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Travel

01.13 Hawaii, the Unique State

Books, Films, Arts & Education

01.24 Can Apple “Rescue” US Education? (Graphics)

01.23 What You (Really) Need to Know

01.22 How to Forecast Weather Infographic w/Simple Explanations

Letters

Ref. : Letters to the editor

Health Care & Environment

02.10 LET’S REMAKE THE WAY WE MAKE THINGS

02.09 Obama shouldn’t compromise on birth control with GOP, religious leaders or an unpopular Congress - video

02.09 Cancer rates triple among New York police officers who responded to 9/11

02.08 The seed emergency: The threat to food and democracy

02.07 Bill Gates backs climate scientists lobbying for large-scale geoengineering

02.04 Your Day at the Beach Could Soon Lead to a Night at the Hospital

02.03 Obama Won't Touch Climate With a 10-Foot Pole

02.03 Komen reverses decision to cut Planned Parenthood funding

02.03 Reforming EU Deep-Sea Fisheries Management

02.02 Obama’s Support for Natural Gas Drilling "A Painful Moment" for Communities Exposed to Fracking- video

02.02 By defunding Planned Parenthood, the Susan G Komen Foundation betrays women

02.02 Ohio Tries to Escape Fate as a Dumping Ground for Fracking Fluid

01.31 Eleanor Smeal dissects Obama vs. Catholic Church controversy over birth control coverage - video

01.30 Report: Small planes still pour lead into skies

01.30 Scientists Call on Obama Administration to Use Science as Guide for Arctic

01.28 Universal health care proposal stalls in California Senate

01.27 Apple, Electronics and Environmental Ills

01.25 Solar Cheaper Than Diesel Making India’s Mittal Believer: Energy

01.24 Sounding an Alarm on Birds and Mercury

01.24 Why Don’t We Have Abundant Solar Power? Blame Financing, and Industry, not Science

01.22 The Money Traps in U.S. Health Care

01.22 Looking Inside the Twinkie

Ref. Dollars for Doctors - How Industry Money Reaches Physicians

Ref. 2010 Comparative Price Report Medical and Hospital Fees by Country - Graphics

Ref. Health at a Glance 2011 - OECD Indicators

Ref. : Why is Healthcare Absurdly Expensive in USA (Part 2) [Graphics] (Part 1 is here)

Video Health Care Systems in Less Corrupt Countries

“News” Media

02.07 Did Obama make the economy worse? Not according to most statistics

02.03 Media Watch: CNN's Erin Burnett regurgitates right-wing talking points to scare retired people - video

02.02 ABC's Iran Propaganda

02.02 The Ongoing “Foxification” of the Wall Street Journal

01.30 While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower

01.29 Fox News psychiatrist: Newt Gingrich's affairs 'mean he might make a strong president'

01.22 ‘Shocking victory’: With SOPA shelved, Markos Moulitsas on a way forward for Internet policy - video

Daily The Daily Howler

Justice Matters

02.05 Why the AGs Must Not Settle: Robo-signing Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

02.04 THE CAGING OF AMERICA

02.03 Senate Votes To Ban Its Members From Insider Trading... Kind Of

01.31 Senate clears way for vote on insider-trading ban

01.25 Why all the robo-signing? Shedding light on the shadow banking system

01.25 In Iraq, Haditha case is reminder of justice denied

01.22 Still Not Clear on SOPA & PIPA? Infographic w/Simple Explanations

US Politics, Policy & Culture

02.10 The Cancer in Occupy

02.10 How Opus Dei Influenced Rick Santorum

02.10 People Are Not Leaving the Labor Force

02.09 Obama, Explained

02.09 OPED: The White Underclass

02.09 EDITORIAL: A Terrible Transportation Bill

02.09 THE OBAMA MEMOS

02.06 Are Conservatives More Fearful Than Liberals?

02.04 Soaking the Poor, State by State

02.04 Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian's Rosy Outlook On The Future of Politics

02.03 SUPERBOWL XLVI: Are You Ready for Some Football???

02.03 Buffett rules: Sheldon Whitehouse introduces the Paying a Fair Share Act - video

02.02 Secrecy Shrouds ‘Super PAC’ Funds in Latest Filings

02.02 Steve Israel condemns GOP Keystone XL ‘stunt,’ cheers Democratic Drive to 25 to reclaim the House - video

02.01 Rich Patrons Are Major Source of Romney’s Cash

01.31 How Newt Gingrich Crippled Congress

01.30 The Truth About the Conservative Mind: Why Reactionaries from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin Have Fought Real Liberty

01.30 Corporate Rule Is Not Inevitable

01.30 Clashes in Oakland: 400 Arrests, Tear Gas, Flash-Bang Grenades

01.30 A European look at the US primaries - video

01.29 Obama’s Faux Populism Sounds Like Bill Clinton

01.25 Inside Romney’s Tax Returns: A Reading Guide

01.24 ILLUSIONS: Being Led Down the Primrose Path...???

01.24 Science Bulletins: Whales Give Dolphins a Lift - video

01.24 Buffett On Why Romney Should Pay Higher Taxes: He’s Just ‘Shoving Around Money,’ Not ‘Straining His Back’

01.24 THE OBAMA MEMOS

01.22 Three Takeaways From South Carolina

01.21 Why Is There So Much God in Our Politics? The Religious Right's Theocratic Plan for the 2012 Election

High Crimes?

Economics, Gov't. & Business

02.10 This is no bailout for Main Street America

02.10 Why the Foreclosure Deal May Not Be So Hot After All

02.10 Matt Taibbi assesses the $26 billion settlement designed to aid victims of foreclosure fraud - video

02.10 Foreclosure Deal to Spur U.S. Home Seizures

02.08 Banks Paying Homeowners to Avoid Foreclosures

02.07 App Stores Create 500,000 U.S. Jobs

02.07 The Payroll Tax Fight

02.07 Obama super PAC decision: President blesses fundraising for Priorities USA Action

02.06 How Privatizing Government Shovels Cash to Parasitic Corporations and Undermines Democracy

02.05 We’re More Unequal Than You Think – Graphic: Unequal rise in income

02.03 PRIVATE INEQUITY

02.02 The New American Divide

02.02 American Airlines proposes to end all four pension plans

02.01 Economics 101

01.30 New Strategy, Old Pentagon Budget

01.30 Where Did All the Workers Go? 60 Years of Economic Change in 1 Graph

01.29 The Apple Boycott: People Are Spouting Nonsense about Chinese Manufacturing

01.29 Made in the World

01.28 Matt Taibbi ponders whether Obama’s embrace of populist rhetoric is already impacting Wall Street - video

01.28 Sugar daddy Adelson could save $500 million in taxes if his boy Gingrich wins - video

01.28 How Swedes and Norwegians broke the power of the ‘1 percent’

01.27 Unemployment in Spain Rises to 22.9%

01.27 Chinese Company Continues Plan To Replace Workforce With 500,000 Robots

01.27 Details Emerge of New Financial Fraud Unit

01.27 Not all jobs are equal

01.27 The Shift from Manufacturing to Service Economy - Graphic

01.25 Billionaires Occupy Davos as 0.01% Bemoan Inequality

01.24 Germany has the economic strengths America once boasted

01.23 State Capitalism: The visible hand

01.22 How Big Money Bought Our Democracy, Corrupted Both Parties, and Set Us Up for Another Financial Crisis - video

01.22 How U.S. lost out on Apple's iPhone work

International

02.03 What the Occupy movement must learn from Sundance

02.02 US plans to halt Afghan combat role early surprise Kabul

01.31 TABLE TALK

01.30 With its deadly drones, the US is fighting a coward's war

01.30 UN panel aims for 'a future worth choosing'

01.26 Iran is ready to return to nuclear talks

01.24 Reagan’s Hand in Guatemala’s Genocide

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Democrats Revert to Form

COMMENTARY

Democrats Revert to Form

by Dave Lindorff

Democrats in Congress, still in full cowering mode, are about to hand the most unpopular president in the history of polling even more power to spy, unchecked, on Americans, despite clear evidence that the president has abused that power for the last six years, and despite his refusal to even answer questions about what those abuses have been to date.

It is hard to believe that this is the party that told voters only last fall that they should vote in Democrats so that the president would finally be held to account for his ongoing destruction of constitutional government.

If it weren't for the fact that the Democratic Party leadership has been a bunch of spineless twits and strategic dimwits for decades now, one would have to suspect that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were Republican "Manchurian Candidates." gradually embedded into the Democratic Party's leadership in order to destroy it from within, or that, perhaps, the two had been caught by Bush's spy network in compromising situations that have made it possible to blackmail them into doing the same thing. Certainly the work they have done over the course of their either months in control of the Congress look like for all the world like the work of sabateurs.

It's a bit like my earlier observation that no real Manchurian Candidate could have done more damage to the United States than Bush and Cheney have managed to do in their six and a half years in office.

Which raises the bizarre thought that maybe all four of these people are actually treacherous spies working in collusion on an evil plan of national destruction--perhaps as a top-secret Al Qaeda cell?

Sadly, I suspect that the real situation is much more prosaic: Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid appear to simply be small-minded politicians with no real principles and no regard for their oaths of office or for the Constitution that is supposed to be their "bible," while Bush seems to be a dimwit with an inflated view of his importance and Cheney is simply a power-mad criminal of limited intellect but with limitless ruthlessness.

Given this sad reality, the only hope, it seems to me, for this tottering republic, is for the public to reject both parties in the coming election. One thing has been clear of late, and that is that the right, the left and the middle--speaking here of the American people, not the political class--have a great deal in common with regard to their common desire for a nation at peace, for a government that responds to their needs, not the needs of corporations and the super rich, and for leaders who listen to them, not to those with fat wallets.

As long as we remain shackled to a system of these two thoroughly corrupt political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, there seems little hope for national salvation.

Lindorff speaking

About the author: Philadelphia journalist Dave Lindorff is co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.

Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved.

Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.

This story was published on August 3, 2007.

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