Jack spoke there freely, like a saintly sinner --
(jelly donuts for breakfast, and brats for dinner?)
Pronouncing to all who would listen: "Ich bin ein Berliner."

Now Obama's running, and looking like a winner
Except that, if he wasn't such a heavy spinner
He'd be...

One of the stories that has mostly flown under the radar (and which Bushites would rather sweep under the rug), is the Stephen Payne story. Payne, the Houston lobbyist and Bush/Cheney bag man who was caught on tape offering to arrange a meeting with top Bush officials for...

Just as the blind devotion to deregulation of the financial markets can be blamed for much of the current meltdown on Wall Street, the war profiteers have enjoyed a Baghdad Bubble as a result of the Bush administration's refusal to hold them accountable.

Not far from Wall...

It's nice to see the NYTimes pick up on the Department of Justice's shift toward the use of deferred prosecutions of corporations in large corporate crime cases. As far as I know, they are the first major media outlet to do so.

The lack of coverage is pretty pathetic,...

Matt Rothschild's astonishing expose of the FBI's decision to "deputize" 23,000 representatives of private industry reflects a frightening alignment of authoritarian forces, as well as another apparently deliberate flouting of constitutional norms. The sad thing is, we can probably expect an almost total silence from the loyal opposition party,...

The Hill reports today that Loews and other corporations are lobbying lawmakers to slash corporate taxes.

The coalition is calling themselves "America Gains." A nice corny flag-wrapper that should immediately make everyone dubious.

With a straight face, Ed McClellan, a lobbyist for the coalition who once...

It felt like I'd just walked onto the set of the sequel to Jurassic Park. There was an industry dinosaur who I'd thought was gone for good.

But no. Former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond, and his colleagues at the National Petroleum Council, an industry committee that advises the Secretary of...

"More than in most criminal law areas, prosecution of corporate criminals has a
significant element of general deterrence," the Department of Justice's new strategic plan for 2007-2012 suggests.

Yet everyday we see more evidence that the Bush administration's Department of Justice has no interest in deterring the ongoing...

Is anyone really surprised by the incident involving Blackwater and eight dead Iraqis? Do the rules of war (cosmic, not legal) not follow that dramatic mandate about the gun on the wall being used by the third act? (Would that we were that close to the end.)

What we couldn't...

In his new book, Alan Greenspan writes:

"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq
war is largely about oil."

60 Minutes managed to completely miss that. Instead of bringing it up, the producers opted to close their lead story...

"I hate the beauty industry. It is a monster selling unattainable dreams. It lies. It cheats. It exploits women."

Those words were made famous because the person who uttered them was Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop.

Roddick, who unfortunately passed away the other day, was not an...

This just came across the transom:

In late July the British government agreed to introduce a new law called the "Corporate Manslaughter Statute," which will make companies criminally responsible for deaths caused by a firm's gross negligence.

Penalties for violating the act potentially include unlimited fines, a "publicity order"...

It was clear from the start that the Iraqis would not meet the "benchmarks" that Congress and Bush have imposed on it.

But anyone who expected them to is deluded. Not simply because the timelines are unreasonable, but because those who want to hold Iraqis "accountable" (as if they...

Murdoch will no doubt push the Journal further to the Right , leaving the New York Times to hold the center. Yet let's not forget that while the Times might publish opinion pieces that come from across the spectrum, we don't need to cite Judy Miller and Gina Kolata to...

The Washington Post's R.J. Hillhouse reports that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell recently classified a long-awaited report resulting from a year-long examination of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies.

The move is an attempt to bury an issue that has become a growing concern among national security experts:...

Just days after Stewart Bowen, the Special Inspector General released a new report which explains how KBR has been gouging taxpayers from inside the Green Zone, the Army announced that the company (which was split off from Halliburton this year) will divvy up another $150 billion with...

(NOTE: Aside from this great piece by Thomas Edsall, NPR ran a good story today on the threat of toxic freight to U.S. cities, and this coming Saturday -- June 23rd -- PBS' "Expose" will feature chemical & rail security as it follows the work of Pittsburgh...

Congress is scheduled to vote on the farm bill again this year.

While it's natural to expect small farmers to nag Congress for more hand-outs, the reality is that the process is more of a feeding frenzy for big corporate agribusiness which, because of the failure of antitrust enforcement,...

It's like battered spouse syndrome.

You want to leave, but where else do you go?

So you stay and fight. But do you? I mean, how many times do progressives have to be screwed over by the Dems before we mount a campaign (from the outside) to purge the Neanderthals...

Remember how many members of Congress actually read the WTO agreement before it was first passed?

One.

That was conservative Republican Hank Brown (CO), who took up a challenge issued by Ralph Nader to actually read the entire treaty and answer ten simple questions in public. Senator Brown not...