Last week, this column argued that the only constitutional role for armed federal forces in Portland, Oregon, was to assist U.S. marshals in protecting federal property and personnel there – in this case, the federal courthouse and those who come to it. The column...
The Likud Conspiracy: Israel in the Throes of a Major Political Crisis
Protests against Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have raged on for weeks, turning violent sometimes. Israelis are furious at their government’s mediocre response to the coronavirus pandemic, especially as COVID-19 disease is experiencing a massive surge...
Both Sides Have a Foreign Boogeyman to Blame for the 2020 Election
Almost four years of Democrats and liberal mainstream pundits hysterically blaming President Trump's 2016 victory on Russia has done enormous damage to U.S. political discourse. Besides the immense danger of ramping up tensions with another major nuclear power,...
Could Covert War With Iran Become Overt Before November 3rd?
Originally posted at TomDispatch. History’s a joke, right? We know that from our president who creates laughable moments of history daily – as when, reading from a script recently, he pronounced America’s famed Yosemite National Park...
Lebanon: Bellwether, Battleground, and Bastard Child of the Mideast
When I was a kid, "Beirut" became a cultural shorthand for any chaotic and violent urban setting. In the 1990s, my hometown rappers – the Wu Tang Clan – repeatedly shouted out the Lebanese city (plus one of its civil war antagonists, the P.L.O. – Palestinian...
The Trump Administration’s Economic War on the World: Hitting Adversaries, Punishing Innocents, Angering Allies
As if viewing gambling at Rick’s Café Americain in Casablanca, Washington policymakers are shocked, shocked to discover that China, too, can apply economic pressure. Complained the Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano: "the Chinese Communist government...
Iraq Daily Roundup: Four Killed in Iraq
We Have House Armed Services Committee Democrats To Thank for Trump’s Horrific War Budgets
I recently discovered the extent to which Democrats routinely vote for Republican policies and expenditures at the committee level. Such enabling committee-level "yes" votes often fly under the radar, since members of Congress who cast these damaging votes...
Teaching Torture: The Death and Legacy of Dan Mitrione
In the pre-dawn darkness of Monday, August 10, 1970, Dan Mitrione’s bullet-ridden body was discovered in the back seat of a stolen Buick convertible in a quiet residential neighborhood of Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital. He had just turned 50, and he had recently...
Seeing Events in Iran Through the Lens of Trump’s Polling Numbers
For nearly four years now, Donald Trump has been a blank check for Israel. That check may be about to expire. From recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel to plans to annex the West Bank to freedom to bomb in Syria, the Donald Trump blank check keeps on being...


