Everyone Should See ‘Torturing Democracy’ May 31, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Criminal Justice, Democracy, Torture.Tags: Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan War, alberto mora, bagram, bill moyers, bill moyers journal, bush administration, cheney, christian century, cia interrogation, CIA torture, Colin Powell, detainees, enhanced interrogation, geneva conventions, Guantanamo, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, Iraq war, lawrence wilkerson, michael wiship, military commissions, nuremberg, Petraeus, roger hollander, rule of law, sere, sherry jones, stuart couch, thomas romig, torture, torture techniques, torturing democracy, War Crimes, war criminals, waterboarding
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In all the recent debate over torture, many of our Beltway pundits and politicians have twisted themselves into verbal contortions to avoid using the word at all.
During his speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week — immediately on the heels of President Obama’s address at the National Archives — former Vice President Dick Cheney used the euphemism “enhanced interrogation” a full dozen times.
Smothering the reality of torture in euphemism of course has a political value, enabling its defenders to diminish the horror and possible illegality. It also gives partisans the opening they need to divert our attention by turning the future of the prison at Guantanamo Bay into a “wedge issue,” as noted on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times.
According to the Times, “Armed with polling data that show a narrow majority of support for keeping the prison open and deep fear about the detainees, Republicans in Congress started laying plans even before the inauguration to make the debate over Guantanamo Bay a question of local community safety instead of one about national character and principles.”
No political party would dare make torture a cornerstone of its rejuvenation if people really understood what it is. And lest we
forget, we’re not just talking about waterboarding, itself a trivializing euphemism for drowning.
If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That’s just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does. Torturing Democracy was written and produced by one of America’s outstanding documentary reporters, Sherry Jones. (Excerpts from the film are being shown on the current edition of “Bill Moyers Journal” on PBS — check local listings, or go to the program’s website at PBS.org/Moyers, where you can be linked to the entire, 90-minute documentary.)
A longtime colleague, Sherry Jones and the film were honored this week with the prestigious RFK Journalism Award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Torturing Democracy was cited for its “meticulous reporting,” and described as “the definitive broadcast account of a deeply troubling chapter in recent American history.”
Unfortunately, as events demonstrate, the story is not yet history; the early chapters aren’t even closed. Torture still is being defended as a matter of national security, although by law it is a war crime, with those who authorized and executed it liable for prosecution as war criminals. The war on terror sparked impatience with the rule of law — and fostered the belief within our government that the commander-in-chief had the right to ignore it.
Torturing Democracy begins at 9/11 and recounts how the Bush White House and the Pentagon decided to make coercive detention and abusive interrogation the official U.S. policy on the war on terror. In sometimes graphic detail, the documentary describes the experiences of several of the men held in custody, including Shafiq Rasul, Moazzam Begg and Bisher al-Rawi, all of whom eventually were released. Charges never were filed against them and no reason was ever given for their
years in custody.
The documentary traces how tactics meant to train American troops to survive enemy interrogations — the famous SERE program (“Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape”) — became the basis for many of the methods employed by the CIA and by interrogators at Guantanamo and in Iraq, including waterboarding (which inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death), sleep and sensory deprivation, shackling, caging, painful stress positions and sexual humiliation.
“We have re-created our enemy’s methodologies in Guantanamo,” Malcolm Nance, former head of the Navy’s SERE training program, says in Torturing Democracy. “It will hurt us for decades to come. Decades. Our people will all be subjected to these tactics, because we have authorized them for the world now. How it got to Guantanamo is a crime and somebody needs to figure out who did it, how they did it, who authorized them to do it… Because our servicemen will suffer for years.”
In addition to its depiction of brutality, Torturing Democracy also credits the brave few who stood up to those in power and said, “No.” In Washington, there were officials of conviction horrified by unfolding events, including Alberto Mora, the Navy’s top civilian lawyer, Major General Thomas Romig, who served as Judge Advocate General of the US Army from 2001 to 2005 and Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch, a former senior prosecutor with the Office of Military Commissions.
Much has happened since the film’s initial telecast on some public television stations last fall. Once classified memos from the Bush administration have been released that reveal more details of the harsh techniques used against detainees whose guilt or innocence is still to be decided.
President Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo by next January, with the specifics to come later in the summer. That was enough to set off hysteria among Democrats and Republicans alike who don’t want the remaining 240 detainees on American soil — even in a super maximum security prison, the kind already holding hundreds of terrorist suspects. The president also triggered criticism from constitutional and civil liberties lawyers when he suggested that some detainees may be held indefinitely, without due process.
But in an interview with Radio Free Europe this week, General David Petraeus, the man in charge of the military’s Central Command, praised the Guantanamo closing, saying it “sends an important message to the world” and will help advance America’s strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In another revealing and disturbing development, the former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, has suggested what is possibly as scandalous a deception as the false case Bush and Cheney made for invading Iraq. Colonel Wilkerson writes that in their zeal to prove a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein during the months leading up to the Iraq war, one suspect held in Egypt, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was water tortured until he falsely told the interrogators what they wanted to hear.
That phony confession that Wilkerson says was wrung from a broken man who simply wanted the torture to stop was then used as evidence in Colin Powell’s infamous address to the United Nations shortly before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Colin Powell says the CIA vetted everything in his speech and that Wilkerson’s allegation is only speculation. We’ll never know the full story — al-Libi died three weeks ago in a Libyan prison. A suicide.
Or so they say.
No wonder so many Americans clamor for a truth commission that will get the facts and put them on the record, just as Torturing Democracy has done. Then we can judge for ourselves.
As the editors of the magazine The Christian Century wrote this week, “Convening a truth commission on torture would be embarrassing to the U.S. in the short term, but in the long run it would demonstrate the strength of American democracy and confirm the nation’s adherence to the rule of law… Understandably, [the President] wants to turn the page on torture. But Americans should not turn the page until they know what is written on it.”
Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers. Research provided by editorial producer Rebecca Wharton.
The Day of the Dead May 26, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Civil Liberties, Criminal Justice, Democracy, Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: Afghanistan War, bill of rights, Casey Sheehan, Cindy Sheehan, free speech, free speech zones, freedom, Iraq, Iraq war, iraqi dead, memorial day, military industrial complex, obama war crimes, patriotism, roger hollander, U.S. imperialism, War Crimes, warrantless wiretapping
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Monday 25 May 2009, www.truthout.org
by: Cindy Sheehan, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
I was on an airplane flying to Orange County from Sacramento to attend the al-Awda Conference, which is a Palestinian Right’s Conference (al-Awda translates to “The Returning”), when the pilot’s voice filled the cabin to make an announcement that I think went unnoticed by most of my fellow passengers, but I heard it.
As the plane was on the approach to John Wayne airport, the Captain came on the intercom to remind us all to “remember our brave troops who have died for our freedom.” Even in this post 9-11 paranoid paradigm, if I wasn’t belted in for landing, I would have popped out of my seat at 13D and charged up to the cockpit to let the pilot know that my son was killed in Iraq and not one person anywhere in this world is one iota more free because he is dead.
As a matter of fact, the people of Iraq, the foreign country thousands of miles away where my oldest child’s brains, blood and life seeped into the soil, are not freer, unless one counts being liberated from life, liberty and property being free. If you consider torture and indefinite detention freedom, then the pilot may have been right, but then again, even if you do consider those crimes freedom, it does not make it so.
Here in America we are definitely not freer because my son died, as a matter of fact, our nation can spy on us and our communications without a warrant or just cause, and we can’t even bring a 3.6 ounce bottle of hand cream into an airport, or walk through a metal detector with our shoes on. Even if we do want to exercise our Bill of Rights, we are shoved into pre-designated “free speech” zones (NewSpeak for; STFU, unless you are well out of the way of what you want to protest and shoved into pens like cattle being led to slaughter), and oftentimes brutally treated if we decide we are entitled to “free speech” on every inch of American soil.
If you watch any one of the cable news networks this weekend between doing holiday weekend things, you will be subjected to images of row upon row of white headstones of dead US military lined up in perfect formation in the afterlife as they were in life. Patriotic music will swell and we will be reminded in script font to “Remember our heroes,” or some such BS as that.
Before Casey was killed, a message like that would barely register in my consciousness as I rushed around preparing for Casey’s birthday bar-be-que that became a family tradition since he was born on Memorial Day in 1979. If I had a vision of how Memorial Day and Casey’s birthday would change for my family, I would have fled these violent shores to protect what was mine, not this murderous country’s. Be my guest; look at those headstones with pride or indifference. I look at them now with horror, regret, pain and a longing for justice.
I can guarantee what you won’t see this holiday weekend are images of the over one million Iraqi dead. Say we assign, in an arbitrary way for purely illustrative purposes, an average height of five feet for every person killed in Iraq and then line those people up from head to toe. That gruesome line would stretch from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon… 950 driving miles up Interstate 5. If we count the Iraqis who have been forced to flee, we would have to go back and forth between Los Angeles and Portland another four times.
There are obscene amounts of people who have been slaughtered for the US Profit Driven Military Empire who do not count here in America on any day. People in Vietnam are still dying from the toxins dumped on their country by the US, not to mention the millions who died during that war. Let the carnage escalate in Afghanistan while we protect our personal images by turning a blind eye to Obama’s war crimes. Are you going to feel a lump of pride in your bosom when the coffins start to be photographed at Dover for this imperial crime of aggression? Will you look at those flag-draped boxes of the lifeless body of some mother’s child and think: “Now, I am free.” Is it better to be dead when Obama is president?
A tough, but real, aspect of this all to consider is, how many of the soldiers buried in coffins in military cemeteries killed or tortured innocent people as paid goons for the Empire? To me, it is deeply and profoundly sad on so many levels. If I have any consolation through all of this, I learned that my son bravely refused to go on the mission that killed him, but he was literally dragged into the vehicle and was dead minutes later – before he was forced to do something that was against his nature and nurture.
Casey will always be my hero, but he was a victim of US Imperialism and his death should bring shame, not pride, as it did not bring freedom to anyone. I will, of course, mourn his senseless death on Memorial Day as I do every day.
However, we do not need another day here in America to glorify war that enables the Military Industrial Complex to commit its crimes under the black cloak of “Patriotism.”
From Palestine to Africa to South America, our quest for global economic domination kills, sickens, maims or oppresses people on a daily basis, and about 25,000 children per day die of starvation. I am not okay with these facts and I am not proud of my country.
I will spend my reflective time on Memorial Day to mourn not only the deaths of so many people all over the world due to war, but mourn the fact that they are the unseen and uncared for victims of US Empire.
Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Bush’s war of terror on 04/04/04. She is the co-founder and president of Gold Star Families for Peace and the Camp Casey Peace Institute. She is the author of three books; the most recent is “Peace Mom: A Mother’s Journey Through Heartache to Activism.” Following an unsuccessful challenge to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sheehan launched a radio show on 960AM in the San Fransisco Bay Area that can also be heard on Soapbox.com.
From Haymarket to Ludlow from Harlen to Matewan from Mother Jones to You May 2, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Democracy, Labor, Revolution.Tags: bailout, big business, calumet, Economic Crisis, Freddie Mac, glenn fox, harlen, haymarket, labor, labor history, labor unions, ludlow, matewan, may day, molly maguires, mother jones, pennsylvania coal, pinkerton, river rouge, roger hollander, social change, trade unions, unions, workers, workers rights, World Bank
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Glenn Fox
www.opednews.com, May 2, 2009
So it has come to this, why must I wake the sleeping? It wasn’t so long ago I was asleep myself. Why must I be the one to tell you what you don’t want to hear? Why must I tell you about how quickly hot red human blood congeals and turns black when mixed with cold pavement or frozen mud? Murderous armies training automatic weapons on women and children, then firing off a few rounds, just for fun.
Not Russia or China or Somalia or Chechnya but in Chicago and Kentucky and Colorado and Michigan. Hundreds died and hundreds more were wounded, but they kept coming because they were fighting for something greater than themselves. They were fighting a more personal revolution, closer to home than Valley Forge or Yorktown–they were fighting for personal liberty and personal dignity.
Sketch by C. Bunnell and Chas Upham in Leslie’s, May 15, 1886.
They were not tools, they were not raised to work sunup to sun down hauling coal or sewing shirts so that the few, far removed from the sweatshops and the coal dust, could travel to Europe on a lark or throw massive parties where the favors were precious jewels. At River Rouge firemen turned water hoses on demonstrators in sub zero temperatures. The police fired into the crowd at random, killing three and wounding thirteen. In Ludlow, the Coal Company put strikers out of company housing during a snowstorm.
They put Mother Jones in jail for the crime of speaking up. No charges, no lawyers, just iron bars and a cold cell. But the miners wouldn’t give in, so they called in the state Militia that took orders from the governor who sided with the company. Just for fun they would fire shots into the strikers’ camps, just for fun. They shot a nine-year-old boy in the head but the press wouldn’t report it. Only after they’d set fire to a family tent and killed nine women and three small children–only then would the press begin to take notice.
In Chicago on May 4, 1886, fifteen hundred gathered to support striking railroad workers demanding — of all things — the outrageous notion of an eight-hour workday. It began to rain and most of the crowd was already gone when police moved in force to disperse the remaining demonstrators. Someone threw a bomb and who that person was was never determined. Police opened fire on the crowd and killed four and wounded over one hundred. Seven policemen were dead and demands for vengeance, not justice, reigned.
Eight men were arrested and tried, but it was a show trial. No evidence was presented that proved the men had anything to do with the bomb or even knew the bomber. Someone’s got to die and we pick you! Four men were hanged, guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One committed suicide and the other three were given long prison terms. They were eventually pardoned, in the words of the governor, “on the grounds that the trial had been patently unjust.”
A heavy price to pay for an eight-hour day isn’t it? No policemen were ever charged for firing indiscriminately into the crowd. Just as no one was charged in Ludlow and no one was charged in Calumet for yelling fire into a union hall during a Christmas party. Seventy-five people, mostly children, suffocated on the stairs that Christmas Eve in the rush to get out.
In Matewan, the company responded to workers organizing by hiring private “detectives” to begin evicting the strikers from company housing. The Police Chief, Sid Hatfield, demanded the detectives produce legal writs of eviction before putting anyone out of their homes. Hatfield was later gunned down on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse by four men. No one was ever charged or arrested for his murder — a murder that happened in broad daylight on the very steps of American justice.
The battle of Matewan killed seven detectives, two miners and the mayor. The surviving detectives vowed revenge on Sid Hatfield and apparently they had it in front of the courthouse in broad daylight.
The Molly Maguires were a secret Irish group whose goal was to organize workers in the Pennsylvania coal fields. The company owned the fields, the town and the courts, and just an inkling of a suspicion of belonging to the “Mollies” was reason good enough for a long jail term–that is if they didn’t hang you. The coal trusts suspected the “Mollies” as being the heart of the resistance when the company cut the workers wages by 20%. Ungrateful wretches weren’t they?
So what does May Day mean to you? Probably nothing, maybe you’ve got a job, maybe a real good one, and you’re only concerned with your own lookout. So you don’t want me jostling your bed cause you sleep good at night. I used to sleep good at night, too. Then by the moonlight I began to wonder why it is that there is always money to help big business and never enough money to help the workers? Or why health care reform means more money for big insurance companies? GM went before Congress and spelled it out: their plan to return to profitability is to eliminate as many American workers from the company payroll as possible and expand their plants in Mexico. Congress nodded, Republican and Democrat alike, and mumbled, “Good plan!”
So what does May Day mean to you? The World Bank has estimated that the United States has exported over 40% percent of its industrial base to the third world. The same report warned that in the event of an economic downturn, it would be difficult for this economy to recover because economies that produce nothing produce no wealth. A carwash, a barbershop or a Wal-Mart only exchange money and take a percentage as profit. They create only low wage jobs because profitability depends on cheap labor–that’s you.
But for those who exported the plants, the times are good. Better than ever until… until they were hoisted on their own petards. Just as they profited from deregulation so did the banks–change partners allemande, right! Just who did they blame when the house of cards fell? Why, you, of course. They’ll grab a handful of scapegoats and let the rest go free. No one will ask why a Freddie Mac bank president who received an $800,000 bonus just a couple of months ago is suddenly suicidal. Maybe his conscience hurt or he had thoughts of telling the truth.
Maybe this all means nothing; maybe you’ll sleep well tonight. After all it’s only May Day and Hallmark doesn’t even send cards to commemorate nine-year-olds shot in the head or gun thugs yelling fire at a Christmas party. A few thousand people who put their lives on the line trying to make this country and this government live up to their promises.
We are not tools; we were not put on this Earth merely to labor for corporations. We cannot sit quietly while they raid the treasury and evade the tax laws because every dollar that they don’t pay is left for you to pay.
This is our country and we can do anything we want with it. We can have national health care; we can have a green environment. We can have good jobs and good schools and living wages and all you have to do is stand up! Stand up and realize who your friends are and who your enemies are. But I warn you; if you do stand up they will try to beat you back down. They will make you understand that land of the free is a slogan on a bank calendar and you’re only entitled to as much freedom as you’re willing to fight for because May Day is a remembrance of busted heads and murdered children right here in the land of the free and the memories of those truly brave.
U.S. Democracy a Sham? May 1, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in About Democracy, Democracy.Tags: american democracy, California, constitution, democracy, democratic representation, democratic rule, democrats, filibuster, filibuster proof, gandhi, government, injustice, majority rule, minority rule, political science, republicans, revolution, revolutionary change, roger hollander, senate, senators, US constitution, US Senate, wyoming
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Roger Hollander, www.rogerhollander.com, May Day, 2009.
When Gandhi was asked by a journalist what he thought of Western Civilization, he replied famously that he thought it would be a good idea. He could have said the same for American democracy.
Now that there is a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic majority in the Senate, there is much discussion about the necessity to obtain a “filibuster-proof” majority of 60 seats. Somehow the Republicans when in power got their program through with a simple majority. Both these data tell us more about the Democrats than the Republicans. Google the word “Republicrat” and see how many entries you get.
In an essay I wrote some time ago and posted on this Blog last August, (http://rogerhollander.wordpress.com/category/rogers-archived-writing/political-essays-roger/the-constitution-is-unconstitutional/) I analyzed the various injustices inherent in the original United States Constitution, some of which have been amended out of existence (slavery, women’s non-sufferance, etc.), and focused on what I characterize as one of the most undemocratic institutions in existence, the United States Senate. I showed how both in theory and in practice, representatives of much less than a majority of Americans control what does and does not get legislated in that astute body.
Since Obama does not yet have his 60 – only the goddess knows when Coleman will give up, and you can never count on sleazebag Lieberman – let’s take a look at the present contingent of Republican Senators, who have in effect a veto over the legislative process. Let’s see what percentage of the American population these 40 Republican Senators actually represent.
(I have taken the population data from the U. S. Census Bureau estimates for July 1, 2008 [http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html; “Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for the United States, Regions, States, and Puerto Rico: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008 (NST-EST2008-01”]. At that the estimate for the entire country was 304,060,000 [all estimates are rounded off to the nearest thousand]).
In the following states both senate seats are held by Republicans:
State Population
Alabama 4,662,000
Arizona 6,500,000
Georgia 9,686,000
Idaho 1,524,000
Kansas 2,802,000
Kentucky 4,269,000
Maine 1,316,000
Mississippi 2,939,000
Oklahoma 3,642,000
South Carolina 4,480,000
Tennessee 6,215,000
Texas 24,327,000
Utah 2,736,000
Wyoming 533,000
Total 75,631,000
The following states are represented by one Republican Senator:
Arkansas 2,855,000
Florida 18,328,000
Indiana 6,377,000
Iowa 3,003,000
Louisiana 4,411,000
Missouri 5,912,000
Nebraska 1,783,000
Nevada 2,600,000
New Hampshire 1,316,000
North Carolina 9,222,000
Ohio 11,486,000
South Dakota 804,000
Total 68,097,000
Let’s do the math. By adding the total population for the states in which both Senators are Republican (75,631,000) to half of the population of the states in which there is one Republican Senator (68,097,000/2 = 34,049,000) we get a sum total of 109,680,000.
This figure represents 36% of the overall American population. The representatives of those 36% in the United States Senate essentially hold the country hostage with respect to legislation (this is based upon the assumption is that all Senators will vote according to the dictates of the party leadership; although this is not always the case, it is not unreasonable to assume that those who cross over from each party cancel each other out).
36%. U.S. democracy in action.
In my original essay (“The Constitution is Unconstitutional”) I compared California with Wyoming with respect to democratic representation in the Senate. Using the updated 2008 population data, let’s take a new look. We have California with a population of 36,757,000 and Wyoming with a whopping 533,000. Yet each state has exactly two representatives in the Senate. One Senator for every 267,000 Wyomingites; one Senator for each 18,379,000 Californians. If you live in Wyoming you have 69 times more senatorial political power than someone living in California.
69 to one. U.S democracy in action.
So big deal, you say, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Instead of whining about it, why don’t you suggest what can be done. In my original essay I argued that the Constitution seemed to establish the Senate in a way that it could never be amended. I am quite possibly wrong about that; perhaps a Constitutional Amendment could democratize the Senate or abolish it. But can you imagine that happening in a dozen lifetimes? No way, Ho Zay.
So what then? In my article I argued for revolution. If you’re interested, read the article. Here again is the link: http://rogerhollander.wordpress.com/category/rogers-archived-writing/political-essays-roger/the-constitution-is-unconstitutional/
The Cheney-Like Secrecy of the Obama White House August 9, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, Democracy, Dick Cheney, Health.Tags: bush administration, cheney, cheney energy, government secrecy, health care industry, health care reform, health insurance, healthcare industry, healthcare reform, john nichols, obama administration, official secrecy, pharmaceutical industry, presidency, presidential transparency, roger hollander, transparency, visitor logs, white house visitor
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It also provided an early indicator that darker and dirtier deeds would eventually be done by Cheney and his compatriots. And they were.
So what should we make of the news that the Obama administration is now refusing to release White House visitor logs that detail meetings between members of the new administration and health-care industry insiders?
As Sharon Theimer, of The Associated Press, notes:
There is a lot of talk about the fact that Obama has broken a campaign promise.
That’s serious.
But far more serious is the perpetuation of practices of official secrecy that characterized the Bush-Cheney den of iniquity.
When administrations begin to enjoy the benefits of operating in the dark, they become disinclined to end the practice. They also begin to buy into the fantasy that keeping details from Congress and the people is the only way to get things done, as did Obama White House spokesman Reid Cherlin when he tried to explain away a lack of transparency by saying: “Here’s what’s happening: Groups that have steadfastly opposed reform in the past are coming to the table and making concessions — because they know we can’t wait another year to pass health insurance reform.”
Actually, bad players are embracing bad compromises because they have made bad deals with the White House.
And, make no mistake, more bad things will happen.
Only whack jobs who believe that Barack Obama was birthed in Jakarta could imagine that this administration might ever be as corrupt as its predecessor. Bush and Cheney achieved Warren Harding levels of official crookedness.
However, bad-but-not-quite-Cheney-bad is an unacceptable standard.
Official secrecy, especially when it involves meetings by White House aides and representatives of corporate interests that face government regulation, is corrosive. It warps the official agenda and undermines the system of checks and balances — making the legislative branch a weak second to a unitary executive.
Barack Obama promised when he sought the presidency to usher in a new era of openness and transparency. “We’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies,” candidate Obama declared at a Pennsylvania campaign stop two months before the 2008 election.
Now, he is doing the opposite.
Worse yet, he is perpetuating the foul practices of the most corrupt administration in American history.
Copyright © 2009 The Nation
John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. A co-founder of the media reform organization Free Press, Nichols is is co-author with Robert W. McChesney of Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy – from The New Press. Nichols’ latest book is The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism.