The Real Legacy of the "Reagan Revolution."
Robert Scheer, editor of Truthdig.com writes a compelling column in which he states: McCain campaign co-chair Phil Gramm is right: We have “become a nation of whiners.” But who is whining more than the bankers that former Sen. Gramm’s financial deregulation legislation benefited? The very bankers who now expect a government bailout, such as those at UBS Investment Bank, where Gramm found lucrative employment.

To read the whole commentary, click here.

The House that Gramm Built
Marie Cocco, contributor on Truthdig.com also looks at Phil Gramm and his dismissal of America’s economic suffering that has forced him to the political sidelines, but as one of the congressional architects of Republican economics, the mess he made will haunt Americans no matter who the next president is.

To read her commentary, click here.

Drilling Without Oil, Tax Cuts Without Growth
Dean Baker, writing for Truthout, says: "Senator McCain is in the unenviable position of running on the track record of a president with the worst economic performance since Herbert Hoover. He has adopted the strategy of ignoring the record while embracing his predecessor's policies. McCain is betting the media will be so incompetent that they will not notice. He might be right."

For the complete article, click here.

New York: 50 Percent of Sequoia Voting Machines Flawed
Kim Zetter writes for Wired: "New York state is in the process of replacing its lever voting machines with new voting equipment, but the state revealed recently that it has found problems with 50 percent of the roughly 1,500 ImageCast optical-scan machines that Sequoia Voting Systems has delivered to the state so far - machines that are slated to be used by dozens of counties in the state's September 9 primary and November 4 presidential election."

To read the complete article, click here.

Birth-Control Denial the Height of Arrogance
Dan K. Thomasson, for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, says: "So when is a pharmacy not a pharmacy? Better yet, when can a licensed pharmacist not fill a legitimate prescription because of political or religious reasons? Should a state licensing authority permit the dispensing of male-enhancement drugs but not those that permit a female to guard her own health? Those are health, ethical and legal questions that most state authorities now find themselves facing with a growing number of pharmacists who refuse to honor prescribed contraceptives or sell those available over the counter on grounds it violates their consciences."

Read the complete column by clicking here.

Is the Fourth Estate a Fifth Column? Corporate media colludes with democracy’s demise
Bill Moyers rewrites his National Media Reform Conference presentation (video of which is available above) as a column in In These Times, opening with: "I heard this story a long time ago, growing up in Choctaw County in Oklahoma before my family moved to Texas. A tribal elder was telling his grandson about the battle the old man was waging within himself. He said, 'It is between two wolves, my son. One is an evil wolf: anger, envy, sorrow, greed, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is the good wolf: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.'”

For the complete article, click here.

Price of Admission for Migrant Women
Tim Vanderpool, for The Tucson Weekly, reports, "According to experts, rape is now considered 'the price of admission' for women crossing the border illegally. But this scourge goes largely ignored, and is suspected to be vastly underreported. Not surprisingly, few women care to describe their ordeals to authorities in stark government detention facilities. And if they do, it's often as they're already being deported back across the border - sometimes back into the very situations where the assaults occurred."

For the complete article, click here.

FCC Chief Says Comcast Violated Internet Rules
John Dunbar, of The Associated Press, reports: "The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday he will recommend that the nation's largest cable company be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet. The potentially precedent-setting move stems from a complaint against Comcast Corp. that the company had blocked Internet traffic among users of a certain type of 'file sharing' software that allows them to exchange large amounts of data."

To read the complete story, click here.

Top Senator And 10 States Attack VA for Banning Voter Registration Drives
Steven Rosenfeld writes for AlterNet: "The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman, Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI), has called on the Department of Veterans Affairs to reverse its new policy barring voting rights groups, "partisan or otherwise," from holding voter registration drives on campuses where injured veterans are living or receiving medical care. "Veterans receiving care at VA facilities risked life and limb to defend the freedoms we enjoy, including the right to vote," Akaka said in a July 10 letter to Veterans Affairs Secretary James B. Peake. "Current VA policy makes it unnecessarily difficult for some veterans to participate in the electoral process." Akaka said the VA's most recent explanation for barring registration drives -- that they would violate the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from engaging in political activities on official time or federal property -- made no sense."

For complete article, click here.

John McCain Hates Social Security
Bill Scher writes for The Campaign for America's Future: "Sen. John McCain, I'm one of your friends, right? The kind of friend who can handle some of your special brand of Straight Talk. So why won't you just tell me you hate Social Security?"

For complete commentary, click here.

Obama and the Progressive Base
Norman Solomon, writing for Truthout, questions the "progressive" image Senator Barack Obama has cultivated: "These days, an appreciable number of Obama supporters are starting to use words like 'disillusionment.' But that's a consequence of projecting their political outlooks onto the candidate in the first place."

For the complete commentary, click here.

US Environmental Agency Lowers Value of a Human Life
The Guardian UK reports: "It sounds like a spot of gallows humour, but the numbers are no joke: the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has lowered the value of a human life by nearly $1 million under George Bush's administration. The EPA's estimate of the 'value of a statistical life' was $6.9 million as of this May - down from $7.8 million five years ago - according to an Associated Press study released today."

To read the complete report, click here.

U.S. Seeks Data Exchange Including Sexual Orientation of Foreign Visitors
Ellen Nakashima writes in the Washington Post that under agreements being negotiated with European countries, the U.S. would be able to swap fingerprint and DNA information -- and in some instances data on race, ethnic origin, political and religious beliefs, and sexual orientation -- in exchange for EU member states to gain or maintain the right to visit the U.S. without a visa. Some privacy advocates question whether appropriate safeguards for the sharing of the data are being included in the agreements.

For complete article, click here.

The Death of Reaganomics
E.J. Dionne write on Truthdig.com: "The biggest political story of 2008 is getting little coverage. It involves the collapse of assumptions that have dominated our economic debate for three decades. Since the Reagan years, free-market clichés have passed for sophisticated economic analysis. But in the current crisis, these ideas are falling, one by one, as even conservatives recognize that capitalism is ailing."

For complete report, click here.

Why big business no longer pays any mind to AFA, similar groups
Noting the complete flop of the American Family Association's recent boycott of McDonald's over its joining a gay business group, columnist Mark Morford believes the AFA's failure to generate any outrage is a sign that its days of influence are over.

Cor complete article, click here.

Betrayed by Obama

The Democrat's FISA sellout is unforgivable, but he's counting on supporters having no place else to go. And McCain's nutty neocon Iran talk helps him make his case.

Joan Walsh, published on 10 July on Salon.com

To view original, click here.

What an interesting week: I came back from vacation to find the two presumptive presidential nominees running away from their bases. Suddenly John McCain is evading, not embracing, the media, limiting access and getting testy with the very people whose formerly friendly coverage made him a popular "maverick." Meanwhile, Barack Obama is complaining that his "friends on the left" just don't understand him -- he's not moving to the center, he is "no doubt" a progressive, just one who now supports the scandalous FISA "compromise" and Antonin Scalia's views on gun rights and the death penalty, no longer plans to accept public campaign funding, and wants to make sure women aren't feigning mental distress to get a "partial-birth" abortion (the right's despicable term of choice; the correct phrase is either late-term or third-trimester abortion).

I actually have some sympathy for Obama. He was never the great progressive savior that his fans either thought he was, or peddled to their readers. While Arianna Huffington and Markos Moulitsas and Tom Hayden were hyping him as the progressive alternative to Hillary Clinton, Obama was getting away with backing a healthcare bill less progressive than Clinton's, adopting GOP talking points on the Social Security "crisis" and double-talking on NAFTA. So why shouldn't he think his "friends on the left" will put up with his abandoning other progressive causes?

I've admired Obama, but I never confused him with a genuine progressive leader. Today I don't admire him at all. His collapse on FISA is unforgivable. The only thing Obama has going for him this week is that McCain is matching him misstep for misstep. While we're railing about Obama's craven vote on FISA -- rightfully; Glenn Greenwald is a hero for his work on this topic -- McCain was outdoing Dick Cheney with neocon crazy talk, warning that Iran's test of nine old missiles we already knew they had increases the chances of a "second Holocaust." Every time I wonder whether I can ultimately vote for Obama in November, given all of his political cave-ins, McCain does something new to make sure I have to.

But Obama needs to watch himself. Telling voters they have no place else to go, before he officially has the nomination, is not a winning strategy. That's what his people told Clinton voters. That's what they're saying about opponents of the FISA sellout. That's the line on those concerned about his "partial-birth" abortion remarks. It's arrogant -- up against the backdrop of Obama's big plans for an Invesco Field acceptance speech in Denver and a Brandenberg Gate extravaganza in Berlin, I'm starting to worry about grandiosity -- and it could backfire.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, voted against the FISA bill, but I think "what ifs" are unproductive. Matthew Yglesias' self-justifying fiction that, if she was the nominee, she'd have done what Obama did, is silly. But none of us can really know she'd have done the right thing in Obama's shoes. Since I believe Clinton's craven vote to authorize the Iraq war in 2002 cost her the Democratic nomination, I do find myself wondering whether she learned her lesson about caving in to GOP threats. It's funny how so many defeated Democrats -- Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards and now Clinton -- seem to become more progressive after they learn that pandering can't protect them from the attacks of the GOP and its friends in the media. Let's hope Obama doesn't have to learn that lesson the same way.

Of course, the only thing more offensive than Obama's yes vote on FISA was McCain's decision to skip the vote entirely -- and then trash Obama for "flip-flopping" on FISA. Unfortunately, Obama did flip-flop on FISA, but McCain didn't bother to show up. So far, this has been a really dispiriting campaign. Part of the problem, I think, is that the two finalists are guys beloved by the media, who've had a fairly free ride to here. With their rivals out of the way, they're getting more scrutiny, and it's not all adoring. Having won impressive underdog victories, neither campaign seems ready for prime time. I know one thing, I'd really like to vote for the guy who said this:

"This Administration has put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. When I am president, there will be no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens; no more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime; no more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. Our Constitution works, and so does the FISA court."

Too bad Obama doesn't believe that anymore.

Free Trade, Why "Free" Matters
For Truthout, Dean Baker writes: "Senator McCain was in Colombia last week touting his support for the trade agreement that the Bush administration had negotiated with the country. He also touted his support for NAFTA, contrasting both positions with Senator Obama's opposition to the two pacts. McCain had an important ally in his campaign. The media decided to embellish McCain's case by touting his support for 'free trade,' as opposed to the specific deals in question. This is a very important difference and it reflects deeply held biases in the media."

For complete article, click here.

Implementer of "don't ask, don't tell" Says Policy Doesn't Work
A new study by four retired military officers has concluded that Congress should repeal the military gay ban because out gay and lesbian soldiers pose little or no threat to the nation's preparedness for war. The report from the Michael D. Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was co-authored by retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert Minter Alexander, a Republican who in 1993 took part in a Defense Department panel that helped implement the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

For the complete AP Story, click here.

Is Water the Next Crisis: Analyzing the flow of water news

Media Tenor looks at many recent reports on water problems that are surfacing and raising concern as South African society struggles to put faith in the "no crisis" sentiment.

For complete analysis, click here.

How to Really Help Pregnant Teens
Jeannette Pai-Espinosa writes for The Christian Science Monitor: "It was common for pregnant single women in the 1800s to be called 'lost, fallen, wayward, and depraved women.' Fast forward to 2008 and spend a bit of time online and you'll read statements that refer to the 17 young pregnant high school women in Gloucester, Massachusetts, as 'sluts, idiots, harlots, and immoral.' This is not progress. We need to move beyond name calling. Let's ask ourselves not only about how we look at vulnerable young women in our society, but let's use those answers to help make a positive difference for them."

For complete article, click here.

Justice Department Right not to Play Politics with Ruling.
The Washington Post, in an editorial, commends the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for "keeping politics out of the analysis" when it ruled that the child of two women was entitled to Social Security benefits from his nonbiological parent. "In short, [the OLC] relied on a straightforward -- some might say 'conservative' -- approach to produce a result that even 'liberals' should applaud," the Post writes.

For complete editorial, click here.

"We Have Seven Years Left to Reverse the CO2 Emissions Curve"
Rajendra Pachauri, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change president and Nobel Laureate, says in an interview with Le Monde's Laurence Caramel and Stephane Foucart that humanity has only seven years to reverse the present greenhouse gas emissions trend before we cross a threshold of "serious danger."

For the complete Truthout translation of the Le Monde article, click here.

Big Brother is Watching Your Every Move
Better not be planning that addition to the house when the cable guy comes.
Bruce Finley writes for The Denver Post: "Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as "Terrorism Liaison Officers" in Colorado and a handful of other states to hunt for "suspicious activity" — and are reporting their findings into secret government databases. It's a tactic intended to feed better data into terrorism early-warning systems and uncover intelligence that could help fight anti-U.S. forces. But the vague nature of the TLOs' mission, and their focus on reporting both legal and illegal activity, has generated objections from privacy advocates and civil libertarians. "Suspicious activity" is broadly defined in TLO training as behavior that could lead to terrorism: taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements or notes, espousing extremist beliefs or conversing in code, according to a draft Department of Justice/Major Cities Chiefs Association document."

For complete story, click here.

Republican Campaign Against Likely Democratic Voters Begins
Steven Rosenfeld writes for Alternet: "Across the country and on the Republican National Committee website, a handful of GOP office holders and party officers are trying to discredit recent voter registration drives and record-setting turnout by Democrats in 2008 primaries, saying efforts seen as benefiting Democrats are rife with "voter fraud.""

For complete story, click here.

What Patriotism Is, and Is Not
Michael Winship, for Truthout, writes about false accusations against Obama's patriotism, "Chances are, many of the perpetrators of this nonsense think they're being patriots, saving us from Obama and ourselves. And goodness knows, there's a long history of this kind of guttersnipery in American politics. As Obama pointed out in his Monday speech on the nature of patriotism, 'Thomas Jefferson was accused by the Federalists of selling out to the French. The anti-Federalists were just as convinced that John Adams was in cahoots with the British and intent on restoring monarchal rule ... the use of patriotism as a political sword or a political shield is as old as the Republic.'"

For his complete commentary, click here.

On Black Patriotism
Eugene Robison writes for Truthdig.com: " Anyone who took U.S. history in high school ought to know that one of the five men killed in the Boston Massacre, the atrocity that helped ignite the American Revolution, was a runaway slave named Crispus Attucks. The question the history books rarely consider is: Why? Think about it for a moment. For well over a century, British colonists in North America had practiced a particularly cruel brand of slavery, a system of bondage intended not just to exploit the labor of Africans but to crush their spirit as well. Backs were whipped and broken, families systematically separated, traditions erased, ancient languages silenced. Yet a black man—to many, nothing more than a piece of property—chose to stand and die with the patriots of Boston.

For the complete commentary, click here.

Single Moms' Poverty Spikes After Welfare Overhaul
Allison Stevens of Women's eNews reports, "Some 15 million US women live in poverty, according to 2006 Census data collated by the Washington-based National Women's Law Center. Poverty rates are especially high among women of color, older women and single mothers. Black and Hispanic women are about twice as likely to be poor than white women. Roughly one in five elderly women are poor, as are one in three single mothers."

For the complete story, click here.

Vendor Misinformation in the E-Voting World
Dan Wallach, for VoteTrustUSA, writes: "At this point, the scientific evidence is in, it's overwhelming, and it's indisputable. The current generation of DRE voting systems has a wide variety of dangerous security flaws. There's simply no justification for the vendors to be making excuses or otherwise downplaying the clear scientific consensus on the quality of their products."

To read the complete article, click here.

Playing the Fear Card
Dan Kennedy for the Guardian writes: "Be afraid. It's not just a warning - it's a campaign slogan. For Republicans, fear is a cudgel with which they've bludgeoned their way to victory since the Reagan era, and it's acquired an extra emotional wallop since 9/11. Will it work again? Even though Barack Obama has a lead of as much as 15 points in the national polls, don't be too sure that it won't. After all, Michael Dukakis led the first George Bush by 17 points in the summer of 1988. That fall, Dukakis collapsed under a vicious assault on his patriotism, his toughness, even his mental stability."

FOr his complete commentary, click here.

The Truth Is Out on CIA and Torture
Milt Bearden, for The Washington Independent, writes: "But whatever the solution for getting US intelligence collection abroad back on track, it should begin with the formal denunciation by the next administration of the use of torture by any US agency -- including the CIA. It might also encompass a balanced investigation into past abuses, but this time with a top-down targeting rather than just throwing a few low-level suspects to the wolves."

For the complete story, click here.

Obama's FISA Opportunity
Keith Olbermann on MSNBC's "Countdown": "The Democratic leadership in the Senate, Republican knuckle-dragging in the same chamber, and the mediocre skills of whoever wrote the final version of the FISA bill, have combined to give Senator Barack Obama a second chance to make a first impression. And he damned well better take it."

For complete commentary, click here.

People-funded Journalism Budding
J. D. Lascia reports for MediaShift, that efforts like Spot.us, where citizens fund stories at the community level, are important experiments that bear watching -- and, more importantly, sustained support.

For complete commentary, click here.

US Leads World in Substance Abuse
According to Reuters, "The United States leads the world in rates of experimenting with marijuana and cocaine despite strict drug laws, World Health Organization researchers said on Tuesday."

For complete story, click here.

For First Time, Congress Addresses Transgender Workers
Rob Hotakainen, McClatchy Newspapers, reports: "After getting hired as a national security analyst with the Library of Congress, David Schroer took his new boss out to lunch to share some news: On his first day of work, he planned to show up as Diane. The next day the job offer was withdrawn, and Schroer says it was a clear case of discrimination."

For complete story, click here.

It Was Oil, All Along
For Truthout, Bill Moyers and Michael Winship write: "Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be ... the bottom line. It is about oil."

For complete article, click here.

Naomi Klein on Disaster Capitalism - A Truthdig Interview with Naomi Klein
Critics and challengers of Naomi Klein’s work had better take a close look at her latest book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” before launching their attacks. This is one writer whose research and documentation are so exhaustive that potential detractors will not only find her analysis to be dauntingly watertight, but they might also discover that some of her source material seems strangely familiar.

For complete interview, click here.

Five Inconvenient Truths
David Downs writes in the Columbia Review of Journalism: "In its June issue, Wired dedicated its cover story to the 'inconvenient truths about global warming,' taking conventionally unconventional looks at ten strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The feature aimed to turn tenets of modern environmentalism on their heads by declaring that 'A/C is OK; organics are not the answer; and carbon trading doesn’t work.' It also urged readers to 'accept genetic engineering; buy used cars, not hybrids; and embrace nuclear power.'"

For complete story, click here.

US Border Agents Copying Contents of Travelers' Laptops
Federica Narancio, of McClatchy Newspapers reports: "US border agents are copying and seizing the contents of laptops, cell phones and digital cameras from US and foreign travelers entering the United States, witnesses told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday. The extent of this practice is unknown despite requests to the Department of Homeland Security from the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution and several nonprofit agencies."

For complete story, click here.

War Contracting Gone Bad
Matthew Blake, of The Washington Independent writes: "A Congressional report released Tuesday details the sordid story of how the military contractor AEY, and its 22 year-old company president, Efraim Diveroli, won, and then lost, a $298-million Pentagon contract to supply munitions to Afghanistan security forces. AEY and Diveroli became infamous after a March New York Times story detailed how the company, which employed less than a handful of people and operated from an unmarked Miami Beach office, rapidly rose to become one of the most successful, and unreliable, wartime contractors."

For complete story, click here.

Scalia Cites False Information in Habeas Corpus Dissent
Marjorie Cohn writes for Truthout: "To bolster his argument that the Guantanamo detainees should be denied the right to prove their innocence in federal courts, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent in Boumediene v. Bush: 'At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo have returned to the battlefield.' It turns out that statement is false."

fFor the complete column, click here.

Telecom Donations Tied to FISA Vote
http://www.truthout.org/article/telecom-donations-tied-fisa-vote
Mike Lillis reports for The Washington Independent: "When scores of House Democrats joined Republicans last week to reauthorize a controversial White House spying program, many critics attributed that support to election-year jitters. But as liberal voters continue to bash Democrats on the issue, some campaign finance reformers charge that political contributions from the telecom industry, which benefited handsomely under the bill, probably also swayed votes."

For complete story, click here.

More Phony Myths
MAUREEN DOWD writes in an op-ed in the New York Times: "Karl Rove was impressed with Barack Obama when he first met him. But now he sees him as a “coolly arrogant” elitist. This was Rove’s take on Obama to Republicans at the Capitol Hill Club Monday, according to Christianne Klein of ABC News: “Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by." Actually, that sounds more like W. The cheap populism is really rich coming from Karl Rove. When was the last time he kicked back with a corncob pipe to watch professional wrestling? Rove is trying to spin his myths, as he used to do with such devastating effect, but it won’t work this time. The absurd spectacle of rich white conservatives trying to paint Obama as a watercress sandwich with the crust cut off seems ugly and fake."

For the complete op-ed, click here.

Reporters Say Networks Block War Reports
Brian Stelter, of The New York Times, reports: "Getting a story on the evening news isn't easy for any correspondent. And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. So she has devised a solution when she is talking to the network. 'Generally what I say is, "I'm holding the armor-piercing R.P.G.,"' she said last week in an appearance on 'The Daily Show,' referring to the initials for rocket-propelled grenade. '"It's aimed at the bureau chief, and if you don't put my story on the air, I'm going to pull the trigger."' Ms. Logan let a sly just-kidding smile sneak through as she spoke, but her point was serious. Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever."

For complete story, click here.

The Price of Hunger
The Los Angeles Times editorial board poses the question, "What would it really cost to end global hunger? The United Nations estimates that it would take at least $30 billion per year to solve the food crisis, mainly by boosting agricultural productivity in the developing world. Over the decade that it would take to make sustainable improvements in the lives of the 862 million undernourished people, that amounts to $300 billion. Three hundred billion dollars is a lot of money, and the U.S. government won't foot the bill alone. But it's less than half of 1% of the world's combined gross domestic products, not an unreasonable sum to invest in ending the misery and degradation of hunger. After all, Congress shelled out $21 billion last year for foreign aid and this week it approved $162 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for fiscal 2009. The U.S. spent $340 billion in 2006 alone on public and private research and development. Directing just one-tenth of that seed money to sustainable, high-yield agriculture in the developing world could trigger a second Green Revolution."

For complete editorial, click here.

Corporate Espionage Detailed in Documents
Defunct Md. Agency Targeted Activists
Reporting for The Washington Post, Jenna Johnson writes: "The agency, Beckett Brown International, had an operative at meetings of a group in Rockville that accused a nursing home of substandard care. In Louisiana, it kept tabs on environmental activists after a chemical spill. In Washington, it spied on food safety activists who had found taco shells made with genetically modified corn not approved for human consumption."

For complete story, click here.

Religious Right Groups Want Pastors to Cross the Partisan Line and Spark Court Showdown
Rob Boston whose original editorial appeared in Church & State Magazine, writes for Alternet: "For years, Religious Right groups have complained about the federal tax law that forbids houses of worship and other tax-exempt groups to intervene in political campaigns by endorsing or opposing candidates. Several organizations pushed Congress to change the statute, without success. The Religious Right suffered another setback in 2000, when a federal appeals court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the tax law."

For complete commentary, click here.

Put Oil Firm Chefs on Trial, Says Leading Climate Change Scientist
Ed Pilkington, The Guardian UK, says: "James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer."

To read full article, click here.

In Media, Too Few Control Too Much

Gary L. Flowers writes in a editorial for the Las Angles Wave: "While most Americans enjoy more radio, television, and Internet channels, many do not realize that behind the channel is less choice. Currently, only six corporations control most of what Americans hear, see, and read. Media consolidation threatens citizens’ ability to receive objective information. For example, independent newspapers have decreased by two-thirds in the past 30 years."

For complete commentary, click here.

LGBT Activists Flighting the Last Battles of the Culture Wars
Anja Tranovich writes for AlterNet: "As wedding halls in New York and California frantically stock up on rainbow-colored confetti and gender-neutral programs, it's easy for coastal liberals to assume the culture wars are over. Not quite -- and if religious conservatives have anything to do with it, expect the last battles to be messy."

For complete story, click here.

The Return of the Neocons
In The Washington Independent, James Risen says, "Ever since the Rumsfeld era at the Pentagon ended abruptly in the aftermath of the Democratic victory in the 2006 mid-term elections, the civilian hawks who ruled the Defense Dept. during the early years of the Iraq war have remained largely silent. They have not engaged publicly even as their culpability for the Iraq war's myriad failures has congealed into accepted wisdom."

For the complete commentary, click here.

Democrats Legalize Bush's Crimes
Writing for Consortium News, Robert Parry says, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims that a key positive feature of the new wiretap 'compromise' is that the bill reaffirms that the President must follow the law, even though the same bill virtually assures that no one will be held accountable for George W. Bush's violation of the earlier spying law."

For the complete column, click here.

Is the Tyranny of Right-Wing Radio Coming to an End?
Roy O'Conner writes for Medicachannel.org: "Conservative fears of an impending Democratic attack on talk radio - dubbed the “Hush Rush” effort in an homage to top-rated radio talker Rush Limbaugh — continue to escalate, despite ample evidence that such an assault is unlikely to occur when (as is likely) Democrats sweep back into power in the forthcoming elections in November."

For complete commentary, click here.

Disabled Soldier Returning to War, Facing "Stop Loss"
The Handford Sentinel's Tom Philpott writes: "One day last August, while manning the .50-caliber gun atop his a Humvee on a dirt road in northern Iraq, Army Spc. Daniel 'Joey' Haun suddenly lost consciousness. His vehicle had struck a buried bomb, an 'improvised explosive device.' Haun was ejected, his vehicle flipped over."

For complete article, click here.

Is Obama Flipflopping on So-called "Free Trade"
Jonathan Tasini writes for glabour writers: "Yesterday, Senator Obama made comments to a business reporter that leave the impression that he is already shifting his stated position on NAFTA and, by extension, so-called "free trade." It is worth looking at as a sign where Senator Obama really intends to lead us on trade if he wins the White House."

For the complete article, click here.

Health Care and Ghosts of War
For Truthout, Norman Solomon writes: "Speaking in a time of war, Martin Luther King Jr. said: 'Somehow this madness must cease.' Forty-one years later, young soldiers are returning to the United States from terrifying zones of carnage. The old claims of a justified war have melted away. So have the promises of a humane society back home. Statistics about the war dead tell us very little about human realities. And familiar downbeat numbers about health care - 47 million Americans with no health insurance, perhaps an equal number woefully underinsured - tell us very little about the actual consequences or other options."

For the complete column, click here.

A Government of Law, not Fear.
Stanley Kutler writes for Truthdig.com on McCain, Obama and the abuse of power the following: "The Constitution holds, albeit by a slender thread. The Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote in Boumediene v. Bush, ruled unconstitutional a 2006 law barring enemy combatants held at Guantanamo from seeking writs of habeas corpus. For now, we are not under Chief Justice John Roberts’ or Justice Antonin Scalia’s constitution. Fear reigns in their dissent amid Cassandra-like threats that we are doomed unless we scrap our constitutional protections for the duration of that never-ending and nebulous 'war on terror.'"

For the complete commentary, click here.

Weather Reports Are Missing the Story.
Journalist Amy Goodman write for Truthdig.com: "The floodwaters are rising, swamping cities, breaching levees. Tens of thousands are displaced. Many are dead. No, I am not talking about Hurricane Katrina, but about the Midwest United States. As the floodwaters head south along the Mississippi, devastating communities one after another, the media are overflowing with televised images of the destruction. While the TV meteorologists document “extreme weather” with their increasingly sophisticated toolbox, from Doppler radar to 3-D animated maps, the two words rarely uttered are its cause: global warming."

For the complete column, click here.