”Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.” - Lewis H. Lapham The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more intrusive police state, more unemployment and home foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by the U.S....
Long before there was Jeffrey Goldberg hyping “dignity” for air travelers, and Charles Krauthammer declaring that don't “touch my junk” is the “anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot,” there was Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin. Since this week is about...
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear former Attorney General John Ashcroft's appeal of a lower court decision, which ruled that he could be held responsible for the wrongful detention of a U.S. citizen. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought the case...
On Friday, Oct. 16, 1970, I woke up at about 7:00 a.m. and turned on the radio. At the time, I was living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The news I heard shocked me. In the middle of the night, Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had invoked the War Measures Act. What was...
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case where the father of a fallen serviceman is suing members of a church over its picketing of military funerals with signs that say, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “God Killed Your Sons,” and “Thank God for 9/11.” These protesters...
The dried blood on the concrete floor is there for all to see, a stain forever marking the spot on a Memphis motel balcony where Martin Luther King Jr. lay mortally wounded by a sniper's bullet. It is a stark and ghostly image speaking to the sharp pain of absence....
Orwell, Kafka, They could see; That government Would soon watch me. For governments keen on muzzling and thwarting opposition, terrorism is a God-sent cover. A nation subject to terrorist attack can get away with deception, surveillance, secret arrests, harassment,...
Recent raids by federal agents on the homes and offices of peace activists are being viewed by civil libertarians and civil society groups as further proof that the U.S. is morphing into a "surveillance state" where the right to privacy and other constitutional...
Hundreds of people who believe they were falsely detained and imprisoned by the Department of Justice in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are now seeking redress through the U.S. courts. The exact number of detainees is unclear, as no lists were ever released...
FBI raids on six houses in Minneapolis and Chicago, including the office of the Minneapolis Antiwar Committee, have the antiwar movement – and the left in general – in an uproar. Agents came barging into homes guns drawn, kicking down doors and smashing...
