If
we win the fight for a real national health system, a single-payer
program, in the United States, it will signal the beginning of more
than just the way we pay for or allocate health services. It will be a
step toward the reinventing of medicine as a way to achieve social
justice, not to make a profit. I have seen that kind of medicine in
Britain, where I lived through the eighties, and, despite challenges
and contradictions, it worked.
As a brown-skinned immigrant who has spent 25 years working for
racial justice, I owe a good deal of my life to the legacy of the
NAACP. So I’ve watched and attended the organization’s centennial
convention in New York this week with both gratitude and the urge to
contribute.
GUANTANAMO BAY - Canada's spy service should have considered Omar Khadr's age and the widespread allegations of abuse before interrogating him in 2003, concludes an investigation by an Ottawa watchdog agency.
The Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) report also revealed for the first time details from a Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) post-interrogation report that said Khadr viewed Al Qaeda "through the eyes of a child" who didn't know about his father's terrorist-linked activities because "he was out playing or simply not interested."
Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.), a member of
the Senate Judiciary Committee, will ask Judge Sonia Sotomayor
questions this week and has said he will ask about network neutrality.
Dick Cheney's accountability moment may finally be arriving.
Television news reports are casting new light on the violence that flourished in New Orleans in the anarchic days after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The reports -- broadcast Thursday by WTAE TV in Pittsburgh [1] and WDSU in New Orleans [2] -- focus on two unsolved crimes: the near-fatal shooting of Donnell Herrington, who was allegedly attacked by a group of white vigilantes in the Algiers Point
America is at a turning point. How we will come to terms with the government abuses unleashed in the aftermath of 9/11 is a historic test of our highest principles. Are we a nation of laws? Will we stand by our commitment to the rule of law over the tyranny of state-sanctioned brutality?
Maryland's particularly powerful congressional delegation in Washington can be pivotal as the nation chooses how to proceed. And, of course, members of Congress will more likely rise to the occasion if they hear from the public they represent.
Scott Roeder, the anti-abortion zealot
charged with killing Dr. George Tiller, has been busy. He called the
Associated Press from the Sedgwick County Jail in Kansas, saying, "I
know there are many other similar events planned around the country as
long as abortion remains legal." Charged with first-degree murder and
aggravated assault, he is expected to be arraigned July 28. AP recently
reported that Roeder has been proclaiming from his jail cell that the
killing of abortion providers is justified. According to the report,
the Rev.
Spencer Ackerman yesterday attended a Senate hearing at which the DOD's General Counsel, Jeh Johnson, testified. As
Ackerman highlighted, Johnson actually said that even for those detainees to whom the Obama administration deigns to give a real trial in a real court, the President has the power
to continue to imprison them indefinitely even if they are acquitted at their trial. About this assertion of "presidential post-acquittal detention power" -- a
Editor’s Note: Prior to giving a series of talks in Texas later this
week, the author offered the following op-ed to the Dallas Morning
News and the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram. Both newspapers in George W.
Bush’s home state turned it down.
Seldom does a crime scene have so clear a smoking gun. A two-page
presidential memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, leaves no room for
uncertainty regarding the “decider” on torture. His broad-stroke
signature made torture official policy.
