Edward Snowden’s disclosures, the New York Times reported on Sunday, "have renewed a longstanding concern: that young Internet aficionados whose skills the agencies need for counterterrorism and cyberdefense sometimes bring an anti-authority spirit that does not...
Clarity From Snowden, Murk From Progressive Politicians
House Speaker John Boehner calls Edward Snowden a “traitor.” The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, labels his brave whistleblowing “an act of treason.” What about the leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus? As the largest caucus...
Historic Challenge to Support the Moral Actions of Edward Snowden
In Washington, where the state of war and the surveillance state are one and the same, top officials have begun to call for Edward Snowden’s head. His moral action of whistleblowing — a clarion call for democracy — now awaits our responses. After nearly 12 years of...
An Open Letter to Dianne Feinstein, Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee
Dear Senator Feinstein: On Thursday, when you responded to news about massive ongoing surveillance of phone records of people in the United States, you slipped past the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. As the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, you seem to be...
Bradley Manning Is Guilty of ‘Aiding the Enemy’ – If the Enemy Is Democracy
Of all the charges against Bradley Manning, the most pernicious—and revealing—is “aiding the enemy.” A blogger at The New Yorker, Amy Davidson, raised a pair of big questions that now loom over the courtroom at Fort Meade and the entire country: “Would it aid the...
Our Twisted Politics of Grief
Darwin observed that conscience is what most distinguishes humans from other animals. If so, grief isn’t far behind. Realms of anguish are deeply personal—yet prone to expropriation for public use, especially in this era of media hyper-spin. Narratives...
Has the Left Made Peace With the Warfare State?
As a perpetual emotion machine -- producing and guzzling its own political fuel -- the “war on terror” continues to normalize itself as a thoroughly American way of life and death. Ongoing warfare has become a matter of default routine, pushed along by mainline media...
The Orwellian Warfare State of Carnage and Doublethink
After the bombings that killed and maimed so horribly at the Boston Marathon, our country’s politics and mass media are awash in heartfelt compassion -- and reflexive "doublethink," which George Orwell described as willingness "to forget any fact that...
Ten Years Ago and Today: A Warfare State of Mind
On a plane circling Baghdad in gray dawn light, a little Iraqi girl quietly sang to herself in the next row. "When I start to wonder why I’m making this trip," Sean Penn murmured to me, "I see that child and I remember what it’s about." After the...
Congress: End Endless War and Stop Becoming “the Evil That We Deplore”
Congress waited six years to repeal the Tonkin Gulf Resolution after it opened the bloody floodgates for the Vietnam War in August 1964. If that seems slow, consider the continuing failure of Congress to repeal the "war on terror" resolution – the...