Mike Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center discusses a recent U.S. Supreme Court case that overturns a Kansas Supreme Court decision concerning a potentially unconstitutional traffic stop. The police officer in the incident in question pulled a car over because his computer showed that the owner had a suspended driver’s license. This was seen as probable cause, even though it’s obviously quite possible that someone other than the owner was driving the car. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled...

John Kiriakou discusses his time at the CIA during the lead up to and aftermath of 9/11, given the recent revelations about the identity of a Saudi official connected with the attack. This is the first time the American people have seen any concrete evidence tying the Saudi government to the hijackers, which Kiriakou finds ridiculous. The families of the victims have been seeking justice for almost two decades, and ought to be allowed to know the truth. He also recounts some of the reasons why...

Scott interviews Ben Freeman about his report, “The Qatar Lobby in Washington D.C.” Freeman goes over the recent history of Qatar’s efforts to influence U.S. policy, including their apparent success in winning over the Trump administration to their side in a dispute with Saudi Arabia. In this case and in others, Freeman is astounded by how easy it is for lobbyists representing foreign governments to buy off American politicians. Small campaign donations of a few thousand dollars can be enough...

Scott talks to Aaron Maté about the latest developments in the apparent OPCW cover-up of their investigation into the alleged Douma chemical attack. It is now clear, based on recently leaked documents, that OPCW leadership lied about expert analyst Ian Henderson, who has since become the leading whistleblower in the story of their cover-up. They claim that he was a low-level team member without anything important to say; in reality, he was the leader of the Douma team and one of the...

Listen to Scott’s latest appearance on Dave Smith’s Part of the Problem, where they discuss Mike Flynn, “Russiagate,” “Obamagate,” and other recent political developments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0WgH4fqdHo

Pete Quinones discusses the recent killing of Ahmaud Arbery and the response from Americans on both sides of the political aisle. In a recent article at the Libertarian Institute, he discusses the incident from the perspective of the gun-owning community, arguing that the vast majority of serious gun owners view this killing as abhorrent, and that even if Arbery had not been shot, the behavior of his killers leading up to the fatal moment was still wildly irresponsible. Leaving aside the...

Ray McGovern reflects on the demise of “Russiagate,” now that two central pieces of the narrative have fallen apart. The first comes from newly-released transcripts of the House Intelligence Committee’s 2017 interview with a senior member of Crowdstrike, the firm that had supposedly provided the evidence that Russian agents were responsible for hacking the DNC’s servers before the 2016 presidential election. These transcripts show the official, Shawn Henry, admitting that his firm had no...

Danny Sjursen talks about America’s long history of intervention in Somalia, beginning after World War II, continuing during the Cold War, and persisting today through the War on Terror. Too often, he says, the mainstream narrative around U.S. interventions starts right before the current terrorist attack, regime change, or civilian uprising, and most people miss decades of crucial history. In the case of Somalia, America and its allies in the UN supported various regimes through the 80s and...

Ramzy Baroud discusses the 100-year history of Jewish Zionism, which has resulted in a century of Palestinians being subjugated, killed, and forced off of their land. Palestinians have sometimes been criticized for not accepting the offer made at the time of the Balfour Declaration to keep about 45% of their land, with critics painting them as intransigent terrorists who refuse to negotiate reasonably or peacefully. Baroud explains how absurd it would be to imagine Americans, or any other...

Patrick Cockburn discusses Iraq’s increasingly desperate economic outlook as oil prices remain at historic lows. Iraq’s economy, like many of those in the Middle East, is hugely reliant on oil, with millions directly on a government payroll that depends almost entirely on the oil market in order to remain solvent. Worsening conditions could endanger an already fraught political environment in a country that continues to battle the remnants of an ISIS insurgency in the western part of the...

Aaron Mehta talks about all the issues with the F-35 fighter jet, a plane that has been in development for 20 years and still can’t do many of the things it was designed for. Mehta describes his long investigation into the F-35 project, which upon initial release had 13 “category 1” deficiencies, which are problems that could result in the death of the pilot or loss of the airplane. Some of these deficiencies have been fixed or “downgraded,” but serious questions remain about the F-35’s safety...

Scott talks to Jeff Deist about the economic ramifications of the coronavirus, including both the virus itself and the government’s fiscal and monetary response. Deist certainly expects that we could be in for a severe recession, but is mainly of the view that this recession was coming soon anyway. It just took the right event to pop the bubble. Much of the ground that the country appeared to make up since the last crash, he says, has really been a reinflation by the Federal Reserve of the...

Daniel McAdams discusses the latest incident in the strange story of the U.S.-backed coup attempts in Venezuela, which seek to replace President Maduro with someone more friendly to “American interests,” like Juan Guaidó. Most recently, a small operation by a few American special forces troops was thwarted almost as soon as it began, leaving Guaidó and his followers looking even more impotent, and ironically boosting Maduro’s popularity. McAdams stresses the need for the United States to mind...

Scott interviews journalist Bas Spliet about the ongoing war in Yemen. Spliet reminds us that even though the Houthis are still referred to in most of the Western media as “rebels,” they have actually been ruling 80% of the country since 2014, and it’s really Saudi Arabia’s puppet ruler Mansour Hadi who is on the outside looking in. The people of Yemen continue to suffer terribly thanks to America’s support for Saudi Arabia and the UAE as they conduct a war of deliberate starvation and...

Scott interviews reporter Arielle Zionts about her recent story about a pregnant South Dakota woman who died of COVID-19 in federal prison. Andrea Circle Bear, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, was charged under an obscure law in connection with a drug sale in which she herself was likely not a primary participant. She was sentenced to two years in a federal prison hundreds of miles from her home. She later contracted COVID-19, and died in April, though not before delivering her baby...