of a hostile takeover of the American government by a militant, yet strangely familiar, enemy organization bent on ... completely obliterating the ever-increasing U.S. debt.
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By Amy Goodman — Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, ousted in the middle of the night just over a month ago, enjoys global support for his return, with the exception of the Obama White House.
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Flickr / Rennet Stowe
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President Obama has ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by January 2010. To meet that deadline, the administration may push for a new detention facility on U.S. soil. Such a compound, sources tell AP, would include space for the indefinite detention of prisoners deemed too dangerous to face trial.
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AP / Timothy Jacobsen
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By T.L. Caswell — With biomass pioneers advancing their technology, the smelly stuff that you throw away today may be providing electricity for your home tomorrow.
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By Ruth Marcus — The Supreme Court may soon allow an unlimited amount of corporate money into the political process. Imagine drug companies and banks running their own ads against legislators who vote against their interests.
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AP / Susan Walsh
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The good news, at least for those hoping for progress on the health care reform front, is that the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the latest version of a bill aimed at revamping the nation’s flagging health care system. The bad news: Now that Congress is headed for a monthlong vacation, we’ll have a whole new round of squabbling to look forward to in September.
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By David Sirota — The lawmakers charged with health care reform, hailing mostly from small states and rural areas, together represent only 13 million people, meaning those speaking for just 4 percent of America are maneuvering to impose their health care will on the other 96 percent of us.
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blog.glodb.com
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One country, so many clunkers: The U.S. government-sponsored “cash for clunkers” program has come to a halt after six short days of enticing car owners to sacrifice their gas-guzzling relics to the scrap-heap gods and drive off in newer, greener models.
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By William Pfaff — Since 2001, there has been no actual terrorist attack reported inside the United States, much less one involving al-Qaida. Plenty of people have been killed by fellow Americans, ordinarily in old-fashioned ways, during that period.
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By Joe Conason — Perhaps the time has come, if it isn’t already too late, for President Obama to ask for help from President Clinton.
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By Marie Cocco — Medicare is where political posturing runs headlong into historical truth: It is, along with Social Security, the most successful government program that the United States has ever created.
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By Ruth Marcus — If only Democrats and Republicans could get together and produce a health care bill that would expand coverage and control costs. But wait—there is such a proposal. In fact, there are two.
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finance.senate.gov
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Looks like the insurance companies are getting what they’ve paid for in the U.S. Congress. The Senate Finance Committee is closer to a deal with Republicans, which means no public health care option. The Blue Dogs, meanwhile, are still nipping at the heels of House Democrats.
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By Amy Goodman — Anti-war activists in Olympia, Wash., have exposed Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Isn’t it time to dismantle the metal detectors, send the guards at the doors away, and allow Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights by being free to carry their firearms into the nation’s Capitol building?
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The Progressive Change Campaign Committee wants to run ads against Democrats, including John Kerry and Dianne Feinstein, who are working against a public health care option. They’re already running this ad against Sen. Max Baucus in his home state of Montana.
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Flickr / jonrawlinson
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By David Sirota — The wealthiest 1 percent’s share of America’s total income is the highest it’s been since 1929, their tax rates are the lowest they’ve faced in two decades and they’ve bought unprecedented protection for themselves on the most pressing issues.
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Collage from Flickr / Korean Resource Center and senate.gov
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It was a foregone conclusion that Republicans and big business would fight tooth and nail against the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, the union bill that would make organizing easier, but in the end it was Democrats who killed it. The Socialist Worker, appropriately enough, has the most comprehensive take on the story to date.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Wow, what big and unexpected news! Reforming the health care system is really hard, and Republicans want President Obama to fail. Imagine that.
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By Marie Cocco — Now that it’s gripped the imaginations of politicians and the media, the politics of the calendar has overtaken the plain truth that Congress already is moving—barely moving, and not necessarily to a triumphal finish—toward reform.
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By Ellen Goodman — I don’t know that we will ever have a dramatic moment in the annals of Big Food like the 1994 testimony of tobacco executives before Congress. But I have begun to wonder whether this is the summer when the (groaning) tables have turned on the obesity industry.
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White House / Lawrence Jackson
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President Obama made an appeal Wednesday night for health care reform, complete with this zinger: “This isn’t about me. I have great health insurance, and so does every Member of Congress.” However, his Senate mentor, Dick Durbin, said not to expect a health care vote before the August recess. Excerpts from the president’s speech and video after the jump.
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By Ruth Marcus — If you’re interested in how to get health care costs under control, the case of the F-22 offers an instructive example.
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By William Pfaff — There is new evidence that the Obama government is serious about halting Israel’s colonization of the Palestinian territories—and about imposing, rather than merely inviting, a two-state Middle East solution.
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U.S. Air Force / Master Sgt. Shane A. Cuomo
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One politician’s jobs program is another’s “inexcusable waste of money.” Luckily for the taxpayer, that’s how Barack Obama feels about the F-22 strike fighter, a plane Congress has been pushing over the military’s objections. After Obama threatened a veto, the Senate voted not to fund the jet, which was designed to fight the Soviets.
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Bill Maher compares the letters of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who fell in love in Argentina, with the texts of former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, who fell for congressional pages.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It was not the soaring rhetoric that is Barack Obama’s signature, but he recently offered the sound bite that may define his presidency: “Don’t bet against us.”
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AP / Charlie Neibergall
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich talks about winning a big victory for health care reform, grilling Hank Paulson over the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger, and the battle against crony capitalism.
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AP / Charlie Neibergall
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich talks about winning a big victory for health care reform, grilling Hank Paulson over the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger, and the battle against crony capitalism.
Posted on Jul 17, 2009
READ MORE 
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fortunespawn.com
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Former Vice President Dick Cheney may have some ’splainin’ to do, and to the House Intelligence Committee at that, when the panel kicks off its investigation into claims that the CIA kept information about a covert counterterrorism program secret from Congress for eight years. Rep. Jan Schakowsky announced the probe Friday.
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whitehouse.gov/video/
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Despite rumblings from detractors on both sides of the aisle, President Barack Obama held his ground as he held forth about health care reform in a speech at the White House on Friday afternoon, declaring that he was “absolutely convinced” that substantial changes to the system will be made this year.
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Flickr / aflcio2008
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Senate Democrats aren’t doing their friends in organized labor any favors. Lawmakers have decided to strip out the basic reform in the proposed Employee Free Choice Act that would make creating unions much easier—the whole point of the bill. But all may not be lost. ...
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By Marie Cocco — The legacy of that administration’s anti-terrorism tactics cannot be washed away in a tide of feel-good rhetoric about moving on, nor will it fade eventually if we apply Obama’s spiritual wisdom that this should be a time for “reflection, not retribution.”
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AP / Susan Walsh
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By Joe Conason — Congressional leaders are expected to announce a new commission to investigate the causes of America’s financial disaster. But unless the speaker and her colleagues summon much greater courage than they have displayed to date, it will only highlight the failure of the Democrats to live up to their heritage.
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By Amy Goodman — Wendell Potter is the health insurance industry’s worst nightmare. He’s a whistle-blower. Potter, the former chief spokesperson for insurance giant CIGNA, recently testified before Congress, “I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick—all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.”
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senate.gov
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Supreme Court confirmation hearings are as much about politicians grabbing a little face time as they are about probing a nominee’s legal philosophy. Amid all the posturing and finger-wagging Monday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse spoke rather eloquently about what the court has become, and what it should be: “ ... A place ... where the comfortable can be afflicted and the afflicted find some comfort. ... ”
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White House / David Bohrer
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What is so controversial about killing al-Qaida bigwigs and avoiding civilian casualties that the CIA would have to conceal such things from Congress? The usual anonymous officials have emerged to explain the secret CIA program Dick Cheney and the agency are supposed to have hidden, and something smells awfully fishy.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — This week’s hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court represent the opening skirmish in a struggle to challenge the escalating activism of an increasingly conservative judiciary.
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White House / David Bohrer
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In a report that’s sure to surprise absolutely nobody, The New York Times revealed on Saturday that former Vice President Dick Cheney explicitly ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to keep a “counterterrorism program”—of an as-yet-unknown nature—secret from Congress. The program reportedly existed for eight years.
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Wikimedia Commons/YooTube
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Former President Bush’s infamous warrant-free domestic surveillance plan, instituted after 9/11 to monitor potentially suspicious communication between parties within and outside of the U.S., has deservedly gotten a bad rap—and it’s about to get worse, thanks to a congressionally mandated report released Friday.
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