Frank Rich Poops His Pants

Goodness-gracious. Via Lew Rockwell is this ridiculous rant by Frank Rich essentially naming the entire populist right and libertarian movements as culprits in the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, the recent Austin Kamikaze attack and, well, pretty much anything bad that happens from here on. I have about as much truck for these torture, war, George Bush-mongering Tea Party idiots, who've seemed to discover the danger of state power only in the last year-and-one-month, as I have for the current...

got gulf war illness?

19 years after the first war against Iraq - or the start of the current one, depending on your point of view - U.S. veterans with various Gulf War illnesses are still in the lurch. Says here now John D. Rockefeller the IV (D-W.VA) is going to set everything right. How about this for another good reason why your son shouldn't join the military? "Every so often they say ,'We're going to look into this, look into that. We'll do a study,' " said Heath, who lives in Tampa. "I don't put much hope in...

Stress Lives!

Nuts to Facebook. The Stress Blog is now re-opened for bidness. Any of y'all in the authors' list over there, please feel free to start posting whatever you want again. I'll do the same.

02/26/10 – Ryan Dawson – The Scott Horton Show

Ryan Dawson, keeper of the Website Anti-Neocons, discusses his website’s designation of February 26 as 'Hate Richard Perle Day,' Perle’s leading role in inventing a Saddam Hussein/al Qaeda link and lying the American people into the Iraq War and how professional war agitators like Perle profit from the revolving door between government and defense contractor employment.

02/26/10 – Allison Kilkenny – The Scott Horton Show

Allison Kilkenny, regular contributor to the Huffington Post, discusses the CNN poll that found a large majority of Americans believe Iran has nuclear weapons, not-so-covert US actions in Iran that make diplomacy impossible, Republicans who are unwilling to admit the cause and effect between US empire and terrorism and the Democrats who hypocritically defend Obama over the same policies they excoriated Bush for.

02/26/10 – Kirkpatrick Sale – The Scott Horton Show

Kirkpatrick Sale, director of the Middlebury Institute, discusses Vermont's secessionist movement that derives from the state's unique historical independence, the need to scrap the US Constitution due to its failure to preserve freedom and liberty, the inverse relationship between population size and the ability of government to function properly, the strong secessionist language enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Liberal tradition of supporting a strong national government...

02/25/10 – Kevin Zeese and David T. Beito – The Scott Horton Show

Kevin Zeese and David T. Beito discuss the formation of a full-spectrum political alliance against militarism and empire, the unwavering commitment of Democrat and Republican leadership to the military-industrial complex, the media's unwillingness to discuss (much less debate) US empire and how you can help the fundraising effort for a broad-based peace movement.

02/25/10 – James L. Payne – The Scott Horton Show

James L. Payne, Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, discusses the often-exaggerated US role in democracy-building during the post-WWII occupation of Germany, FDR’s intent to keep Germany impoverished for a generation, how the issuance of a currency and the end of price controls allowed the German economy to rebuild, government 'good intentions' that invariably produce bad results and why 'democracy' is really nothing more than the absence of violence in the political process.

02/24/10 – Matthew Harwood – The Scott Horton Show

Matthew Harwood, author of the Guardian article 'Torture is a crime, not a state secret,' discusses the obfuscation of facts through the invocation of state secrets privilege in the Binyam Mohamed torture case, the lack of accountability for torturers within the justice system and the large number of innocent people swept up in the 'war on terror' dragnet.

02/24/10 – Daphne Eviatar – The Scott Horton Show

Daphne Eviatar, Senior Associate in Law and Security for Human Rights First, discusses the preemptive legal defenses trotted out by John Yoo and Dick Cheney, information missing or withheld from the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility's torture memo investigation, the incompatibility of Yoo's extralegal commander-in-chief theory with any semblance of Constitutional rule of law and why a post-apartheid South Africa-style truth commission may be the best resolution of Bush administration...

02/24/10 – Frida Berrigan – The Scott Horton Show

Frida Berrigan, columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus, discusses US dominance of the global weapons market, the costly domestic upgrade cycle that is perpetuated by defense contractors selling current generation high-tech weapons abroad, the relatively low number of jobs created with money spent on the military compared to other sectors of the economy and how weapons manufacturers create demand for their products by promoting belligerent US foreign policy.

02/24/10 – George Maschke – The Scott Horton Show

George Maschke, co-founder of Antipolygraph.org, discusses the polygraph examination that Bruce Ivins passed before he was the FBI’s prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax mailings, historical failures in detecting national security threats through 'lie-detector' tests and the retrospective claims by the FBI and DOJ that Ivins used countermeasures (that are now supposedly detectable) to mislead his polygraph examiner.

02/23/10 – Chris Floyd – The Scott Horton Show

Chris Floyd, author of Empire Burlesque — High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, discusses the media-designated 'post-war' status of Iraq, the real 'Mission Accomplished' goal of establishing a permanent US military footprint in Iraq, Ahmed 'hero in error' Chalabi’s talent for remaining politically relevant despite a total lack of public support, why only war criminals on the losing side need worry about prosecution and how ending the US empire would improve nearly all aspects of...