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by Amy Goodman, David Goodman
$5.58
By Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia L. Cooper
$10.17
$24
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Even while pocketing billions in bailouts, the captains of industry who wrecked the world economy sneer at government. Just imagine, they say, if their businesses were run like the post office. “You mean the place that takes a note in my hand in L.A. on Monday and gives it to my sister in New Jersey on Wednesday for 42 cents?”
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The publication of Sontag’s early diaries provides a revelatory look at the self-inventions of the late writer.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If President Obama’s primary task is to restore economic growth, he has also been waging a quiet, long-term campaign to ease the nation’s divisions around religious and moral questions.
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By Joe Conason — Once, conservatives liked to say that “ideas matter.” Although many of their theories later proved flimsy, they at least attempted to address real problems with fresh thinking. But ideas no longer matter—and in fact they’re dangerous, according to the maximum leader of the right.
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White House / Joyce N. Boghosian
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Rep. John Conyers has not stopped investigating the U.S. attorneys scandal and he’s finally gotten former Bush aides Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to agree to testify. The two advisers previously ignored subpoenas to appear before Congress, citing executive privilege.
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aclu.org
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The Justice Department has released nine secret memos and opinions written by the Office of Legal Counsel that authorized some of the Bush administration’s unlawful national security policies.
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The FCC has incredible power over the health of our democracy, from how we get our information to the technology we use to freely express ourselves—and the billions of dollars made in between—yet we tend to know little about the people who wield that power. The latest technocrat nominated to take charge of the commission is Julius Genachowski, an old school chum of the president.
Posted on Mar 4, 2009
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White House / Chris Greenberg
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President Bush’s memo fetish is well documented, but the Obama administration has just made public a series of memos that said the executive had extraordinary powers far beyond those traditionally considered legal. According to the crack legal minds of the Bush administration, the president could overrule the other branches of government.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Eugene Robinson — Just six weeks into his term, Obama has opened his bid to redraw the boundaries of our politics and expand the realm of the possible.
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Composite image: mediabistro.com / AP photo / Ron Edmonds
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¿Quién es más macho? And who’s the rightful leader of the GOP? Both Rush Limbaugh and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele are claiming the title in a curious kind of public arm-wrestling match that also pits entertainment against politics (as if the two weren’t already interconnected).
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Flickr / kimberlyfaye
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The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives had hoped to set an environmental example, but going green is turning out to be a bit of a challenge for the cigar-chomping Washington types.
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Marine Corps / Lance Cpl. Michael J. Ayotte
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By Chris Hedges — Combat troops are to be pulled out of Iraq by August 2010, President Obama said, but some 50,000 occupation troops will remain behind. Someone should let the Iraqis know the distinction.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The well-off will pay more in taxes. And before the howling on the right gets too loud, consider that we have just gone through a long era involving a far less frank form of redistribution—upward.
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c.berlet / publiceye.org
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The conservative wing of the Republican Party still has a lot of affection, oddly enough, for the former governor of the People’s Republic of Taxachusetts. For the third straight year, Mitt Romney beat out the likes of Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee in a poll of conservative activists.
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By David Sirota — Only months after the 2008 primaries, most Americans probably don’t remember Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul. But that doesn’t mean the conservative populism they championed during their campaigns is as fleeting as their dark-horse candidacies.
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A new book gives us one of the most indispensable poets in the English language whose work mines the terrain between hope and history.
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By Marie Cocco — For someone who spent much of the Democratic primary season running against the Clinton era, Obama sounds an awful lot like President Clinton.
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When civilizations collapse, mass hysteria ensues, often followed by cannibalism—a scenario familiar to the Republican Party, in which old friends are now turning on each other with reckless abandon.
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White House
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In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, President Obama acknowledged the dire state of the economy, but struck a hopeful tone as he expanded on his vision for recovery. Investments in energy, education and health care will be key, he said, as will an expanded bailout of the financial sector. (Summary, video and full text after the jump)
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White House / Eric Draper
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Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biographer has revealed that the California governor recently thought about leaving the Republican Party, but decided he wouldn’t gain much by doing so, politically. Camp Schwarzenegger has yet to respond, but the news fits, given the governor’s problems working with his own party.
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seattlepi.nwsource.com
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Fourth time’s the charm? Barack Obama’s two official picks to serve as commerce secretary both had to drop out. Another candidate withdrew her name before it was ever announced. Now the president is reported to have offered the job to former Washington Gov. Gary Locke. So who is he?
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By Marie Cocco — It is time to wipe the term entitlement reform, a monument to the dark art of disinformation, out of the political dictionary. There is no crisis in Social Security, or even in Medicare and Medicaid.
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By Eugene Robinson — It’s reaching the point where desperate measures—brutal honesty and complete transparency—may be the only way to bring the economy out of its kamikaze dive. If so, this won’t be pretty.
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AP photo / Hasan Sarbakhshian
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By Chris Hedges — Bibi Netanyahu’s assumption of power in Israel sets the stage for a huge campaign by the Israeli government, and its well-oiled lobby groups in Washington, to push us into a war with Iran, but a stable relationship with Iran would do more to protect Israel and our interests in the Middle East.
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Flickr / geerlingguy
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While just about every state in the Union is starving for funds, a small band of Republican governors is debating whether or not to reject the stimulus bill’s cash infusion, citing concerns over future taxes. This California editor says good. Give their stimulus money to my state. It’s broke.
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Jeff Madrick’s new book insists that the anti-government ethos that is a treasured American prejudice is not grounded in the new economic reality. But is he fighting the last war?
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By Eugene Robinson — Roland Burris, the woefully forgetful Illinois senator, should go home and stay there, and I’d advise taking a vow of silence as well.
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AP photo / M. Spencer Green
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By Bill Boyarsky — The national health care crisis, intensified by the recession, is so bad that nothing can be permitted to stop reform of the system, not even the implosion of the president’s health czar.
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By Joe Conason — Republicans congratulate themselves for remaining unified in defeat and whine about Obama’s refusal to capitulate—but in fact it is they who have failed in the initial episode of a confrontation that will certainly continue for four years.
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Chris Matthews dares GOP strategist Todd Harris to say something negative about Rush Limbaugh. He can’t, which leads the “Hardball” host to wonder whether anyone in the GOP is willing to risk Rush’s ire.
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telegraph.co.uk
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The New York Post is no stranger to controversy, but the rag’s latest goes beyond its typically low standards: A cartoon shows two cops, one of whom points his smoking gun at a bullet-riddled, bloody chimp. His partner says: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”
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change.gov
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Speaking at a Justice Department event in honor of Black History Month, the first black attorney general, appointed by the first black president, acknowledged that America has made progress but warned that “in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” His full remarks, after the jump.
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Flickr / Aaron Escobar
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The Truthdig Podcast is back and better than ever. This week the panel tackles our obsession with imperfect athletes, the first days of the Obama administration and the decline of media. Special guest Megan Tady, campaign coordinator for Free Press, joins James Harris and Josh Scheer.
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DoD / Sgt. Zach Otto, U.S. Army
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President Obama’s desire to escalate the war in Afghanistan, a sore spot for the progressives and anti-war folk who helped elect him, took a major step forward Tuesday when the White House announced plans to raise troop levels in Afghanistan by 50 percent over the next few months.
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Flickr / jphilipg
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ProPublica did some digging into the infrastructure spending bundled into the stimulus package—the $100 billion that promises have the biggest impact in terms of job creation—and found that Wyoming is getting more than $20,100 per unemployed worker while Michigan, a state on the verge of a labor apocalypse, is expected to have to make do with just $2,434.37.
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senate.gov
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Surprise! Roland Burris has no credibility. The man who condemned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for allegedly trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat—until he was appointed to it—has revealed that, contrary to what he told the United States Congress in sworn testimony, he tried to raise money, as requested, for the governor-turned-auctioneer.
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By Marie Cocco — This didn’t start with the mortgage and credit crisis. It all began with the wage crisis.
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Flickr / openDemocracy
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Hugo Chavez can remain Venezuela’s president until he dies, gets bored or loses the job in an election, now that a referendum dropping term limits has succeeded. Chavez was facing mandatory retirement in 2012. An earlier attempt to extend his time in office failed. International election observers pronounced the process free and fair.
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Flickr / Jeffrey Beall
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President Obama on Tuesday will sign the stimulus bill, which passed without the support of a single House Republican and with only three votes from the GOP in the Senate. With battle lines that stark, lawmakers have tied their fates to that of the bill.
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How stimulating is the stimulus, really? Did Obama bite off more than he could chew? Who wears the pants at the Treasury Department? Answers to these questions and more in this week’s episode.
Posted on Feb 15, 2009
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By David Sirota — One thing is obvious after Michael Phelps’ marijuana “scandal”: Our society is addicted to fake outrage—and to break our dependence, we’re going to need far more potent medicine than the herb Phelps was smoking.
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At last, a revisionist takedown of our 40th president, portrayed as an empty suit too often lauded by the common people he betrayed.
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By William Pfaff — Of the possible political combinations that have emerged from the Israeli parliamentary election, none will bring the region closer to peace. Israel will continue to persecute the Palestinians, whose hatred will only grow.
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State Dept. / Michael Gross, cropped
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With his party holding 15 seats in the Knesset, Avigdor Lieberman of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu is poised to pick Israel’s next government. Lieberman would like a choice cabinet post in exchange for anointing the next premier, but he’s under investigation for allegedly laundering millions of overseas dollars.
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