Health Care and the Supremes (tags)
When the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act in late March, the vicious hostility of their comments signaled their intent not only to rule so-called "Obamacare" unconstitutional but to fundamentally recast the Court's jurisprudence. It's clear from the health-care hearings and from previous decisions like Citizens United that the Court's five-member Right-wing majority wants to return to the days before and during the New Deal when the Court quite consciously saw its mission as protecting the 1 percent by ruling any meaningful attempt at regulating the economy unconstitutional.
R.I.P. Ted Kennedy: The Senate’s Last Liberal (tags)
The mainstream media’s eulogies for the late Senator Ted Kennedy predictably focused on his success as a deal-maker, pushing a liberal agenda but in ways that compromised and often won the support of Republicans and conservatives. But Kennedy’s deals were based on the existence of a Republican party that, despite its different priorities from the Democrats, still believed in government as a force for the public good. Today’s nihilistic, Right-wing dominated Republican Party no longer believes in government as anything but a repressive instrument for benefiting the rich and enforcing the discipline of “the Market” on working people both domestically and abroad who dare to challenge the imperatives of lassiez-faire capitalism. What the times call for are tough, no-nonsense progressive resistance to the bipartisan Market agenda, not support of capitalist politicians promoted as “pragmatists” in the corporate media.
The war in Iraq and the assassination of Kennedy (tags)
AT 44 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the war in Iraq and the Bush family saga have magnified the need to declassify documents related to the November 22, 1963 attack that affected not only the United States but, to a surprising degree, Cuba, and the rest of the world.
The peace protestors inspire hope in a nation that seemed headed for its own destruction.