Peace and Security
Armed with Irony
If irony is a crucial ingredient for comedy, the House of Representatives can be a laugh riot. Lately, there’s been some serious silliness about sequestration and Pentagon spending.
A Glimmer of Military Budget Sanity
Here’s a milestone of sorts. For the first time since 1998, the House of Representatives voted in July to maintain the current military budget rather than increase Pentagon spending. It’s the first step toward bringing the budget down.
Just Another Corporate Profit Center
U.S. media outlets tend to report Haiti strictly as a land of tragedy. Its hapless citizens seem endlessly beset with earthquakes, floods, cholera, hunger, and bad government. Unfortunately, our press isn’t making that up.
Military Pork Shield
Indefensible: The Truth about Pentagon Spending
Today, there’s a debate raging about the federal budget, our national spending priorities, and how best to protect our national security and our men and women on the front lines.
Oh, Just Call Them Terrorists
The terrorist menace is proving quite useful to the U.S. government, much as the communist menace did many years ago. What could be more convenient than tagging dissenters and opponents as “giving material aid to terrorists”?
Steering Clear of the Iceberg Ahead
“Doomsday!” “Taxmageddon!” “Catastrophe!” Next year will begin with both a bang and a whimper unless Congress can escape its apparently hopeless deadlock.
Drone on the Range
Get ready, America. Here comes “the next latest and greatest thing in aviation.” Wow, what could it be? Maybe the airlines are going to drop all of their ridiculous rip-off fees. That’d be great!
A Rotten Cop on the Beat
In mid-July, relatives of three U.S. citizens killed by drone strikes in Yemen filed a wrongful death lawsuit against top security officials. Their complaint charges that the lethal strikes “violated fundamental rights afforded to all U.S. citizens, including the right not to be deprived of life without due process of law.”
Washington’s Democratic Double-Standard
The Western Hemisphere, from Mexico on down, traditionally served as a happy hunting ground for American business. From the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, cheap labor, cheap oil, cheap copper, cheap gold, cheap bananas, cheap beef, cheap wheat, cheap palm oil, and cheap politicians made Latin American countries attractive places to extract profits.
