Justice ends investigation of former House GOP leader DeLay
By Jordan Fabian and Susan Crabtree – 08/16/10 12:07 PM ET
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and yet….

Don Siegelman and the Evil of a Political Prosecution
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When Wall Street Rules, We Get Wall Street Rules
Whacking the Middle Class
By DEAN BAKER

The middle class is getting whacked by the Great Recession. Fifteen million people are out of work, another 9 million workers can only find part-time jobs, and millions more have given up looking for work altogether. Those lucky enough to be employed are unlikely to see any substantial wage gains for years to come.

Millions of homeowners are facing the loss of their home and more than 10 million are underwater in their mortgage. Most of the huge baby boom cohort is approaching retirement with little other than Social Security to support them, now that the collapse of the housing bubble has destroyed their home equity and much of the rest of their savings.

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And let’s be clear: force-feeding is torture, as Luke Mitchell notes so cogently in Harper’s, at http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/07/0082566.

MCM

via Citizens for Legitimate Government (CLG):

Ramadan at Guantánamo: Nightly force-feedings
BY CAROL ROSENBERG

Here’s a new twist in the U.S. military’s Islamic sensitivity effort in the prison camps for suspected terrorists at the Guantánamo Bay Navy base:

Military medical staff are force-feeding a secret number of prisoners on hunger strike between dusk and dawn during the Muslim fasting holiday of Ramadan.

The prison camps spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Bradley Fagan, says it is U.S. Southern Command policy to no longer reveal the exact number of detainees being shackled by guards into restraint chairs for twice daily feedings.

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Hard Times Are Getting Harder: Why The Silence?
by Danny Schechter

Aren’t job losses and foreclosures as important as a “Ground Zero Mosque” (which isn’t a mosque, and hasn’t been built and wouldn’t be at ground zero?)

We know we live in hard times that are on the verge of getting harder with 500,000 new claims for unemployment last week, a recent record.

The stock market may be over for now as fear and panic drives small investors out. Big corporations hoard stashes of cash rather then hire workers. The D-Word (depression) is back in play.

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Fox News shareholder funded ‘Ground Zero mosque’ imam
By Raw Story

The second largest shareholder in News Corp. — the parent company of Fox News — has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes linked to the imam planning to build a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, says a report from Yahoo!News.

According to the report from Yahoo!’s John Cook, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who owns seven percent of News Corp., “has directly funded [Imam Feisal Abdul] Rauf’s projects to the tune of more than $300,000.”

Cook reports that Prince Al-Waleed’s personal charity, the Kingdom Foundation, donated $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a project sponsored by two of Rauf’s initiatives, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, which is building the Manhattan mosque.

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Editorial: Cannibalism or Disinfectant? Missing the Plot in Arizona
by Denis G. Campbell

Sunlight is a great disinfectant, but it’s cloudy and raining over the Arizona election desert. In the few hours since t r u t h o u t ran my article on transparency and hacking problems with vote scanning machines in Arizona, two events occurred demonstrating a continued preference to attack accusers rather than the problem.

Having watched past Arizona vote machine election official fiascos for three years from abroad, UK Progressive recommends that since the Arizona election system seems to be so badly broken:

1. Federal observers, led by US Attorney General Eric Holder be dispatched to Arizona county tabulation and polling centres from the moment ‘vote by mail’ balloting begins until a final count is determined.

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From Josh Mitteldorf:

Mark,

Though I have no firsthand knowledge, I’ve seen enough research to find it plausible that the truth was that Tillman was murdered by a military firing squad because the Bush Administration saw his potential to become a potent spokesman for the anti-war movement.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/25159

Josh

Here’s that piece (from July, 2007):

New Evidence Clearly Indicates Pat Tillman Was Executed

Army medical examiners concluded Tillman was shot three times in the head from just 10 yards away, no evidence of “friendly fire” damage at scene, Army attorneys congratulated each other on cover-up, Wesley Clark concludes “orders came from the very top” to murder pro-football star because he was about to become an anti-war political icon.

Prison Planet | July 27, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson

Astounding new details surrounding the death of Pat Tillman clearly indicate that top brass decided to execute the former pro football star in cold blood to prevent him from returning home and becoming an anti-war icon.

These same criminals then engaged in a sophisticated conspiracy to create a phony “friendly fire” cover story.

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Last night (Sunday) HBO aired the first half of Spike Lee and Sam Pollard’s must-watch sequel to their When the Levees Broke. The second half of this great documentary–If God Is Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise–airs tonight at 9:00 p.m. EST.

MCM

Spike Lee: “We Knew the Story Was Not Done”
By Joshua Alston, Newsweek

Spike Lee discusses the making of his new documentary about the ongoing impact of Hurricane Katrina and the state of New Orleans today.

As the saga of New Orleans’s rebirth continues, so does director Spike Lee’s documentation of it. If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise, which premiered Aug. 23 on HBO, is his second four-hour documentary about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, following 2006′s Peabody Award-winning When the Levees Broke. He spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Joshua Alston. Excerpts:

Did you plan from the outset to revisit New Orleans sometime after you did When the Levees Broke?

We knew we were going to revisit [it] before we were even finished with When the Levees Broke. We knew the story was not done, not that it’s going to be done any time soon; we wanted to revisit it, and HBO agreed with me. It was just a matter of determining when we would return, and we felt like five was a good number, so we decided to do something that could air just prior to the fifth anniversary.

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Covert Operations
The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
by Jane Mayer August 30, 2010

On May 17th, a black-tie audience at the Metropolitan Opera House applauded as a tall, jovial-looking billionaire took the stage. It was the seventieth annual spring gala of American Ballet Theatre, and David H. Koch was being celebrated for his generosity as a member of the board of trustees; he had recently donated $2.5 million toward the company’s upcoming season, and had given many millions before that. Koch received an award while flanked by two of the gala’s co-chairs, Blaine Trump, in a peach-colored gown, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, in emerald green. Kennedy’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had been a patron of the ballet and, coincidentally, the previous owner of a Fifth Avenue apartment that Koch had bought, in 1995, and then sold, eleven years later, for thirty-two million dollars, having found it too small.

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