Bulking up Pentagon North

With the prospect of a Harper majority hanging menacingly over the country, the mind inevitably turns to the question: Just what is the "secret agenda" lurking behind the friendly sweater?

Actually, I don't believe there is one. The truth is that Stephen Harper has already laid out an agenda that would fundamentally change this country - in ways most Canadians would oppose.

Pat Nixon at the US-Mexico Border

The death of nine Central American and Mexican migrants in a vehicle crash near Florence, Ariz. on Aug. 9 is only one of the latest grisly manifestations of the mounting toll in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. More than 5,000 bodies have been recovered since the mid-1990s, the "collateral damage" of a war on unauthorized migrants that has led them and their guides to take ever-greater risks to evade the intensifying boundary enforcement apparatus.

Restore Power to the People

Virginia just approved a new $1.8 billion coal-fired power plant to be built in Wise County. The final decision was made by the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board. Who are these "wise" people who believe that our commonwealth needs yet another source of greenhouse gasses, neurotoxin mercury, plus 60 other hazardous air pollutants to contaminate our air, water and soil?

$2M Settlement Is a Cop Wakeup Call

Around 8 a.m. on the morning of April 7, 2003, Sarah Kunstler, daughter of legendary civil rights lawyer Bill Kunstler, joined a small protest in Manhattan against the fledgling Iraq war.

"I was in law school at Columbia at the time," Sarah Kunstler recalled Tuesday. "I had my knapsack and books with me, and I thought the demonstration was early enough so I'd be able to get to class on time."

She thought wrong.

America in the World: Silenced by Bush

 "The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity."

--André Gide

One of the legacies of Bush's tragically flawed foreign policy is that it has managed to silence Americans who believe that the United States -- for all its faults -- should condemn aggression in other parts of the world.