Patriot's Dream
Bill Moyers: Was the Financial Bailout Just a Slick, Friendly Takeover of the Federal Government? By Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal. Moyers interviews Marcy Kaptur, a hero of Michael Moore’s latest documentary and former IMF head Simon Johnson on Wall Street’s purchase of our democracy.
4 Supreme Court Cases That Will Say a Lot About the Direction of Our Country By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Would a Human Sacrifice TV Channel be protected by the First Amendment? Answers to this and other key questions will be answered.
As the Supreme Court kicked off its new season last week with a brand new justice on the bench, the cases on the docket provided a fascinating glimpse into the judicial soul of the country.
In the first days alone, there were cases involving dog fighting, a controversial cross on public land, and a number of prickly criminal justice issues.
The months to come will test laws on some of the most controversial issues of our time, including guns, sex offenders and the uniquely American question of whether teenagers can be sentenced to life without parole. The outcomes will tell us a lot about the future direction of the Roberts court, and what it might mean to have Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the bench.
Possible Major Speed Bump on the Way to Legal Marijuana By Stephen Webster, Raw Story. In spite of a law on California books for over a decade allowing sales of pot, L.A. DA Steve Cooley suddenly announces, “The time is right to deal with this problem.”
In spite of a law on California books for over a decade which allows the sale of medical cannabis to properly licensed patients, the district attorney in Los Angeles County is preparing an all-out legal assault against the “vast majority” of dispensaries.
“Hundreds of dispensaries operate under a 1996 voter initiative that allowed medical marijuana use, and a state law that allows for collective growing of marijuana,” NBC Los Angeles reported. “But based on a state Supreme Court decision last year, [LA County District Attorney Steve] Cooley has concluded that over-the-counter sales are illegal. Most if not all of the dispensaries in the state operate on that basis.”
http://www.alternet.org/rights/143208/possible_major_speed_bump_on_the_way_to_legal_marijuana
Republican Senate Sex Scandals Point Back to Secretive Conservative Christian “Family” By Bill Berkowitz, Religion Dispatches. It was a hot summer full of sex scandals for GOP members of “The Family,” the exclusive conservative Christian group with designs on DC power.
Before the Tea Party Express brought tens of thousands to protest in the nation’s capital, and before town hall meetings about health care devolved into shout downs, there was the story of the boys of C Street.
What at first seemed like a series of public sex scandals turned out to have a connective thread. The main protagonists (Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Senator John Ensign of Nevada, and former Arkansas Congressman Chip Pickering) were all one-time residents of C Street and members of the Family, otherwise known as the Fellowship. As the summer unfurled, the “three amigos” gave mainstream media outlets plenty to talk about, and this highly secretive and powerful right-wing group got a lot of exposure. And then, as is the wont of the media, the story of C Street disappeared from the headlines.
Insurers Mount Attack Against Health Reform by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar. WASHINGTON — The health insurance industry is warning that a comprehensive Senate bill would increase the cost of a typical policy by hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars a year after lawmakers eased up on the requirement that all Americans get coverage.
The stinging attack came on the eve of a pivotal Senate vote and was a clear message to President Barack Obama and congressional Democratic leaders who have been making headway on overhauling the nation’s health care system. The industry fears that a weakening of the penalties for failing to get insurance would let Americans postpone getting coverage until they get sick.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/10/12-4
Second Thoughts by Michael Moore. Friends,
Last night my wife asked me if I thought I was a little too hard on Obama in my letter yesterday congratulating him on his Nobel Prize. “No, I don’t think so,” I replied. I thought it was important to remind him he’s now conducting the two wars he’s inherited. “Yeah,” she said, “but to tell him, ‘Now earn it!’? Give the guy a break — this is a great day for him and for all of us.”
I went back and re-read what I had written. And I listened for far too long yesterday to the right wing hate machine who did what they could to crap all over Barack’s big day. Did I — and others on the left — do the same?
We are weary, weary of war. The trillions that will have gone to these two wars have helped to bankrupt us as a nation — financially and morally. To think of all the good we could have done with all that money! Two months of the War in Iraq would pay for all the wells that need to be dug in the Third World for drinking water! Obama is moving too slow for most of us — but he needs to know we are with him and we stand beside him as he attempts to turn eight years of sheer madness around. Who could do that in nine months? Superman? Thor? Mitch McConnell?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/11
War and Peace Prizes by Howard Zinn.
I was dismayed when I heard Barack Obama was given the Nobel peace prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on two wars would be given a peace prize. Until I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Henry Kissinger had all received Nobel peace prizes. The Nobel committee is famous for its superficial estimates, won over by rhetoric and by empty gestures, and ignoring blatant violations of world peace.
Yes, Wilson gets credit for the League of Nations – that ineffectual body which did nothing to prevent war. But he had bombarded the Mexican coast, sent troops to occupy Haiti and the Dominican Republic and brought the US into the slaughterhouse of Europe in the first World War, surely among stupid and deadly wars at the top of the list.
Sure, Theodore Roosevelt brokered a peace between Japan and Russia. But he was a lover of war, who participated in the US conquest of Cuba, pretending to liberate it from Spain while fastening US chains on that tiny island. And as president he presided over the bloody war to subjugate the Filipinos, even congratulating a US general who had just massacred 600 helpless villagers in the Phillipines. The Committee did not give the Nobel prize to Mark Twain, who denounced Roosevelt and criticised the war, nor to William James, leader of the anti-imperialist league.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/10-3
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