All Views Articles for 2008-archive-2008
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Larry Beinhart Keep Religion Away From the Ballot The Constitution, Article VI, Section 3, states "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." James Madison, the primary author... Read more |
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Peter Dreier, John Atlas The GOP's Blame-ACORN Game An increasingly desperate Republican attack machine has recently identified the community organizing group ACORN as Public Enemy Number One. Among ACORN's alleged crimes, perhaps the most serious is... Read more |
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Matthew Rothschild University of Nebraska-Lincoln Disinvites William Ayers After Death Threats, Financial Pressure William Ayers can't catch a break. After the McCain campaign has dragged his name through the mud and tried to attach it to Obama's, Ayers is finding himself shunned even on a university campus... Read more |
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Patricia Schroeder Amendment 48 Goes Too Far My very first job after graduating from Harvard Law School was as a part-time lawyer for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains in Denver. I was working on cases related to expanding access to... Read more |
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Sarah Wildman Preying on the Right With her eyes on 2012, Sarah Palin is aiming at the same evangelical base that carried George Bush to the White House Read more |
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Richard Hopson ACORN Fights Back In the midst of the predictable partisan exaggerations, distortions and occasional lies that close election races generate, ACORN has become the focus of an extraordinary amount of attention over our... Read more |
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Haroon Siddiqui Disturbing Complicity on Torture The headlines didn't match the stories on the report of the Frank Iacobucci inquiry into the alleged torture of three Arab Canadians abroad. The former judge of the Supreme Court of Canada concluded... Read more |
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Sarah van Gelder How to Stop the Rigging of Election '08 Don't be fooled by all the accusations about ACORN . The real voting scandal is the voter suppression methods that likely swayed election results in 2000 and 2004, and are in process again as you... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Bipartisanship and Threats of War Toward Iran Two former Senators -- conservative Democrat Chuck Robb and conservative Republican Dan Coats (that's what "bipartisan" means) -- have a jointly authored Op-Ed in The Washington Post today decreeing... Read more |
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Patricia J. Williams Predatory Scapegoating Some three weeks before New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was forced to resign his office in disgrace (sex! scandal! floozies!), he published an op-ed in the Washington Post. Titled "Predatory Lenders... Read more |
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Chuck Williams Never a Better Time for Health-Care Reform Moderator Tom Brokaw's question in the second presidential debate crystallized the crux of the health-care reform discussion: Is health care in America a privilege, a right or a responsibility? The... Read more |
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George Hunsinger Iraq: Did the Surge Work? Violence, Alexander Solzenitsyn once observed, finds refuge in falsehood, even as falsehood is supported by violence. "Anyone who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose... Read more |
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Allan Lichtman What Voter Fraud? This year the Republicans are rolling out one of their oldest and most misleading charges: that Democrats and their supporters are planning to flood the polls with illegal voters. Although the GOP... Read more |
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Robert Jensen and Pat Youngblood Taking Politics Seriously: Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections We have nothing against voting. We plan to vote in the upcoming election. Some of our best friends are voters. But we also believe that we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that the most... Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler Redesigning Democracy Two seconds of radio news was enough -- suddenly the 2008 presidential campaign collapsed around me in an unrecognizable heap of consumer politics as I ate breakfast. "Redistribution of the wealth,"... Read more |
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Amy Goodman Change Big Donors Can Believe In Change is at hand. Barring a repeat of the protracted Florida recount of 2000, there will be a victor soon in the U.S. presidential election. With the economic crisis, change is something in your... Read more |
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Andy Worthington Guantánamo's Bleak Farce After dropping war crimes charges against five prisoners today, the US's use of military commissions is unraveling Read more |
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Marianne Mollmann Abortion, Reproductive Health: Not Just Rights to Me Throughout a long election campaign, the future of abortion rights and the right to choose has remained a silent concern for many women and men as the higher-profile issues of the economy and the... Read more |
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Joyce Marcel McCain and Palin: To Their Eternal Shame Outrage is a columnist's best friend. When you're working up a good head of steam, words pour out in self-righteous anger and columns almost write themselves. This is not one of those columns. It... Read more |
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Sen. Bernie Sanders Now Is the Time These are frightening and unusual times. The world of finance and the overall economy are both in perilous condition . Almost every day a new crisis erupts. The stock market has plunged dramatically... Read more |
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Kathleen Taylor Don't Ignore Constitution During Election Season America is in the midst of an election season, nearing an Election Day with what likely will be far-reaching consequences. Public interest is extraordinarily high, and candidates are debating many... Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt F Is for Failure The Bush Doctrine in Ruins Read more |
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Robert Scheer The Battle for Obama’s Economic Soul The battle for Barack Obama's economic soul is on in earnest, and it has nothing to do with the "European socialism" that John McCain attempted to use as an epithet against him. The Republican... Read more |
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Chris Hayes How I Committed Voter Fraud This past week, I committed voter fraud. Or, I should say, "voter fraud" inside the same sarcastic scare quotes that John McCain deployed when he recently invoked that old tricky word "health," as in... Read more |
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Dean Baker Any Pay Cuts on Wall Street Yet? Congress assured us that there would be no more big paychecks for incompetent Wall Street bankers when they passed their bailout bill. They told us that the tough pay provisions would put an end to... Read more |
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Linda Burnham The Great Unmasking Capitalism in crisis is a sight to behold. Most of the time the system seems to hum along quite nicely. Oh, maybe a passel of people loses their jobs when some big-headed suit at the top decides to... Read more |
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Robert B. Reich No Company Should Be Too Big to Fail According to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the biggest Wall Street banks now getting money from the government are just "too big to fail." Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke uses a different euphemism: he... Read more |
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Norman Solomon In the Battle for a Progressive Congress At this point, many journalists are speculating about the number of congressional seats that Republicans will lose on Election Day. But a boost in the size of the Democratic majority might not count... Read more |
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Demitrious C. Sinor No Child Left Behind Fails Us All The last question in the final presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama had to do with what moderator Bob Schieffer suggested might be the most important issue of all: education. Read more |
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Linda McQuaig Maybe the Rich Are the Problem John McCain clearly thought he'd found a winning issue last week when Barack Obama was caught on tape defending his plan to tax the rich and "spread the wealth around." Gotcha! For days, the... Read more |
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George Monbiot If an Hour Is a Long Time in Politics, We Must Start Thinking in Centuries From banking to the climate, the wreckage of short-termism is stark, and the need for a 100-year committee is plain Read more |
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H.D.S. Greenway The Grand Illusion of American Power The other day I went to hear my favorite soldier-scholar, Andrew Bacevich, give a talk at Boston University, where he teaches. A retired colonel and Vietnam veteran, Bacevich's new book is called "... Read more |
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Jeff Biggers Speak Now Against Bush's Great Coal Giveaway With our attention focused on the Wall Street crisis and the presidential election, the George W. Bush administration took an extraordinary step last Friday to give coal companies a couple of... Read more |
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Seth Kantner That Sarah Palin Is One Unreal Alaskan I'm sitting on my bearskin chair beside the woodstove, in Kotzebue Alaska, fifty miles above the Arctic Circle, while outside the ocean begins to freeze over. Inside I have about 49 things piling up... Read more |
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Robert Buzzanco Spreading the Wealth Around? Why Not? According to the Republican candidate for U.S. president, John McCain, whose family wealth exceeds $120 million, and who owns eight houses and thirteen cars, Democrat Barack Obama poses a grave... Read more |
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Bill Gallagher McCain Gambles Rove's Way, Making Vile Bet "We declare this race well and truly over and congratulate all those who backed Obama." --Paddy Power, Ireland's biggest bookmaker, Oct. 16th. While John McCain keeps rolling gutter balls and his... Read more |
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Sean Gonsalves Brother, Can You Spare the Time? During his first re-election campaign, FDR came to Bedford, Massachusetts in 1936, stumping for four more years of New Deal . In the crowd was a young girl with an envelope. She tried to make her way... Read more |
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Carol V. Hamilton Let's Call the Whole Thing Off! Why the Blue States Should Secede Read more |
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Sarah Anderson, Sam Pizzigati Rewrite Bailout Rules on CEO Pay Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has executed two fairly slick about-faces since Congress passed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout two weeks ago. The first makes eminent sense. The second should... Read more |
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Nell Levin Mountaintop Removal Destroys Wildlife and the Way of Life for Local Residents Imagine earth-shaking explosions, rock and debris flying through the air, and mountains blasted to smithereens by explosions 100 times more powerful than those that blew up the federal building in... Read more |
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Leonard Pitts Jr. Fear Has Profoundly Changed Us Meanwhile, back at the War on Terror . . . You remember the War on Terror, don't you? It was in all the papers. Back before presidential politics sucked the air from the room and your 401(k) shrank... Read more |
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Johann Hari Don't Kill the Planet in the Name of Saving the Economy The collision of the credit crunch and the climate crunch could be a boon Read more |
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Stephen Zunes The Republicans Embrace the Cootie Effect Back in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, simply being friends with someone suspected of being a Communist could ruin your career. It became known as "guilt by association." During this... Read more |
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Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman Critical US Supreme Court Ruling Against Rovian GOP Vote Meddling May Prove Temporary A critical US Supreme Court decision against GOP voter meddling in Ohio may prove temporary. Read more |
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John F. Borowski Corporate Curriculum: Teaching the 'Science of Death' For more than a decade, writing for numerous newspapers, magazines and websites, I have attempted to cast a light on "industrial strength" science curriculum: "that curriculum of the corporation, by... Read more |
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Bill Quigley Swedish Peace Activists Repeatedly Break Into Weapon Factories Using hammers and bolt cutters, peace activists repeatedly broke into weapon plants and damaged weapons in Sweden. Activists from the Swedish group OFOG/Avrusta admitted damaging twenty high... Read more |
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Jeanmarie Bishop, Jeanmarie Simpson The Revolution Has Arrived The current global economic crisis has rekindled the wannabe hippy spirit I carried as a kid in junior high in the early 1970s. My generation admired our flower child elders. We played guitar and... Read more |
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Nick Turse The Rising Body Count on Main Street: The Human Fallout from the Financial Crisis On October 4, 2008, in the Porter Ranch section of Los Angeles, Karthik Rajaram, beset by financial troubles, shot his wife, mother-in-law, and three sons before turning the gun on himself. In one of... Read more |
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James Carroll Courage, Wisdom in an Age of Fear When friends have confided their fears for Barack Obama's physical safety, I have winced and wanted to shush them. It may be a neurosis peculiar to me, but I have felt that even to speak of the... Read more |
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Chris Hedges The Idiots Who Rule America Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and... Read more |
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Michael Winship A Mighty Hoax from ACORN Grows ACORN and election fraud. Hang on. As soon as I can get the alligator that crawled out of my toilet back into the New York City sewers where it belongs, I can turn my attention to this very important... Read more |
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Nir Rosen How We Lost The War We Won A journey into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan Read more |
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Linda Milazzo How Spreading The Wealth Rescued A Mother Thanks To CODEPINK and ANP As corporate media reports obsessively on Joe The Plumber, who misrepresented himself to Barack Obama saying he'd be victimized by Obama's tax plan, Americans more in need than Joe are being... Read more |
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Jeff Goodell Change Everything Now One of the nation's most mainstream environmentalists says it's time to get a lot more radical. An interview with Gus Speth. Read more |
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Mark Danner The Radical Face of Obama A Fateful Election Read more |
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Jessica Mosby Soldiers of Conscience: Opposing the Iraq War "There are two types of bayonet fighters, the quick and the dead. Which type are you?" This is what a boot camp drill sergeant yells at new recruits, who then reply in unison - "the quick!" During... Read more |
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Eric Margolis Maybe US Needs Yard Sale Russia could buy back Alaska or perhaps Canada could pick up sunny Florida Read more |
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Jay Bookman GOP Terrified of American Voters John McCain's statement in the debate that ACORN and the liberals are "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history ... maybe destroying the fabric of democracy" is... Read more |
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Olga Bonfiglio Will Catholics Move On or Will They Cave to Same-O, Same-O? It might be wishful thinking to believe that the 67.5 million Catholics of this nation (about 24.5 percent of the population) will influence this year's presidential election in Barack Obama's favor... Read more |
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Jim Rucquoi Reading The Election Thumbing Pages With A Restless Geezer Read more |
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Aziz Huq Use It or Lose It? How to Manage an Imperial Decline Read more |
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Tim Dickinson Make-Believe Maverick A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty Read more |
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Joan Hamilton The Electronic Activist Can digital organizing work in the real world? Read more |
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Bill McKibben Green Fantasia Thomas Friedman is the prime leading indicator of the conventional wisdom, always positioned just far enough ahead of the curve to give readers the sense that they're in-the-know, but never far... Read more |
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Joesph Stiglitz Guided by An Invisible Hand Make no mistake: we are witnessing the biggest crisis since the Great Depression. In some ways it is worse than the Great Depression, because the latter did not involve these very complicated... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli Lucky Sarah Palin Ever since I could remember I'd wished I'd been lucky enough to be alive. . . when something big was going on-like the crucifixion. And suddenly I realized I was. - Ben Shahn, On Painting a gouache:... Read more |
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Ray McGovern Attack on Iran Off the Table? On Sept. 23, the neo-conservative chiefs of the Washington Post's editorial page mourned, in a tone much like what one hears on the death of a close friend, that "a military strike by the United... Read more |
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David Michael Green Payback’s A Bitch With apologies to Churchill (who owed a few of his own): Never have so many been so wrong about so much. There are few things you'd less rather be right now than a conservative/regressive, and that... Read more |
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Michael Sears GOP Strategy: Voter Suppression In the 2000 Presidential election, reporter Greg Palast, author of "The Best Democracy Money can Buy," broke the story of Florida's illegal voter purges, in which Florida Secretary of State Katherine... Read more |
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Philippe Sands The Torture Time Bomb The Bush administration's approval of the abuse of detainees is a toxic legacy for the next US president Read more |
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Michael T. Klare The Crisis and the Environment Given the magnitude and scope of the current economic crisis, the world will no doubt experience a significant economic downturn - of what degree and duration, no one can say - profoundly affecting... Read more |
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Brattleboro Reformer Editorial Diverse Voices, Ideas Missing From Debates In the past few weeks, we've seen three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate. The TV audiences have been sizable, but these four debates have provided little sizzle and even less... Read more |
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Amy Goodman Who Gets to Vote? The 2008 presidential election may see the highest participation in U.S. history. Voter-registration organizations and local election boards have been overwhelmed by enthusiastic people eager to vote... Read more |
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Richard Kim Waiting for the Barbarians In case you haven't heard, there's a guy running for president named Barack Hussein Osama Nobama. This Nobama was born outside America and secretly schooled in Islamic terrorism at a Wahhabi madrassa... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Poor John McCain: Forced Against His Honor to Run an Ugly Campaign Time's Ana Marie Cox, in a Bloggingheads discussion with Ann Althouse, does an excellent job of expressing what is still, amazingly enough, the prevailing media view of John McCain: namely, that this... Read more |
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Suzanne Smith McCain Said It, Why Don't We? John McCain said it. Right out loud in the third debate. "Obviously, we had to take Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait or it would've threatened the Middle Eastern oil supply." The first gulf war was about... Read more |
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Dan Brook Courage, Cowardice, and John McCain 'Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life', by John McCain Read more |
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Ralph Nader Closing the Courthouse Door "Real change comes from the bottom up, not the top down. The genius of the American system has been to let that change flow upward, from neighborhoods to cities to states and then to the federal... Read more |
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Philippe Sands 10 Years of the Pinochet Principle The arrest warrant served on the Chilean head of state in 1998 changed history and has implications for the US government now Read more |
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Peter Dyer US Journalists and War-Crime Guilt October 16 is an anniversary that should hold considerable interest for American journalists who have written in support of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" - the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Sixty-two... Read more |
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Michele Swenson McCain Works Against Access to Contraception Does He Consider It Murder? Read more |
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Ellen Goodman Endangering Choice Do you remember the New Yorker cartoon showing a couple in their living room reading the newspaper? "Gays and lesbians getting married," reports the husband to his wife, whereupon he adds, "haven't... Read more |
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Johann Hari Scribbled in the Margins: The Character of the Next President It is the aggression that McCain loves in his Teddy, not the reform Read more |
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Glenn W. Smith Why the Media Can't See the Trees for the ACORNs John McCain and other Republicans making criminal allegations against the community-organizing group ACORN know exactly what they're doing. They're using alarmist allegations of "voter fraud" to fire... Read more |
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Andy Worthington The Trail of Torture That the White House authorised 'waterboarding' is disturbing. But that no one in mainstream US politics seems to care is worse Read more |
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Ira Chernus Lefties for Obama, Round Two I've written a lot of columns for Commondreams over the years. But I don't recall any that got as much response as a piece I posted recently urging lefties to support Obama. Many of the responses... Read more |
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David Benjamin The Little Lie, and How It Grew GREAT NECK, N.Y. - Last week, Gayle Quinnell, a septuagenarian reactionary from Shakopee, Minnesota, confessed - on TV - to G.O.P. candidate John McCain that she fears Democratic candidate Barack... Read more |
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Ann Wright 'In a Way, It’s Surprising That There Aren’t More Bodies Piling up at Military Bases All Over This Nation' Military Town Newspaper Challenges US Military on Murder of Military Women Read more |
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Dave Lindorff Why I’m Voting for Obama Okay, I was going to vote for Ralph Nader this November 4. It was an easy decision. I live in Pennsylvania, which is now, according to all the polls, reliably in the Obama column, with the Democratic... Read more |
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Juan Cole The Great Reagan Pyramid Scheme Comes Crashing Down The Republican Party that Nixon invented melded the moneyed classes of the Northeast with the white evangelicals of the South. This odd couple went on to simultaneously steal from and oppress the... Read more |
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Phyllis Bennis As Its Economic Power Wanes, Does the US Lean Harder on the Military? The current economic crisis holds enormous dangers, even beyond its direct threat to jobs, homes, savings, and the well-being of millions of ordinary people in the U.S. The challenge will be, as ever... Read more |
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Keith Olbermann McCain, Suspend Your Campaign The GOP ticket is inciting supporters to violence against Barack Obama Read more |
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Mike Davis Can Obama See the Grand Canyon? On Presidential Blindness and Economic Catastrophe Read more |
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John Nichols How to Fix the Debates: Better Moderators The last of the Lincoln-Douglas debates took place 150 years ago today in the politically volatile Mississippi River town of Alton, Illinois. As Stephen Douglas, the former Illinois Supreme Court... Read more |
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Matthew Rothschild Paulson, the Treasurer of Wall Street Is there anyone out there other than Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders who wonders about the conflict of interest that Henry Paulson has been displaying lately? It doesn't seem to... Read more |
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Mark Morford More Booze and Cake! Cruel recession got you down? Buck up, pal. Good news abounds! Read more |
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Pat LaMarche, Pat LaMarche Defining ‘Socialized’ Medicine I got an e-mail yesterday afternoon from a friend of mine who worked on my 2004 campaign for U.S. vice president. He was pretty disheartened with the way things have been going the last four years... Read more |
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Diane Santoriello An Open Letter to Cindy McCain From a Gold Star Mom I am really upset over your statement about how you felt about Sen. Obama's refusal to vote for war funding. Usually, I am loath to criticize any blue or gold star parent for their political views,... Read more |
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Nomi Prins Paulson's Plan B How do you stop a ship from sinking, and simultaneously rebuild it to prevent its future destruction? That was the question in the minds of the world's central bankers as they sat down over the... Read more |
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Robert Weissman Public Ownership -- But No Public Control t is an extraordinary time. On Friday, the Washington Post ran a front-page story titled, "The End of American Capitalism?" Today, the banner headline is, "U.S. Forces Nine Major Banks to Accept... Read more |