As Price of Grain Rises, Catfish Farms Dry Up (NY Times). The Bush administration has been pushing ethanol—fuel derived from grain rather than from crude oil—as one of its few Green initiatives. As with so many of it's other policies, this one is misguided in all regards: the ethanol process consumes far more than a gallon of oil for every gallon of "clean" fuel it produces, it's a dirty process, and it has contributed to the rise in the cost of grain, which in turn is causing huge problems in underdeveloped countries where even small increases in food prices lead to large increases in death and disease. The latest victim of this foolishness in the US economy is the impending demise of the southern catfish industry—not just the farms, which can't afford to feed their fish any more, but the packers, shippers and even the restaurants at the end of that particular food chain. (18 July 2008)

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Bruce Jackson: Showdown: US Marshals vs. the Indians at Buffalo Creek? (Artvoice). Last week federal Judge William M. Skretny voided the gambling ordinance the Indian Gaming Regulatory Commission issued for the Seneca Nation of Indians Buffalo casino project. That means the Buffalo casino is illegal. The Senecas said the judge's decision meant nothing to them and they would continue doing "business as usual." The Indian Gaming Regulatory Commission refused to respond to mail from the lawyer for the plaintiffs in the casino case. So now the plaintiffs have gone back to Judge Skretny, this time asking him to put teeth into his July 8 decision. They want him to tell the IGRC to shut down the Seneca's Buffalo gambling shed and, if IGRC doesn't act, they want him to have US marshals do the job. (17 July 2008)

Civic leader Paul J. Koessler dies at 71 (Buffalo News). As member and chairman of the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority under three governors, he'd tried mightily to get shared border management at the Peace Bridge, which would have significantly reduced the plaza and connecting road configurations on the American side. But he was no match for the Bush administration's paranoia and its ability to alienate Canadians, so the elegant plan, which had the support of all the local agencies connected with the bridge and Senators Schumer and Clinton, failed. Koessler had been ill for several weeks and last week told some friends the doctors were having a difficult time figuring out what was wrong. (17 July 2008)

Bush administration wanted torture advocate as Justice Department legal adviser (Washington Post). It turns out that former Attorney General John D. Ashcroft wasn't a total bum, at least not in comparison to the ethical retards at 1600 Pennsylvania. In 2003, Ashcroft had 5 candidates for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, but the White House rejected them all in favor of the legal courtier John Yoo, who, unlike the others, could be counted upon to provide rationales they liked for torture, expanded executive power and warrentless wiretapping. (17 July 2008)

Bargain hunting picks up as Southern California home values fall further (LA Times). Home prices in six Southern California counties dropped 30% in the past month and home sales are down 13.6%. If it weren't for flippers buying foreclosed houses cheap and quickly selling them for a small profit, the rate of sales would have dropped far more. (17 July 2008)

Nick Turse: The Pentagon Fuels Up (TomDispatch). The US Department of Defense is the world's largest energy consumer. It doesn't have to worry about $4 gasoline because Congress authorizes whatever energy bills it generates, and (along with the mainstream press) never looks at the sweetheart deals DoD has with energy companies now reaping obscene profits at our expense. (17 July 2008)

Robert L. Borosage: Wall Street Socialism (Huffington Post). The Bush administration is taking steps to bail out Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, privately owned profit-making corporations that got themselves into trouble while paying their own executives huge salaries (the chair of Freddie Mac made $18 million last year). So now the Bush administration, which has been willing to do nothing to help people aquire homes or go to college, is using taxpayer money to save these fiscally irresponsible greedyguts from themselves. They cash the checks and you'll pay for it. (17 July 2008)

Fannie, Freddie spent $200M to buy influence (Politico). Want to know why everybody in Washington jumped on the bail-out-Fanny-and-Freddy bandwagon? Maybe it's the $200 million the two organizations spent lobbying over the past decade. This tainted influence isn't going to end with the departure of the Bush gang: Fanny and Freddy have their hooks deep in both the McCain and Obama organizations. (17 July 2008)

Donn Esmonde: A swift look at 'tragedy' of casino ruling (Buffalo News). It is impossible to talk about how stupid Buffalo mayor Byron Brown and Erie County executive Chris Collins are about the Seneca-Buffalo casino (they both think it's a profit center for the community) without falling into name-calling, as we just did. In this piece on Judge William Skretny's ruling that the Seneca-Buffalo casino is illegal, Buffalo News columnist Donn Esmonde tries irony to make the same point. It won't help Brown or Collins—they're beyond redemption on this one. But it may help you the next time either of those guys comes up with something and says "Trust me." (July 16, 2008)

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Obama Remarks on Iraq and Afghanistan (NY Times). The prepared text of Obama's July 15 speech in Washington, after which John McCain, who cannot utter sentences like these let alone attend to thoughts those sentences represent, threw another of his fuzzy-wuzzy hissy-fits. "This must be the moment when we answer the call of history," Obama said. "For eight years, we have paid the price for a foreign policy that lectures without listening; that divides us from one another – and from the world – instead of calling us to a common purpose; that focuses on our tactics in fighting a war without end in Iraq instead of forging a new strategy to face down the true threats that we face. We cannot afford four more years of a strategy that is out of balance and out of step with this defining moment." To which McCain's responded that we need to send more troops to Iraq to "win the war." He learned nothing in that cockpit or that prison cell. (15 July 2008)

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Wilfred M. McClay: Burden of the Humanities (Wilson Quarterly). What are the humanities and what good are they? What price do you pay—and you do pay a price—if you can't answer those questions? (14 July 2008)

Misleading Information from the Battlefield: The Tillman and Lynch Episodes (US House of Representatives). The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's 51-page report on how the Bush administration lied about how Pat Tillman died and about how Jessica Lynch was captured and released. We've know about both hype campaigns for 4 years, which leads to two questions: Why did it take Congress four years to catch up with us? And what practical cosequences, if any, will follow on this new awareness of planned mendacity in the White House? (14 July 2008)

Uri Avnery: Why not? (Gush Shalom). Neither Israel nor the U.S. will start a war against Iran, says Irgun soldier-turned peace activist Uri Avnery. Why not? The Gulf of Hormuz. Iran could block it and the U.S. would be powerless to prevent it, and such a blockade would send oil far over $200 a barrel. "President Bush is about to end his career in disgrace. The same fate is waiting impatiently for Ehud Olmert. For politicians of this kind, it is easy to be tempted by a last adventure, a last chance for a decent place in history after all. All the same, I stick to my prognosis: it will not happen." Arnery is smart and he's usually right about things. But he assumes that Bush, althought incompetent, is rational and sane. Those might not be rational assumptions. (14 July 2008)

Tom Engelhardt: The Wedding Crashers (Tom Dispatch). There were no wedding crashers at the Bush family affair down on the ranch this May. If anyone had tried to crash the party the Secret Service and who knows whoall else would have vaporized him. Wedding parties in Bush country are safe and secure and everybody gets to go home alive. Not so in Afghanistan, where Bush's air warriors have slaughtered the participants and guests—largely women and children—in at least four different weddings, after which, each time, the military lied about who got killed and why they got killed. (13 July 2008)

Andrew J. Bacevich: Collateral Damage: According to Jane Mayer, the United States has succeeded in creating an American Gulag (Washington Post). A review of Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. Remember when George Bush was going around saying the reason Al Quaeda attacked the U.S. was because they didn't like "our way of life"? If he was right, it looks more and more like Al Quaeda was successful in that goal, and nobody was a more useful handmaiden than George W. Bush himself, the torturer-in-chief. "Since embarking upon its global war on terror, the United States has blatantly disregarded the Geneva Conventions. It has imprisoned suspects, including U.S. citizens, without charge, holding them indefinitely and denying them due process. It has created an American gulag in which thousands of detainees, including many innocent of any wrongdoing, have been subjected to ritual abuse and humiliation. It has delivered suspected terrorists into the hands of foreign torturers....Further, it has done all these things as a direct result of policy decisions made at the highest levels of government." (13 July 2008)

Rod Watson: Anti-casino ruling wise for a poor city (Buffalo News). The Buffalo News editorial page has consistently said 'Yeah, the casino is bad economics, it will be a drain on the city's economy, but it's a done deal so roll over and don't struggle and maybe it won't hurt so much going in' (almost exactly the same advice it gave with the ugly and dysfunctional Peace Bridge twin span 10 years ago). Buffalo News columnist Rod Watson on the other hand, consistently looks at complex local issues, does the math, and and reports on the facts he's found. In this column, Watson says Judge Skretny's decision that the Seneca Buffalo casino was illegal was not only right in law but good for Buffalo. How nice it would be if News's editorial writers spent as much time reading the paper's own columnists as they spend doing stenography for city hall and big business. (10 July 2008)

"I'd like to cut his nuts off" (Fox News). Yeah: Fox News and Bill O'Reilly on Buffalo Report. But everybody else is bleeping out what Jesse Jackson whispered about Barack Obama. Bill O'Reilly shows it twice, then says he's not going to speculate on his motivation or describe his comment in any negative way, then proceedes to do exactly that with two guests for 10 minutes. (10 July 2008)

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Bruce Jackson: The Casino Craps Out (Artvoice). "The small casino currently operated in downtown Buffalo by the Seneca Nation of Indians is an unlawful operation. The Senecas own the land and it benefits from and carries the special conditions regulating land that, in federal law, is 'Indian country.' But it is not the narrowly defined and strictly regulated kind of Indian country on which gambling can take place. The Senecas can build whatever they like there—hotels, theaters, shops, hospitals, schools, anything at all. They can even build a gambling joint. But they cannot legally permit anyone to gamble in it. So ruled US District Court Judge William M. Skretny, in a 122-page decision (127 pages with the front matter) rendered Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Buffalo." (9 July 2008)

Judge William M. Skretny: Decision and order in Citizens Against Casino Gambling et al v. Philip N. Hogen et al. (9 July 2008). The learned and elegant 127-page decision saying the Seneca gambling operation in Buffalo is illegal. Click here for a 5-page summary of the issues and conclusions. (9 July 2008)

McGovern: War heroism doesn't make a president (Boston.com). John McCain is claiming that his experience bombing North Vietnam and spending five years as a prisoner qualifies as a military expert and therefore likely to be a good commander-in-chief. Nonsense says 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, himself a WWII bomber pilot. As far as McGovern is concerned, retired General Wesley Clak had it right when he said, "I don't think riding in a fighter plan and getting shot down is qualification to be president." (9 July 2008)

Stewart Ain: A Pariah In Exile (The Jewish Week). Have you wondered what happened to historian Norman Finkelstein, the DePauw University professor whose career was destroyed by Harvard law professor and torture advocate Alan Dershowitz? (9 July 2008)

Judith Thurman: First Impressions (New Yorker). "What does the world's oldest art say about us?" (9 July 2008)

Senate Backs Wiretap Bill to Shield Phone Companies (NY Times). "More than two and a half years after the disclosure of President’s Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program set off a furious national debate, the Senate gave final approval on Wednesday afternoon to broadening the government’s spy powers and providing legal immunity for the phone companies that took part in the wiretapping program. The plan, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, marked one of Mr. Bush’s most hard-won legislative victories in a Democratic-led Congress where he has had little success of late. Both houses, controlled by Democrats, approved what amounted to the biggest restructuring of federal surveillance law in 30 years, giving the government more latitude to eavesdrop on targets abroad and at home who are suspected of links to terrorism.... After long opposing the idea of immunity for the phone companies in the wiretapping operation, [Barack Obama] voted for the plan on Wednesday." (9 July 2008)

Clinton says no, Obama says yes (U.S. Senate). The 69-28-3 rollcall vote on the bill amending FISA to protect telephone companies doing illegal surveillance on behalf of government agencies. Clinton, no longer a candidate, stood up and said no; Obama, courting the middle, sat down and said yes.The other nays included Biden, Boxer, Dodd, Durbin, Feingold, Harkin, Kerry, Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Reid and Schumer. The ayes included Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Dole, Feinstein, Grassley, Hutchinson, Inhofe, Lugar, Rockefeller, Specter and Sununu. Not voting were Kennedy, Sessions and McCain. (9 July 2008)

"How Many of You Expect to Die?" (NY Times). Given your druthers, which would you pick as a way to go: cancer, chronic heart failure or emphysema? If you chose none of the above are you opting for frailty and dementia? Is "the reward for living past age 85 and avoiding all the killer diseases...that you get to rot to death instead?" (8 July 2008)

Where the Hell is Matt? (YouTube). Just watch it. You'll feel better. You may even move. And if you need an explanation to explain why you feel better than you did slightly under 5 minutes ago, click here. (8 July 2008)

Frank Rich: Wall-E for President (NY Times). Maybe Wall-E would make a better president than Obama or McCain. At least he's consistent. The dumbing-down of the Obama campaign has been dizzying: "For all the hyperventilation on the left about Mr. Obama’s rush to the center — some warranted, some not — what’s more alarming is how small-bore and defensive his campaign has become. Whether he’s reaffirming his long-held belief in faith-based programs or fudging his core convictions about government snooping, he is drifting away from the leadership he promised and into the focus-group-tested calculation patented by Mark Penn in his disastrous campaign for Hillary Clinton. Mr. Obama’s Wednesday address calling for renewed public service is unassailable in principle but inadequate to the daunting size of the serious American crisis at hand. The speech could have been — and has been — delivered by any candidate of either party in any election year since 1960." His supporters say he's just saying this crap to get those undecided voters in the middle and sane Republicans who know John McCain is an anachronism. Some folks recall that line from Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night: "We are what we pretend to be so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." (7 July 2008)

Secret deal may open prime forestland in Montana for residences (Boston Globe). The Bush administration enters its last six months as confident as ever in the invulnerability of its corruption. The latest is a massive conversion of hundreds of thousands of acres of public mountain forestland to residential subdivisions. It comes out of a secret deal between the former timber lobbyist Bush put in charge of the US Forest Service and Plum Creek Timber Co., a former logging company that is now a real estate investment trust. (5 July 2008)

Joe Conason: What John McCain didn't learn in Vietnam (Salon.com). "Whenever McCain tries to explain what lessons he drew from the Vietnam tragedy, he cites a simple doctrine. We should not send troops into foreign conflict unless there is a vital American interest at stake, and once we go to war, we must deploy sufficient force to win. It is difficult to see how McCain has applied that logic to Iraq, which we invaded on a fraudulent excuse and where the definition of 'winning' remains murky five years later. But it is easy to understand why a man who thinks that we should have escalated the Vietnam War after 10 futile years would talk about occupying Iraq for a century. And it is hard to imagine why voters would elect a president who still believes that 60,000 American dead and more than 300,000 wounded in Vietnam were not quite enough." (5 July 2008)

Hunter S. Thompson on 9/11 (ESPN). Millions of words about the consequences of the September 11, 2001, attacks were publlished in the weeks and months following the event, but none were so on the money as this column by Hunter S. Thompson published the following day. Here's a sample: "The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country....We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.... We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once.... This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why...." (We found the link to this essay in Andrew O'Hehir's review of Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Alex Gibney's new film about Thompson, in Salon.com.) (4 July 2008)

Jonny Bowden; The 10 Best Foods You Aren't Eating (Men's Health). Some things you need to know about beets, cabbage, pomegranite juice, purslane, goji berries, dried plums, pumpkin seeds, guava, Swiss chard and cinnamon. This appeared about a year ago; a shorter version turned up on the NY Times "The Well" blog a few days ago. (4 July 2008)

Miscounting Obama's Tax Votes (Newsweek). The McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee claim Obama "voted 94 times for higher taxes." They're lying. (3 July 2008)

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Chris Satullo: A not-so-glorious Fourth (Philadelphia Enquirer). Put the fireworks away. This year, Americans aren't entitled to light the fuses. We're the nation that tortures. The nation that locks people away for years and years with no charges filed and no chance for a legal hearing. We're the nation that kidnaps people in foreign lands and brings them, hooded and in chains, to an offshore gulag. Yeah: Bush and Cheney ordered it. But we let them get away with it. Our congressional representatives gave them the money to do it. "So put out no flags. Sing no patriotic hymns. We deserve no Fourth this yer. Let us atone, in quiet and humility. Let us spnd the day truly studying the examples of our Founders. May we earn a new birth of courage before our nationa's birthday next rolls around." (3 July 2008)

Paul Roberts: The End of Food (WordforWord). "The skyrocketing costs of food and fuel are forcing Americans to make tough choices, and around the world, developing countries are facing starvation. Bestselling author Paul Roberts argues in his new book 'The End of Food,' that our global food economy is careening toward disaster. In a June 18th speech at the Commonwealth Club of California, Roberts discussed his book and how problems like food scarcity, food borne illness, obesity and malnutrition are all rooted in the industrial mass-production of food." (3 July 2008)

Jay Parini: Why Poetry Matters (Chronicle of Higher Education). In the 19th century, the audience for poetry was huge; in the 21st century, outside of schools, it's nearly nonexistent. Too bad for the folks filling their ears with the endless stream of digital noise. Poetry is not only something fit for study; it's also useful, practical and, for some people, necessary. Wallace Stevens said poetry was "a violence from within that protects us from a violence without. It is the imagination pushing back against the pressure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do with our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of poetry, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives." (3 July 2008)

Lying LA narcs (LA Times). The two Los Angeles narcotics agents told a perfect story on the stand about how the defendant dropped a package of cocaine that they picked up. The only problem was a surveillance video camera they didn't know about until the defense produced it at trial. It showed the defendant dropping nothing at all, the cops poking around for 20 minutes, and one of the cops saying to the other, "Be creative in your writing." The judge cut the prisoner loose and now the creative cops are themselves objects of scrutiny. (3 July 2008)

Joseph L. Galloway: Gen. Taguba knew scandal went to the top (McClatchy). The Defense Department appointed two-star general Anthony Taguba to investigate the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. He had a free hand but for one thing: he could not investigate any uniformed or civilian official whose rank was higher than his own. Which meant he was officially prohibited from calling to account the people he knew ordered the torture program. How convenient. (3 July 2008)

E.J. Dionne Jr: The Court vs. Voters (Washington Post). The immediate damage a bad president inflicts is easy enough to see: people die in needless wars, the economy is wrecked, the country is scorned by other nations for its selfishness and ruthlessness. But even after a bad president and his supporters are voted out he and they can still defy the wishes of the electorate and the actions of the new government if they've placed enough activists of their persuasion on the appellate courts and the Supreme Court. Which is exactly what Bush I (Clarence Thomas) and Bush II have done to us. (3 July 2008)

Gail Sheehy: Hillaryland at War (Vanity Fair). "After 17 months of running for president as a man, and four days of internalizing the loss of a dream, Hillary Clinton conceded on June 7, in the finest speech of her career. She rose up in a grandiose, classically columned hall worthy of Caesar, the National Building Museum, and spoke, finally, as who she really is—a woman of full humanity. Yes, ruthless, nakedly aggressive, hawkish, and often tone-deaf—qualities common among those who dare to compete at this level. But she was also staggeringly smart, empathetic, unsparing of her energy and commitment, and gallant in her optimism as she waded through the sludge of sexist and media bias." (2 July 2008)

Decades Later, Still Asking: Would I Pull That Switch? (NY Times). It's been 50 years since psychologist Stanley Milgram's obedience studies showed that ordinary people would, when told, administer what they thought were terribly painful electrical shocks to other ordinary people. Some people wouldn't torture beyond a certain point; others did as they were told no matter how painful they thought the results. Milgram's studies have important lessons for people trying to make sense of Abu Ghraib and other places where American soldiers obey orders to torture helpless prisoners. (1 July 2008)

Deep Down, We Can't Fool Even Ourselves (NY Times). Here's a corollary to Milgram's work: how is it people can say (and believe) a certain behavior is wrong but, when the situation arises in which that behavior is an option they choose it over the behavior they previously said was right or just? This isn't abstract: Obama said he was a "longtime advocate" of public financing of election campaigns, yet became the first presidential candidate to eschew public financing in favor of private fundraising; in 2001 John McCain said he could not "in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate" but he is now campaigning in support of exactly that kind of tax cut. Now doubt many Germans in the Hitlertime would have said they were against murder, torture and theft, yet.... Psychologists have been studying this behavior, which they call "moral hypocrisy." It turns out that when you do it, your gut is often far more ethical than your brain. (1 July 2008)

Evidence Faulted in Detainee Case (NY Times). The only evidence the Bush administration was able to come up with for having held a Chinese Muslim for more than six years in the Guantanamo Gulag was that vague accusations against him appeared in three secret government documents. The appelate court derisively compared that to a line from Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark": "I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true." The court then told the government that it either had to come up with something that wasn't patently absurd or let the guy go. Defense lawyers notes that many other prisoners in the Gulag were being held on similarly lame non-evidence. Military lawyers said this decision showed why civilian judges shouldn't be allowed to review military tribunals. The Supreme Court, happily, disagrees. (30 June 2008)

Canadian loses U.S. appeal in Syrian torture case (Reuters). Canadian citizen Maher Arar was taken off a plane in New York by Federal officials and shipped to Syria, where he was tortured for a year, then finally let go when the torturers decided they'd been sent the wrong guy. Arar received compensation from the Canadian government because the RCMP were complicit in the kidnapping. His lawsuit against the U.S. has just been thrown out by a U.S. court on the grounds that since he was never accepted into the U.S. he has no standing to sue the U.S. for what it did to him. Humpty-Dumpty rules! (30 June 2008)

Amid Policy Disputes, Qaeda Grows in Pakistan (NY Times). The Bush Administration opened Iraq to Al Qaeda, where it was never previously able to get a foothold. It succeeded in driving it out of Afghanistan—but it was only a move in the base camp, not a defeat. Al Qaeda is as strong as ever, perhaps stronger, in large part because of incompetence and squabbling within the Bush administration itself. (30 June 2008)

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Seymour M. Hersh: Preparing the Battlefield: The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran (New Yorker). If you've been breathing a little easier because Bush and Cheney will be out of the White House soon, making the world a less parlous and safer place—forget it. This is no time to let the anxiety go nappies. Bush and Cheney have stepped up their covert actions in Iran, they're purging and making end-runs around senior military officials who won't suppress their knowledge of the situation in Iran and the Middle East in favor of Cheney's passion for another war. These guys are as inept and dangerous as the day they invaded Iraq—which they still insist was the right thing to have done. And John McCain agrees with them about Iraq and seems to be agreeing with them about Iran. Keep in mind that White House press officers have frequently called Seymour Hersh all kinds of nasty names—but not one has ever caught him wrong in fact or conjecture. (30 June 2008)

Wesley Clark points out the obvious about John McCain (CNN). Retired U.S. General Wesley Clark said publicly the one thing all the politicians and all the news commentators have been terrified to say about John McCain: "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," he told "Face the Nation" moderator Bob Schieffer. The McCain campaign immediately went into high-hissy-fit mode, calling on Obama to retract Clark's statement. How you do retract something you didn't say that is, um, true anyway? (30 June 2008)

Mary Beard: Isn't It Funny? (New York Review of Books). How do you know when something is funny? Many scholars in many fields have tried to figure out the mechanism and process, like the authors of the two interesting books reviewed in Beard's article. We may not agree on the way humor works, but we all know what to do when it works well. "Like sex and eating, [laughter] is an absolutely universal human phenomenon, and at the same time something that is highly culturally and chronologically specific. Every human society in the world laughs, and whatever their race or language, people make almost exactly the same sound in doing so. Not only that, but they represent the sound of laughter in almost exactly the same alphabetic or phonetic form." (30 June 2008)

Apologizing to the Maoris for shameful history of injustice (The Independent). The New Zealand govenment is returning to Maoris nearly half a million acres the British had stolen from them in the mid-19th century. It is the latest in a series of restorations of rights and property to the indigenous tribes. "Maori are among the country's poorest citizens, with lower education and income levels than pakeha, or white New Zealanders. They endure poor health, substandard housing and high rates of unemployment, as well as making up more than half of the prison population." (30 June 2008)

Peter Dreier: What is a Housing "Crisis"? (Rooflines). The recent decline in value of housing hasn't made home ownership easier for anyone but the rich, because that real estate decline has been accompanied by a rise in prices and an overall decline in purchasing power. The earnings of the top 5% of wage earners have soared under the Bush administration (from $324,427 to $385,805 in 2006), but fewer and fewer Americans can afford to buy a home, pay college tuition, keep up health insurance, take an annual vacation or save an adequate amount for retirement. The problem isn't housing. Housing prices are just a symptom. (30 June 2008)

An Attack That Came Out of the Ether (Washington Post). An anonymous chain e-mail falsely claiming that Barack Obama is concealing a radical Islamic background has been careening around the Internet for a year. In the five months from November 2007 to March 2008 the number of voters who believe that lie has risen from 8 to 13%. The common wisdom is that there is no way to trace such lies back to their source; it's not like the Swift Boat Veterans who told lies about John Kerry—those guys had a mailing a address. Danielle Allen, a scholar at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study decided to see if the common wisdom was right or if the people taking refuge in it just weren't trying hard enough. (30 June 2008)

Nat Hentoff: The 'W.' Stands for 'War Criminal' (Village Voice). On June 6, in a letter all but ignored by the national press, 56 Democrats in the House of Representatives asked the US Attorney General to appoint a special counsel "to determine whether actions taken by the President, his Cabinet, and other Administration officials are in violation of the War Crimes Act...and other U.S. and international laws." It's too late to impeach these guys and Congress doesn't have the stomach for going after an impeachment based on substance anyway (a blowjob, okay, but starting a war under false pretenses, kidnapping, torture, etc.—no way). Words like "war crimes" are never uttered by senior Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, but House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers Jr. isn't afraid to give things a name, and he isn't likely to let this one go. Stay tuned. (29 June 2008)

Emma Brockes: Love at First Touch (NY Times). A review of A Romance on Three Legs; Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano, Katie Hafner's new book on the synergistic relationship between epically temperamental Bach genius Glenn Gould, Steinway CD 318 and Verne Edquist, the blind piano tuner who kept the romance between GG and 318 harmonious, at least until a dolt dropped the piano in 1971. Along the way, Hafner details everything a music lover needs to know to understand what goes into making a piano worthy of the art of someone like Glenn Gould. There's also an interesting, perceptive review of Hafner's book by Charles Matthews in the San Francisco Chronicle. And there is a preternaturally vapid review by Mary Kunz Goldman in the Buffalo News. Kunz Goldman says she is so expert on pianos she "could probably build a Steinway myself in my basement," so she skimmed over the technical parts. She missed Verne Edquist entirely, so she also missed one of the puns in the book's title, Gould's romance with CD 318 was possible only as long as Edquist was on hand. Only two anecdotes in the book seem to have caught and kept her attention: Gould's overreaction to a pat on the back by a Steinway employee and (her favorite part of the book) his affair with Cornelia Foss, which the book touches on only in passing and which Kunz Goldman suggests should have been the subject of the book. (Kunz Goldman is the classical music critic of the Buffalo News and also writes a weekly column for the News called "The Buzz" in which she goes on about herself in the third person plural and uses lots and lots of exclamation points.) (29 June 2008)

Pentagon Fights EPA on Pollution Cleanup (Washington Post). The Pentagon is not only the nation's largest consumer of fossil fuels. It is also the nation's biggest polluter. It is presently stonewalling the EPA, which is demanding that the Pentagon clean up massive pollution on many of its bases, 12 of them on the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country. (29 June 2008)

Caroline H. Dworin: Ladders of Memory (NY Times). Dickens in the Grey Lady: who'd a thought? You'll probably never patronize this shop, but after reading this article you'll be glad it's there. And you'll learn who needed a longer bookshelf ladder track, Morley Safer or George W. Bush. And you'll know where to find the "orphanage of broken ladders" should you ever be moved to adopt. (29 June 2008)

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John J. LaFalce: Indian casino gambling is controversial, especially in Congress. Two Michigan Democrats had a battle-royal in Congress over casinos this week. John Dingell wants a casino in Port Huron and he tried an end run around the law with a measure that would bypass the required review by the Department of the Interior; John Conyers opposed the bill, both because he opposes gambling in general and because he doesn't want another casino in his district, which includes Detroit. The House backed Conyers (and the law), defeating the proposed bypass by a vote of 121 to 298 (Brian Higgins, of course, voted to bypass the review). This has implications for Buffalo because it restates Congress's strong opposition to Indian gambling operations created outside the very specific law Congress passed regarding what kind of Indian land could have casinos and what kind of Indian land could not host Indian casinos. The Seneca Nation of Indians has been claiming that the Seneca Settlement Act of 1990 was a land claim, hence its land purchase in Buffalo fits the definition of casino-eligible property. Former Congressman LaFalce, who was co-author of that Act, says the reverse is true: the Act was not a land claim, Congress never intended it to create gambling land, and the Buffalo operation is illegal. "To say that the 1990 law permits casino gambling in Buffalo" he writes, "would be a pernicious distortion of the law." The lawsuit against the Buffalo casino is now in federal court and a decision endorsing or contradicting LaFalce's position may be rendered within the next few weeks. (16 June 2008)

District of Columbia et al. v. Heller (U.S. Supreme Court). In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court this week said the District of Columbia's handgun law violated the Second Amendment to the Constitution and was therefore invalid. Here is the majority decision by Scalia (joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito) and the dissents by Stevens (joined by Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer) and Breyer (joined by Stevens, Souter and Ginsberg). (26 June 2008)

Linda Greenhouse: Landmark Ruling Enshrines Right to Own Guns (NY Times). "Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion, his most important in his 22 years on the court, said that the justices were 'aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country' and 'take seriously' the arguments in favor of prohibiting handgun ownership. 'But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table,' he said, adding, 'It is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.'" (26 June 2008)

Atul Gawande: The Itch (New Yorker). One prominent neuropsychologist estimates that visual perception is 90% memory and less than 10% sensory nerve signals. How can that be? The itch, the common itch, the itch you scratch whether something is causing it or not, may help lead to the answer. (26 June 2008)

James Holstun: Nonie Darwish and the al-Bureij massacre (Electronic Intifada). Nonie Darwish is a star on the StandWithUs academic lecture circuit. (StandWithUs is a very well-funded group based in Los Angeles that sponsors pro-Israel lectures and hate-mail attacks on people who deal with Palestinian issues in an academic context or who question Israeli politics or provide a forum for people who ask such questions. They went after James Holstun because he teaches a course in Palestinian literature.) Darwish's father was murdered by an Israeli letter bomb, an event for which she holds Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's second president, responsible, which suggests something about her logical style. She has a new book that purports to explain why she rejected her Egyptian Muslim background and became an anti-Muslim American Evangelical Christian. Holstun puts it all in some perspective, a skill Darwish seems to lack and StandWithUs seems to abhor. (26 June 2008)

Is anybody paying attention to McClatchy's powerful Guantamamo expose? (Boston Phoenix). "The subject matter of 'Guantanamo: Beyond the Law' wasn’t new, exactly — the abuse of prisoners, the questionable criteria used to put them behind bars, and the dubious legal framework crafted to justify their ongoing legal limbo have all been covered elsewhere. But the depth of McClatchy’s treatment was unprecedented, and its conclusions were startling. For one thing, most prisoners at Guantanamo had 'no intelligence value in the war on terror.' For another, by radicalizing formerly apolitical detainees, Guantanamo may actually have made Americans less safe, not more." It was an extremely well-researched series that tore the lid off the Bush administration's pointless Cuban gulag. So they made and proved their point. Does anyone care? (26 June 2008)

Olmsted Conservancy proposes $428 million system restoration (Buffalo News). One key piece of this generally laudable and ambitious plan to restore much of Frederick Law Olmsted's Buffalo park and parkway system is the construction of an 1870 wood frame building with a lot of porches. ( 26 June 2008)

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Obama holds 12-point lead over McCain (LA Times). According to an LA Times/Bloomberg poll done on Thursday, Barack Obama is now 12 percentage points ahead of John McCain in a two-man race (49% to 37%) and leads by15% if Spoiler candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian Bob Barr (the congressman who looked like Porky Pig during the impeachment hearings) are in the race. That's because Nader and Barr would draw mostly independent voters who would otherwise vote for McCain. There is little data supporting CNN's prediction that Clinton voters would defect to McCain. Obama is far ahead among women, black voters and other minorities and he and McCain are even at 39% among white voters. McCain gets the call on being better at handling terrorism by $49% to 32%, the implications of which are scary in all regards. (25 June 2008)

Sworn to virginity and living as men in Albania (International Herald Tribune). There are species of tropical fish in which one of the females in a group or school transforms herself into a male if there are no males available for fertilizing. What if you need a male not to fertilize, but just because every household needs a boss and only males can be the kind of boss households need? The Albanians figured it out. (25 June 2008)

Nick Turse: The Pentagon's Stealth Corporations (TomDispatch). The public figure on the current Pentagon budget is $541 billion; it's actually more than $1 trillion a year. At least $34 billion of that, and probably a great deal more, is the "black budget," items for which the Pentagon is almost perfectly unaccountable because almost nobody outside the Pentagon know where or for what the money is being spent. You know about the big Pentagon suppliers like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, BP, Shell (who do you think pays for the huge amount of fuel used by all those 8 mpg Humvees and aircraft—you), General Dynamics and Hallliburton subsidiary KBR. Here are five small fry you probably don't know about: mere billion-dollars babies. (25 June 2008)

Locking up immigrants (Latina Lista). The US has the world's largest prison population, with China and the Russian Federation coming in second and third. More prisoners are in the Federal Prison System for drugs than anything else, followed by those in for weapons, explosive and arson. Third is immigration. So the two groups most punished by the US government are people connected with a victimless crime from which the criminal element would be removed instantly by decriminalization of use, and people who want to live in peace and freedom, work for a living and who admire our way of life enough to risk jail time to take part in it. (25 June 2008)

Byron Brown fires Richard Tobe (Buffalo News). Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has fired Richard Tobe, head of the city's Department of Economic Development, Permits and Inspections. Tobe is widely regarded as city hall's epitome of competence, honesty, intelligence and incurruptability, any and probably all of which could be the reason or reasons Brown and his deputy mayor Steve Casey couldn't abide his presence on the second floor of City Hall. Brown's action has been widely criticized. The only public figure applauding it was developer Carl Paladino, the man who claims he was more responsible than any other person for bringing the Seneca gambling joint to Buffalo, which should put his idea of useful citizenship in some perspecive. (24 June 2008)

Geoff Kelly: The Rape of Europa (Artvoice). When the Nazis weren't busy slaughtering and dominating they were busy stealing. During WWII, they ripped off one fifth of Europe's fine art. Even as the Thousand Year Reich was being blown up around him, Hitler was planning a huge musem of his stolen art in his home town in Austria. Many European curators and art collectors, well aware of Hitler's and Goering's collecting technique, were brilliantly creative in the ways they hid their treasures from the predators. It's all documented in this fascinating documentary (now playing in Buffalo at the North Park). (24 June 2008)

Report Sees Illegal Hiring Practices at Justice Dept. (NY Times). This will no doubt shock you: the Bush administration has, for the past six years, consistently discriminated against qualified Justice Department job candidates with liberal leanings and have instead consistently favored candidates who passed various conservative litmus tests. Both Ashcroft and Gonzales worked mightily to keep out of Justice anyone who was a Democrat, was a member of Greenpeace or the American Constitution Society. Affiliates of the very conservative Federalist Society, on the other hand, were kissed on the lips and shown to their desks. This is an evil gift that keeps on giving, since many of these are career jobs, so these people chosen for their ideological rather than legal qualifications will remain on the job long after Bush & Co. are back home counting their money. (24 June 2008)

George Carlin, 71, Irreverent Standup Comedian, Is Dead (NY Times). You can hear every one of his "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" any day of the week on HBO, Showtime or any other of the cable channels catering to grownups, but rarely will you hear them parsed with such delight. (23 June 2008)

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Documentaries lose box office muscle (LA Times). Documentaries are tanking in the theaters. Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure, released April 25, hasn't grossed $250,000 yet, and neither have Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains or My Kid Could Paint That. Even Taxi to the Dark Side, which won this year's Oscar for best feature documentary, made just $275,000. The Incredible Hulk, which opened June 13, has grossed $55.4 million and Kung Fu Panda, which opened June 6, has grossed $117.3 million. Reality tv shows, which are, by and large, silly-putty, are also doing very well. Documentaries are really about reality, and, without the star power of a Michael Moore or Al Gore, that just doesn't sell well these days. Which may help explain the mess we're in. (23 June 2008)

Adam Mirsch: Patrick J. Buchanan's Know-Nothing History (New York Sun). The basic premise of the fruitcake xenophobe Pat Buchanan's new book seems to be that if Winston Churchill hadn't gone to war with Hitler, Hitler would have destroyed Russia and then would have left everyone else in peace and we all would have been far better off. For Buchanan, the real villain of World War II was Winston Churchill, who was the only political leader in Europe at the time who put up a real fight against the Nazi war machine. He bases this upside-down/inside-out theory on epidermal readings of several popular histories and no original research whatsoever. Buchanan's book is so bad that even the war-loving snitch Christopher Hitchens has trashed it at length. He is a regular political commentator on MSNBC, The McLaughlin Group and Hannity and Colmes, which tells you something about 24/7 news. Or should. (23 June 2008)

Glenn Greenwald: Obama's support for the FISA compromise (Salon.com). Why did Obama vote for the awful Cheney/Bush FISA bill? Is he afraid John McCain will say mean things about him? He promised he'd do exactly the opposite. (22 June 2008)

Michael T. Klare: Anatomy of a Price Surge (The Nation). The current price surge came as no surprise to anyone in the oil industry or any of the Federal agencies connected with any aspect of energy supply and use. The factors have been known for a along time: declining supply, increasing speculation, ruinous policies of the Bush Administration, and a continuing military effort that has brough the US no increase in security but which every day burns up as much oil as will ever be delivered by ANWR and all the other environmentally ruinous offshore plans that have long been so attractive to the White House and which, this week, also became attractive to John McCain (22 June 2008)

Tom Engelhardt: No Blood for.... er... um.... (TomDispatch.com). Oil: it was always about the oil. You knew that, I knew that, your information-challenged cousin knew that. Bush denied it, but we all knew he was lying. So now, six months before a new president occupies the Oval Office, the big oil companies are making their move, claiming the spoils of war. After all, what did they wreck the US economy for and kill and mutilate all those American kids for if not for oil? And aren't the current oil prices great—for them? What a fine time to be given a no-bid piece of the action. What a country. (22 June 2008)

Scalia had it wrong on Gitmo villains (Seton Hall Law). One of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's reasons for denying prisoners locked up for years in Guantanamo protection under the law in Boumediene v. Bush was that 30 detainees who had been released subsequently returned to the battlefield. Not only was Scalia relying on lousy logic (nowhere does the law authorize witholding legal rights from X because Y went off and did something he shouldn't have without the collaboration, consent or knowledge of X). He was also relying on fiction, rather than fact. It's been more than a year since the legend of the 30 battlefield veterans of Guantanamo was revealed as a fabrication. (22 June 2008)

At Roadside Vigil, an Iconic Voice of Protest (NY Times). He's 89 and his voice is pretty much gone, but neither of those facts has slowed Pete Seeger down one bit. He's still speaking up for the right, calling out the wrong, and picking up litter, piece by piece. (22 June 2008)

Joan Walsh: Another flip-flop on the Straightalk Express (Salon.com). John McCain has flip-flopped on tax breaks for the rich, immigration policy and, this week, offshore drilling. Consistency isn't his strong suit. But his Dubya imitation is dynamite. (22 June 2008)

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Robert Oscar Lopez: Brownout in Black Camelot: Obama and Latino voters. Latinos overwhelmingly voted for Clinton over Obama in the primary. "Hillary is the whitest of white women yet she still looks like one of us. Michelle and Barack do not." The pundits say Democratts will vote Democrat, Republicants will vote Republican, so the election will be decided by the people in the middle, the independents. They're missing the huge voter block that may really determine which way the election goes. Neither the pundits nor the liberals ever understood why Latinos loved Hillary so. If they don't figure it out by election day McCain may walk away with it after all. (19 June 2008).

Tom McCarthy: The Visitor (Rolling Stone). Richard Jenkins (the father in "Six Feet Under") stars in a briliant film film about identity, love, understanding, bureaucracy and drumming by Tom McCarthy (who directed The Station Agent and played the creepy Jayson Blair clone in "The Wire"). There's not one trick shot or phony moment in it. It's the best antidote to Lou Dobbs you'll find anywhere. It's about something America forgot, and shouldn't have. (19 June 2008)

An Unlikely Antagonist in the Detainees' Corner (NY Times). Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler is the Bush administration's worst nightmare in its Guantanamo gulag: a military lawyer who is a born-again Christian, a devout Republican and (the part that screws it all up) a firm believer in the Constitution, the rule of law, and the idea of justice. (19 June 2008)

Dana Milbank: Abu Ghraib? Doesn't Ring a Bell (Washington Post). Oh dear, maybe some folks DO deserve waterboarding. William 'Jim' Haynes II, the Pentagon's former top lawyer and one of the people responsible for the US becoming a nation with an official policy of torture, got oss "no fewer than 2 don't recalls, 22 don't remembers, 16 don't knows, and various other protestations of memory loss." It was the perhaps the best stonewalling of a Senate committee since Alberto Gonzales "forgot everything he ever knew about anything." (19 June 2008)

General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes (McClatchy). Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba (ret) wrote, "After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, thereis no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account." The White House, for once, had no comment. Click here for the Taguba story on "Democracy Now!" (19 March 2008)

Guantanamo: Beyond the Law (McClatchy). The explosive five-part series on the Bush administration's detention system found that "the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of the legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Gauntanamo Bay, Cuba, into a school for jihad." (19 March 2008)

Phyllis Bennis: U.S. Steps Up Eforts to Prolong Iraq Occupation (Insitute for Policy Studies). If the Bush administration has its way, its disastrous policy in the Middle East will survive defeat of Bush-lite John McCain in November. The "administration is escalating its efforts to make permanent its occupation of Iraq through imposing a 'bilateral' agreement on the Iraqi government, but Iraqi opposition is growing. If those efforts fail, the U.S. and Iraq may try to pressure the United Nations to extend its current mandate 'legalizing' the U.S. occupation." (19 March 2008)

U. Michigan Press Severs Ties to Controversial Publisher (Inside Higher Ed). The University of Michigan has succumbed to pressure from pro-Israel groups and severed its relationship with Pluto, which publishes Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Ariel Dorfman, Joel Kovel and others. Representatives for the press said they didn't terminate what had been, until the publication of Joel Kovel's Overcoming Zionism, a very satisfactory relationship because of Zionist political pressure; it was mere coincidence that the pressure and the reevaluation occurred at the same time. (19 March 2008)

Al Franken's time: Can a comedian conquer the US senate? (Independent). Al Franken is one of the funniest guys in America, but his senatorial campaign in Minnesota against neanderthal Norm Coleman is no joke. And he's got a chance: not only is he infinitely smarter and more entertaining and politically sane than Coleman, but Minnesota is the state that not very long ago elected former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura as governor. They'll try anything. (19 June 2008)

Katrina Vanden Heuvel: One Simple Question (Nation). In an invitation to a town meeting Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont) asked his constituents "What does the decline of the middle class mean to you personally?" And in his e-newsletter he asked, "Do yhou have a story to tell about how gas prices are affecting you?" The first question produced 800 responses, the second 1200. They told of brutal struggles, lives destroyed, a losing battle against despair and the winter cold. Saunders points out that the current military budget of $515 billion is stuffed with waste, fraud and abuse. (19 June 2008)

Cyd Charisse, 86 (LA Times). Born Tula Ellice Finklea in Amarillo, Texas, she moved with her family to Hollywood and became the best and sexiest dancer Hollywood ever had. Her first film role was a still-breathtaking ballet with Gene Kelly in "Singin' in the Rain" (1952). She later teamed with Fred Astaire in "The Band Wagon" (1953), "Silk Stockings" (1957) and other films. She said that as a child "I was this tiny, frail little girl, I needed to build up muscle." O, she did. (19 June 2008)

Mark Benjamin: A timeline to Bush government torture (Salon.com). "The US doesn't torture," said George W. Bush. He was lying, as we all knew. Here are the steps by which the Bush administration imposed its torture program on the military. (18 June 2008)

How to nap (Boston Globe). Naps—like sex—are good for most people and they are something most people can do, but—also like sex—you're likely to get more out of them if you take the trouble to learn what you're doing. Here's a primer. (16 June 2008)

Peter J. Boyer: One Angry Man: Is Keith Olbermann changing TV news? (New Yorker). He reveres Ed Murrow and, at the end of his show, imitates him. Would Murrow applaud or call the looney bin to cart him away? (16 June 2008)

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Bruce Jackson: Where I was. Why was Buffalo Report dormant for six weeks? Your editor ODed on atmospheric bloviatiion. He got over it. (16 June 2008)

Art in a Time of Terror (Democracy Now!). Buffalo artist Steve Kurtz tells Amy Goodman how he was terrorized by the U.S. Justice Department after the death of his wife in 2004. (16 June 2004)

Women voters lining up behind Obama (LA Times). Remember all those reports on CNN and Fox the night of the NC primary that a huge portion of the women who voted for Clinton were going to vote for McCain in the fall election? None of the current polls show anything like that. Most voters in the Democratic primary are, it turns out, rational rather than petulant. The latest polls have Obama leading McCain among women 52% to 33% (Gore led Bush by 7% among women and Kerry 1%). (16 June 2008)

Obama speaks to campaign staff after winning nomination (YouTube). A good friend sent this 13-minute video along with a note saying, "In this little speech, thanking his staff, I felt closer to Obama than viewing I-don't-know-how-many of his previous appearances." (16 June 2008)

Obama's father's day speech urges black fathers to be more engaged in raising their children (Huffington Post). "Barack Obama and his family celebrated Father's Day by attending Sunday services at the Apostolic Church of God on Chicago's South Side, where Obama gave a speech highly critical of absent black fathers. He urged them to remember their filial responsibilities and be more engaged in raising their children. Obama reminded the congregation of his own experience growing up without a father, saying that if he could be anything in life, he would be a good father to his daughters." (16 June 2008)

David Kirkpatrick: In '74 Thesis, the Seeds of McCain's War Views (NY Times). "About a year after his release from a North Vietnamese prison camp, Cmdr. Josn S. McCain III sat down to address one of the most vexing questions confronting his fellow prisoners: Why did some choose to collaborate with the North Vietnamse? Mr. McCain blamed American politics." Which is to say, too many people at home were asking too many questions about the wisdom of the war, and the warriors had been insufficiently brainwashed before being sent overseas to wage that war. (15 June 2008)

John S. McCain, Commander, USN: The Code of Conduct and the Vietnam Prisoners of War (National War College). John McCain's 1974 paper ("sanitized" August 2000) on the necessity for POWs to understand and support government policy and on the deleterious effects of anti-war movements. Read this and you'll get some insight into why he still insists the US should have held out for total victory in Vietnam and what might be going through his head should he ever get in position to have wars of his own. (15 June 2008)

Walter Shapiro: Tim Russert, one of the good guys (Salon.com) "Washington may be the smallest place on the globe with pretensions to being the center of the universe. That is why there are ties that cross party and profession that link so many Washingtonians, based on career arcs, shared friendships, neighborhoods, children's soccer games and the vagaries of life in a confined geographic area. These personal bonds, combined with the emotional intimacy of a TV screen, help explain the devastating sense of loss that surrounds Friday's death. In a political world filled with spin and sin, hypocrisy and deceit, ego and entitlement, Tim Russert was one of the good guys. For months and maybe years, it will be hard -- so hard -- to adjust to Sunday morning coming down." (15 June 2008)

What Happened to Russert: The science of sudden cardiac arrest (Newsweek.com). He was under treatment for diabetes and coronary artery disease and he recently did well on a stress test. What went wrong? (15 June 2008)

Anne C. Martindell, Late Bloomer, Lawmaker and Diplomat, Is Dead at 93 (NY Times). She was born in the Plaza Hotel and for half her life the men in her family worked very hard at making sure she played by their rules. Feminism and the 1960s changed everything. Her life started anew in her 50s. She was deeply involved in politics, became a New Jersey state senator in the 1970s, then ambassador to New Zealand, where, after two marriages and at the age of 65 she met "the love of her life": Sir Mountford Tosswill Woolaston. She went back to Smith college (from which her judge father had forcibly removed her six decades earlier when he learned she wanted to be a lawyer) in 1999 at the age of 85. The day she received her B.A. she also received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. She considered going to grad school but wrote a memoir ("Never Too Late") instead. The book's theme, she said, was carpe diem. Good advice. (15 June 2008)

Patricia Maloney: Tim Russert and the Buffalo Diaspora. A longtime member of Buffalo's Capitol contingent writes about being a Buffalonian from afar and how Tim Russert never lost touch with home. (14 June 2008)

Mark Liebovich: Tiny Town: Washington After a Fall (NY Times). Tim Russert was "comfortable in his shoes." (14 June 2008)

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Keith Olbermann: McCain should know better: context and decency elude the GOP presidential nominee (MSNBC). John McCain says it isn't important when the troops come home from Iraq. Keith Olberman says McCain is mad, a terminally-befuddled resident of an Escher drawing where delusion reigns supreme. A lot of people got angry with Olbermann when he went savaged Hillary Clinton for nine over-the-top minutes at the end of the Democratic primary. He redeems himself with this eleven minute analysis of and commentary on McCain's lunatic comments on the Iraq War. (14 June 2008).

Tim Russert, 58, NBC's Face of Politics, Dies (NY Times).

Tim Russert, 58 (MSNBC). The Friday evening MSNBC and NBC obit for Buffalo's Tim Russert (13 June 2008).

Joseph Solman, Painter, Is Dead at 99 (NY Times). Joseph Solmon's son, Paul, had a lovely piece on his late father on the June 13 Newshour which didn't receive the attention it deserved because of the sudden death that afternoon of Tim Russert. Here's a link to a transcript of Paul Solman's essay. It contains a link to the audio track. If the video—which shows many of Solman's wonderful paintings—comes online, we'll update. (13 June 2008)

Jonathan Hafetz: Supreme Court Deals Death Blow to Gitmo (Nation). The Supreme Court announced that the president cannot create offshore prisons where kidnapped individuals are held forever with no recourse to any of the legal protections guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito disagreed. (13 June 2008)

I'm Voting Republican (YouTube). Finally we know why they voted for Bush and Cheney and why they love McCain so. (13 June 2008)

Bill Moyers at NCMR 2008 (YouTube). Sick of Wolf Blitzer expanding a one-line story into three days of hype and flashing lights? Sick of Fox telling one lie after another? Sick of network news that never takes anything head on because it might get nasty? A lot of us are, which is why a whole world of alternative media has flourished in the last several years. Independent weekly newspapers provide the insightful journalism mainstream papers avoid because they won't spend the time or offend the advertisers. Complex digital mags with big staffs and one-person blogs fill the web with information you'll find nowhere else (yeah: some of it is junk; you've got to think for yourself on the web, just as when you read a newpaper or watch tv). Several thousand of the folks involved in this information revolution met last week in Minneapolis. One of the high points was this inspiring speech by the great Bill Moyers. The recording is out of sync, a small price to pay for the great insight and passion. It's 40 minutes long, and worth every minute of the time you spend listening to it. (13June 2008)

Fight the Smears (BarackObama.com). It's "snopes.com" for the bedazzled voter. Lies about John Kerry's war record worked very well for the Republicans four years ago so they're cranking up the same machinery, this time with one lie after another about Barack and Michelle Obama, all of them faithfully caressed and repeated again and again on Fox and by that famous drug abuser Rush Limbaugh. Arguing a lie just puts it out there twice, but not arguing it lets it stand, which is why it is such a good (albeit rotten) political dirty-trick. The Obama campaign has responded with a web site refuting the Fox/Limbaugh smears. When some idiot tells you that Barack is a Muslim and Michelle puts down "whitey" from the pulpit, give them the url. It won't change their minds—people who believe Fox and Limbaugh do not have minds susceptible to data—but at least you won't get a sore throat telling them what morons and dupes they are. (12 June 2008)

Elizabeth Drew: The Jim Webb Story (New York Review of Books). John McCain keeps touting himself as an expert on military matters because he flew an airplane and spent five years in jail. He keeps saying that we could have won in Vietnam if we'd just stuck it out, which suggests what he might do in Iraq if given the chance. There are, fortunately for us, saner and far more intelligent and thoughtful vets in the Senate. Jim Webb is one of them. He's a novelist, screenwriter, Annapolis grad, Marine rifle platoon commander, winner of the Navy Cross, Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. He was secretary of the navy in the Reagan administration and he taught literature at the Naval Academy. He's everything that Bush-wannabee John McCain is not. (12 June 2008)

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? department (NY Times). The chief judge of the federal appeals court in California, who is currently presiding over an obscenity trial, has been posting photos and videos of sexually aroused animals naked women painted to look like cows, and images of masturbation and public sex on a web site maintained by his son. The judge said (a) the site also contains lots of other stuff—jokes, family photos, judicial opinions—so he didn't see what was the big deal, and (b) he didn't know it was publicly accessible. (12 June 2008)

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Henry Louis Gates: The Science of Racism (The Root). Last year, Nobel laureate James Watson uttered the unutterable: the co-discoverer of DNA said, "he believed that nature had created a primal distinction in intelligence and innate mental capacity between blacks and whites, which no amount of intervention could ever change." The resulting firestorm cost him his job as the head of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Here are Gates' comments on a conversation he had with Watson about the statement and the consequent mess, along with links to a transcript of part of that conversation. (12 June 2008)

GOP claim about Chinese oil drilling off Cuba is untrue (McClatchy). Remember how Dick Cheney lied about Saddam's WMD and continued lying about it long after everybody knew there weren't any WMD in Iraq? He's at it again. To justify the Bush administration's long-frustrated plan to give oil companies the right to rape ANWR, he's now claiming that China is drilling for oil in Cuba. It worked last time, right? And when people found out he'd been lying what did they do? They relected him and his Bush. Maybe this time they'll elect their puppet. (12 June 2008)

7.2 million criminals—and that's not counting the unindicted members of the present administration (Washington Post). Well over seven million Americans are in prison, on probation or on parole, most of them for drug-connected offenses. Corrections is more recession-proof than education and health care; it's right up there with the military for an untouchable, ever-growing budget. Feel safer? Think the country runs better now that we're pouring more money into two pointless wars, one abroad, another at home, than ever before? Did you hear a single one of the presidential wannabes mention this lunacy? Did you hear a single one of the 24/7 news primadonnas raise it as an issue worth some attention? (12 June 2008)

Louis Bayard: Kiss my ass (Salon.com). "For years America has desperately tried to outlaw sodomy and other sex acts like fellatio and cunninlingus. What are we so scared of?" William N. Eskridge Jr., in "Dishonorable Passions," has tried to make sense of it all, even the poor souls convicted in the 1800s of "bestiality with barnyard animals and the occasional ferret." It's about time somebody made sense of this silliness. Some years back I knew a guy who really could have used this book. He was doing 20 in a Texas prison when I met him. I asked him for what and he said "anvil sodomy." "What's that?" I asked him. I envisioned something creepy in a blacksmith shop. "Damned if I know," he said, "they never did talk much about it when they sent me down here." (11 June 2008)

Tern colony forces U-turn on big plans for 'Forth Riviera' (The Scotsman). Developers who were all set to begin a huge development project on Edinburgh's waterfront found themselves back at the drawing boards after Scottish National Heritage told them the proposed site is only 200 meters from the home of 5% of Britain's tern population. (11 June 2008)

Camile Paglia: Obama's best veep choice (Salon.com). No, not Hillary. Not after all that and not with all that baggage. But how about....? (12 June 2008)

McCain's tin ear (Independent). The McCain campaign is desperate for a campaign anthem. Every place they go, they hit sour notes: they tried to get Mellencamp's "Pink Houses" (did they ever check the lyrics?) but the Cougar said no way. Then they tried for the Rocky theme but couldn't get those rights either. They tried Abba's "Take a Chance on Me" but Abba found out about it and put and end to that. Their latest attempt is Chuck Berry's "Johnny B Goode." As soon as Berry heard about it he issued a statement endorsing Obama. (12 June 2008)

Bush administration wants 58 permanent US bases in Iraq (McClatchy). The "pull-out", apparently, wouldn't apply to them. The Iraqis aren't happy about what is more and more looking like McCain's hundred-year occupation. (12 June 2008)

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Bruce Jackson: Who shrank the Peace Bridge? (Artvoice). "How a bird-brained notion has put us in the weeds again." (1 May 2008)

Geoff Kelly: Don't Surrender the Front (Artvoice). For the past 80 years, The Front, the crown jewel of Frederick Law Olmsted's magnificent park and parkway system in Buffalo, has been mutilated by public works developers and all but abandoned by city officials. The plaza part of the Peace Bridge expansion project gives the community a chance to rehabilitate some of what has been lost or to let the abominations continue. It's not at all clear yet which way things will go. (1 May 2008).

Rod Watson: Forget race when talking of competence (Buffalo News). Buffalo developer Carl Paladino has spent a small fortune driving African Americans from offices in city government. That never stopped the sweetheart deals and largesse he enjoyed from city officials. But his recent racist attack on Buffalo schools head James Williams may finally have been too much even for the yes-men at City Hall. (1 May 2008)

How George Steiner was wilted by grammar (Guardian). In case you ever wondered how devoted to language George Steiner really is: in a chapter on multilingual sex-talk in his new book, he recalls the time he was distracted "in, as it were, mid-flow" when the lover used a "tricky subjunctive pluperfect." (1 May 2008)

Edward McClelland: So long, Canada (Salon.com). How the Bush administration turned a good neighbor into a foreign country. (1 May 2008).

Philipp Sands: The Green Light (Vanity Fair). "As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, and a prized Guantánamo detainee wouldn’t talk, the Bush administration’s highest-ranking lawyers argued for extreme interrogation techniques, circumventing international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the army’s own Field Manual. The attorneys would even fly to Guantánamo to ratchet up the pressure—then blame abuses on the military. Philippe Sands follows the torture trail, and holds out the possibility of war crimes charges." (1 May 2008)

Former Guananamo prosecutor says trials tainted (Reuters). "The former chief prosecutor fo the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals testified on Monday that the tribunals were tainted by political interference and evidence obtained through prisoner abuse. ...[He] said political appointees and higher-ranking officers pushed prosecuors to file charges before trial rules were even written." (1 May 2008)

Rev. Jeremiah Wright speech to the National Press Club (Chicago Tribune). The cable newstalk shows have had a four-day orgy around sound-bites from Rev. Jeremiah's National Press Club remarks. Did they get the right four-second clips? He's a transcript of his entire speech so you can make up your own mind. (1 May 2008)

Frank Rich: How McCain Lost in Pennsylvania (NY Times). The pundits are carrying on as if John McCain is way ahead in the fall election. They're just running their mouths because they don't have anything else to do and they've got all that airtime to fill. McCain doesn't stand a chance of taking Pennsylvania in November, and once he's on a stage debating with Obama it isn't likely he'll captivate many of many independents (who are mostly leaning Democratic) or Republicans who don't want a war-idiot president. Absent some unlikely revelation about corruption or Spitzerism, the only way the Democrats will lose, says Rich, is if the Clinton forces get vindictive and undermine Obama rather than working for him. (27 April 2008)

Is the Marine less dead if the Pentagon banishes camera from the funeral? (Washington Post). Lt. Col. Billy Hall's family wanted the press at Hall's funeral in Arlington. No way, said the Pentagon. Do that and people might start thinking there are families connected to those names and numbers of GI's killed in Iraq. (25 April 2008)

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U.S.: the convict society (NY Times). With 5% of the world's population, the US has almost 25% of the world's convicts. The reason: prison time for offenses other countries don't punish with prison and sentences longer than just about everybody for everything. Punishment advocates point to falling crime rates and say the ever-expanding prison society accomplished that. They remain silent on neighboring Canada's falling prison population and falling crime rate. Prisons are silent welfare for rural America, so politicians love them: they provide secure jobs for rural areas and increase those areas' census numbers, getting them disproporation amounts of state and federal aid. (23 April 2008)

Glenn Greenwald; Media's refusal to address the NYT's 'military analyst' story continues (Salon.com). Last Saturday the New York Times ran a devastating 7000-word story about the way the Pentagon has gotten war shills on regular and cable news shows as experts and consultants. ABS, NBC, CBS, CNN and all the others are equally guilty: they've given Bush's shills free airtime, just as if they were valid news sources. How have the networks responded to this revelation of professional and ethical failure? The same way they've responded to nearly every other revelation of hype, lying, manipulation, deception and corruption in Bush's wars: silence. If the news doesn't get spoken of on the news, it's not news, right? (23 April 2008)

Clinton Outduels Obama in Primary (NY Times). If you listened to Hillary Clinton's victory speech last night you might have thought her pulling a 5% victory of Barack Obama out of a 20% lead a few weeks ago was an overwhelming confirmation of her candidacy and ever more racist, fear-mongering and saber rattling campaign style (recent speeches, e.g., have featured Louis Farrakhan, Osama bin Laden, and a threat to destroy Iran entirely). (23 April 2008)

The Low Road to Victory (NY Times). The New York Times editorial page, which endorse Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, seems to be having second thoughts.

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Michael Moore: My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote)... (MichaelMoore.com). "Over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name 'Farrakhan' out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the 'F' word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the 'church bulletin' once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin! (22 April 2008)

David Barstow: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand (NY Times). The Pentagon uses torture and drugs to screw up the minds of the prisoners at Guantanamo, some of whom are guilty of nothing other than being tortured and drugged at Guantanamo. For you, the Pentagon has another mind-altering technique: retired colonels and generals, endlessly reiterating propaganda points on television talk shows, pretending merely to be expressing their opinions or reporting facts. (22 April 2008)

Joshua Holland: Jimmy Carter Was Right to Meet with Hamas (AlterNet). The Idiot Right is busy attacking Jimmy Carter this week because he keeps insisting that talking with pepople is better than shooting them or blowing them up. "Carter's crime was to sit-down with leaders of Hamas last week to explore the possibility of waging peace in the Middle East. For many Israel-hawks, it wasn't a first offense; Carter is guilty of viewing the Palestinians as human beings and for condemning human rights abuses on both sides of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. 'Any side that kills innocent people is guilty of terrorism,' he told an audience at Cairo's American University after his sit-down with members of Hamas." (22 April 2008)

Torture Victim's Records Lost at Guantánamo, Admits Camp General (CommonDreams). It is unlikely that any Americans will ever be tried as war criminals—that's a fate reserved for officials in countries that are occupied after they've lost a war. But, hey, you never know, which is perhaps why the Pentagon has been disappearing ever more physical evidence of its methodical abuse of prisoners of war in its offshore detention camp in Cuba. (22 April 2008)

Uri Avnery: The Lion and the Gazelle (Gush Shalom). Last week was Passover. Does it matter, asks Uri Avnery (onetime Irgun fighter, longtime Israeli journalist and peace activist), that the Exodus from Egypt never took place? (22 April 2008)

White House delay on ship speed limit endangers whales (Independent). Why is Dick Cheney blocking legislation to protect the right whale, a mammal in danger of extinction? (22 April 2008)

ABC's Debate Debacle (FAIR). Were George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson auditioning for Fox News? It took them 50 minutes to get to the first question of substance in the April 16 Clinton-Obama debate, and even those questions were slanted, stupid or distractions. (22 April 2008)

Hendrik Hertzberg: Bitter Patter (New Yorker). "Last Wednesday’s two-hour televised smackdown in Philadelphia between the two remaining Democratic candidates for President, which might have been billed as the Élite Treat v. the Boilermaker Belle, turned into something worse—something akin to a federal crime. Call it the case of the Walt Disney Company v. People of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (and of the United States, for that matter). Seldom has a large corporation so heedlessly inflicted so much civic damage in such a short space of time. (22 April 2008)

Garry Wills: Two Speeches on Race (New York Review). Abraham Lincoln at the Cooper Union in New York on February 27, 1860, and Barack Obama at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008. The two men, and the two speeches, have a great deal in common. (15 April 2008)

Barbara Koeppel: Clinton's Experience: Fact and Fancy (Consortium News). Hillary Clinton claims she's the candidate of experience? What experience, exactly? Certainly not landing under sniper fire in Bosnia or brokering the Northern Ireland peace deal. Then there's her support of NAFTA (which she currently denies), her refusal to consider a single payer health system, her long membership on the board of union-busting WalMart. And, the fact that Barack Obama has been an elected official longer than she has. (15 April 2008)

ACLU queries Harvard's police (Boston Globe). Why did a Harvard police undercover officer take photographs of protesters at a rally in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip? Are they working for the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force? If so, why? (15 April 2008)

Area C strikes fear into the heart of Palestinians as home are destroyed (Guardian). In the confiscated Palestinian land designated as "Area C," 18,472 housing units were built for the squatters in Israeli settlements, but only 91 housing permits were issued to Palestinians wanting to build homes on their own land. In the process, 1,663 Palestinian buildings were destroyed by the Israelis. The Israelis are also uprooting trees, destoying water cisterns and stone terraces used by the Palestinian farmers. If this were done by blacks against whites or whites against blacks in Africa, the US government would be screaming "racism, racism, racism." So why the silence from the White House and the presidential candidates? (15 April 2008)

A Block in Baghdad Mourns Its Own (Washington Post). Last week, President Bush gave a crowing victory speech at the Air Force Museum. He said things were going very well in Iraq, the surge had worked, tranquility was in the air. Tell it to the neighbors of this family, slaughtered by U.S. troops shooting at someone else. (1 April 2008)

Ex-Terror Detainee Says U.S. Tortured Him (60 Minutes). Murat Kumaz was sold to the Americans for $3000. Even though the FBI and US intelligence said he was innocent, US officials tortured him and kept him prisoner for 5 years. How do you define a terrorist organization? How about a government that buys people, then locks them up and tortures them for 5 years? (1 April 2008)

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Elizabeth Drew: Molehill Politics (New York Review of Books). In this fight, the Clinton camp is the more aggressive of the two, and it's adept at what might be called molehill politics: making a very big deal in the press about something that's a very small deal—such as a single word in a mailing or a slip-up by an aide. Clinton's strategists pounce on whatever opportunity presents itself to attack Obama, and try to knock him off his own message, and his stride. Clinton's approach resembles her tactics in the White House, in which her inclination was to attack (which caused a number of problems, and was one of the reasons her health care bill was defeated). The Obama camp has sometimes been slow, and even reluctant, to respond, because if he attacks her personally (which the Clinton campaign would like him to do), he's not Barack Obama anymore. ...It's been long said among politicians that "the Clintons will do anything to win." Unfortunately, they are increasingly proving the point." (30 March 2008)

Phoebe Damrosch: A waitress's revenge (Telegraph). "Celebrities love to be allergic to things, including any or all of the following: nuts, fish with scales, fish without scales, shellfish, all fish, wheat, dairy, sugar, chocolate, egg yolks, duck eggs, onions, garlic, pineapple, mango, peppers, fennel - the list goes on. Either that or they are so bored by good food that they have to spice it up by asking for an all-mushroom tasting menu (as a famous newsreader did). Celebrities are not as attractive in person - but they usually have the best hair, skin and shoes in the room." (30 March 2008)

Dith Pran: The Last Word: A Video Interview and Profile (NY Times). The photographer who was the subject of "The Killing Fields" says, on his deathbed, what we should do now. (31 March 2008)

Glenn Greenwald: Michael Mukasey's tearful lies (Salon.com). "Michael Mukasey has conclusively proven himself to be an exact replica of Alberto Gonzales -- slavishly loyal to every presidential whim and unbound by even the most minimal constraints of truth while serving those whims. Speaking in San Francisco this week, Mukasey demanded that the President be given new warrantless eavesdropping powers and that lawbreaking telecoms be granted amnesty. To make his case, Mukasey teared up while exploiting the 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11."(30 March 2008)

Obama Back Into Lead in Democratic Race (Gallup). Barack Obama has advanced to an eight percentage point lead over Hillary Clinton, tying his largest lead to date, indicating that he has weathered the Wright flap and she is still taking the hit for her fake memory about arriving in Bosnia under fire. Meanwhile, both Democrat candidates lag John McCain among registered voters, reminding us that a lot of registered voters are pretty stupid about voting. (29 March 2008)

Cliff Schecter: The Top Ten Craziest Things John McCain Has Said While You Weren't Watching (AlterNet). Reporters who cover the McCain campaign full-time say the thing that impresses them most about the Senator is how much he lies. He makes a lot of mistakes, he says some very goofy things, but more importantly, he lies. Here are some samples of all three. (29 March 2008)

Robert Kuttner: Obama v. Krugman (American Prospect). What's with NY Times/Princeton economics prof Paul Krugman's hostility toward Obama's recent speech on the financial crisis and what to do about it? That speech, says Kuttner, "showed real understanding and subtlety in grasping how financial 'innovation' had outrun regulation, as well as a historical sense of the abuses of the 1920s repeating themselves. Obama is one of the few mainstream leaders -- Barney Frank is another -- calling for capital requirements to be extended to every category of financial institution that creates credit. This is exactly what's needed to prevent the next meltdown, but if it were put to a vote now, it would be rejected by legislators from both parties because they are still in thrall to market fundamentalism and Wall Street. That's where presidential leadership comes in." Is Krugman's denial of what was actually said the act of an economic analyst or a Clinton flack? (29 March 2008)

Barack Obama at Cooper Union (YouTube). Obama's March 27 speech on the economy that Paul Krugman wouldn't understand. (29 March 2008)

Abstinence only strikes again (Salon.com). Tedra Osell takes aim at a particularly stupid anti-birth control op-ed in the Buffalo News. (29 March 2008)

Amy Goodman: Body of War (truthdig). "Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman comments on the new film by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro about George W. Bush's mutilated Iraq war veterans, "Body of War." (29 March 2008)

Ray McGovern: Frontline's War: Too timid, too little and too late (Counterpunch). When it comes to looking at Bush's war in Iraq, Frontline, the PBS documentary/news program that used to put out some penetrating examinations of important subjects, serves up pablum. (29 March 2008)

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Stanley Fish: Denouncing and Renouncing (NY Times). The best essay yet on the media-created phony-baloney Jeremiah Wright foolishness. "This denouncing and renouncing game is simply not serious. It is a media-staged theater, produced not in response to genuine concerns – no one thinks that Obama is unpatriotic or that Clinton is a racist or that McCain is a right-wing bigot – but in response to the needs of a news cycle. First you do the outrage (did you see what X said?), then you put the question to the candidate (do you hereby denounce and renounce?), then you have a debate on the answer (Did he go far enough? Has she shut her husband up?), and then you do endless polls that quickly become the basis of a new round. Meanwhile, the things the candidates themselves are saying about really important matters – war, the economy, health care, the environment – are put on the back-burner until the side show is over, though the odds are that a new one will start up immediately." (25 March 2008)

Gary Kamiya: Rev. Jeremiah Wright isn't the problem (Salon.com). It's the idiot flag wavers. "This is absurd. We're worrying about someone in Row 245 who refuses to stand up for "The Star Spangled Banner," while the people who are singing loudest and waving the biggest flags are the ones who got us into the mess we're in today. Wright isn't the problem. Stupid patriotism is the problem." (25 March 2008)

Hillary in Bosnia (CBS). Ouch! Hillary Clinton last week talked about landing in Bosnia under sniper fire and running in a crouch to the waiting vehicles. The event was, alas, filmed by CBS. Click on the link for a flash file of the news report and click here for Clinton's rationale of the discrepancy.(25 March 2008)

Adeline Levine: Your call is very important to us... Check your phone bills. It probably won't do you any good, but check them anyway. (25 March 2008)

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Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris: Exposure: The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib (New Yorker). Were it not for Specialist Sabrina Harman's interest in photograph, Abu Ghraib would be a name known to hardly anyone.You've seen many of her Abu Ghraib pictures, and one in particular: "The image of Gilligan achieves its power from the fact that it does not show the human form laid bare and reduced to raw matter but creates instead an original image of inhumanity that admits no immediately self-evident reading. Its fascination resides, in large part, in its mystery and inscrutability—in all that is concealed by all that it reveals. It is an image of carnival weirdness: this upright body shrouded from head to foot; those wires; that pose; and the peaked hood that carries so many vague and ghoulish associations. The pose is obviously contrived and theatrical, a deliberate invention that appears to belong to some dark ritual, a primal scene of martyrdom. The picture transfixes us because it looks like the truth, but, looking at it, we can only imagine what that truth is: torture, execution, a scene staged for the camera? So we seize on the figure of Gilligan as a symbol that stands for all that we know was wrong at Abu Ghraib and all that we cannot—or do not want to—understand about how it came to this." (24 March 2008)

Thomas Walkom: Is Bush the worst U.S. president ever? (The Star). Yeah. (24 Marcch 2008)

Uri Avnery: Two Americas (Gush Shalom). The great Israeli peace activist, journalist and Irgun veteran explains why he hopes Obama becomes the next US president: "If McCain is a continuation of Bush, Hillary is an extension of the entire present American political system, the present policy and the present routine. But the world needs another America. The name of another America is Obama. Full name: Barack Hussein Obama.The very fact that this person can be a serious contender for the presidency at all restores my faith in the possibilities inherent in America. After the excesses of Senator Joe McCarthy there was President John Kennedy. After Bush there can be Obama. Only in America....A personal note: as an optimist from birth, I like Obama's optimism. I prefer a candidate who brings hope over one destroying hope. Optimism spurs to action, pessimism produces nothing but despair. America needs a complete overhaul. Not just a wash, not just a wax job, not just a new coat of paint. It needs a new motor, a change of the entire leadership, a reappraisal of its position in the world, a change of values. Can Obama do this? I hope so. I am not sure. But I am quite sure that the other two will not." (23 March 2008)

Robbing the cradle of civilization, five years later (Salon.com). You may remember that part of the collateral damage of Bush's destruction of Iraq's civil government was widespread looting of Mesopotamanian antiquities. It's still going on. Every day innocent civilians are murdered and irreplacable antiquities are stolen. It's the price the Iraqis are being forced to pay for importing George W. Bush's brand of democracy abroad. (20 March 2008)

Scott McLemee: The Truth? I Can't Handle the Truth! (Inside Higher Ed). "Harvard University Press has just issued a book promulgating a JFK assassination conspiracy theory." Maybe next they'll publish a book saying 9/11 was a Pentagon conspiracy. And another saying Bush's Iraq war wasn't about oil. The possibilities for lunatic prose are limitless. (20 March 2008)

Why Are Winter Soldiers Not News? (FAIR). "Dozens of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars gathered in Silver Spring, Maryland last weekend for the Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan hearings (3/13/08-3/16/08), where they offered harrowing testimony about atrocities they had witnessed or participated in directly. The BBC predicted that the event, organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, "could be dominating the headlines around the world this week" (3/7/08). The hearings were covered as far afield as the U.K. (Guardian, 3/17/08), Australia (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/14/08), Croatia (Javno, 3/16/08), and Iran (Press TV, 3/14/08). Yet there has been an almost complete media blackout on this historic news event in the U.S. corporate media." (20 March 2008)

Mr. Obama's Profile in Courage (NY Times). An editorial about Obama's race and religion speech. "There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with. Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better." (20 March 2008)

Barack Obama: A More Perfect Union (Obama '08). The prepared text for and a video of Senator Barack Obama's March 18 Philadelphia talk on race and religion. (20 March 2008)

Justices overturn Louisiana Death Sentence (NY Times). By a vote of 7-2, the Supreme Court threw out a Louisiana death sentence because the prosecutor had systematically excluded blacks from the jury. Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia found nothing wrong with the prosecutor's behavior and voted to uphold the sentence. (19 March 2008)