Jean-Jacques Rousseau described the reciprocal relationship between a government and its people as a “social contract.” Even from the first legal code by the Babylonian Hammurabi, one learns that the principal benefit that government bestows on the people is the...
Uncovering the Military’s Secret Military
In “Getting bin Laden,” Nicholas Schmidle’s New Yorker report on the assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, here’s the money sentence, according to Noah Shachtman of Wired Magazine’s Danger Room blog: “The Abbottabad raid was not DEVGRU’s...
Wednesday: 21 Iraqis Killed, 24 Wounded
Hawks Upset With Debt Deal
As both houses of Congress began debating the 11th-hour debt-limit deal hashed out Sunday night by senior lawmakers and the White House, neoconservatives and other national security hawks complained bitterly Monday that the final package may force major cuts in...
US Muslims More Tolerant, Opposed to Violence Than Other Faiths
Muslims in the United States express greater tolerance for members of other faiths than any other major religious group, according to a major new survey and report released Thursday by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center. They are also more likely than any other religious...
‘Science’ and America’s Police State
So, you’re sick and tired of being hassled by Transportation “Security” Administration (TSA) thugs, who fondle your “junk” and force 95-year-old grandmothers to take off their adult diapers? Well, that’s tough – because...
Let’s Hope for Continued Fiscal Gridlock
Although President Barack Obama may have won over some key independent voters for the 2012 election by successfully painting the tea party Republicans as extremists responsible for the protracted debt-ceiling gridlock, the outcome for the nation of that policy and...
Lowering America’s War Ceiling?
By now, it seems as if everybody and his brother has joined the debt-ceiling imbroglio in Washington, perhaps the strangest homespun drama of our time. It’s as if Washington’s leading political players, aided and abetted by the media’s love of the horse race, had...
Enormous Cuts in Military Spending? Read the Fine Print
In this age of austerity, all the politicians are talking about the need for spending cuts. But when it comes to shared burdens and slashed budgets, don't expect the Pentagon to start holding bake sales, despite what you may have heard about reductions to its...


