Armed drone warfare has radically altered the nation of warfare. No longer are there multiple combatants. Now there is the hunter and the prey. It’s only a matter of time before drones are used the same way in the United States as they are used abroad.
A fight in Congress threatened to shut down the Department of Homeland Security. What would we do without the brave men and women of the TSA?
Idaho State Representative Vito Barbieri, a Republican, earned mass ridicule for suggesting that a woman’s stomach is directy connected to her vagina. Should anyone that stupid be making public policy?
There are signs of a genuine nascent recovery in the US economy, four years after it was formally announced by government propagandists. But the new jobs pay less, and it will take a long time before newly hired workers feel safe enough to risk spending again.
Cultural norms are that religion must be respected while other beliefs, cultural and political, receive no such deference.
A declining American military empire relies on increasingly flimsy legal justifications to attack foreign countries without provocation. Last year, Obama asserted that the 2001 Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force authorized him to launch airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, even though the AUMF related to Al Qaeda, an enemy of ISIS. Now Obama wants Congress to give him retroactive authorization, even while claiming he was right last year. Why not go even further to stretch logic?
NBC News anchorman Brian Williams got in trouble for fibbing about a supposed close call while embedded with US soldiers occupying Iraq in 2003. Why didn’t he get in trouble for being embedded in the first place? Or for the bigger lies inherent in the way he and other news networks package US government and military propaganda?
From vaccinations against measles to some Muslims’ assertion that no one should draw Mohammed, we are constantly being told that we should respect religion. But why should we respect or accommodate beliefs with which we disagree?
For nearly a year, the Obama Administration has waged a high-intensity air campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, killing thousands of Iraqis and Syrians, including many civilians. Now they’re finally asking for retroactive authorization from Congress, as mandated by the Constitution, for doing what they’ve already done. So much for a nation of laws.
Pundits like to say the problem with Washington is a lack of bipartisan cooperation in Congress. But we don’t need cooperation. We need representation.
