By Dave Lindorff

    I remember back in 1970, when I was a student and anti-war activist in Connecticut, watching an ad on TV for Lowell Weicker, who was running for US Senate. The ad was very powerful: It showed Weicker playing in the yard with his son, who looked like he was maybe 10 or 12.  Weicker was saying that when his son was a tot, the US was fighting in Vietnam, and he didn’t want us to be fighting there when his son reached draft age.  

I voted for Weicker, a Republican who went on to win a Senate seat where he played a key role in helping to bring an end to the Nixon presidency.

As it happens, the Vietnam War ended five years later, when Weicker’s son was probably 17. He didn’t get drafted, but I remain struck by the fact that we could, back then, even contemplate the idea of being at war for so long.

By Dave Lindorff

Is America at the mercy of an invasion of the pumpheads?

The bizarre behavior of Bill Clinton during this campaign season, which has seen this once smooth-talking and politically uber-sophisticated campaigner repeatedly stick a foot in his mouth and undermine his wife’s struggling campaign, raises the issue of whether he is suffering from postperfusion syndrome—a now recognized cognitive impairment common in patients who have undergone heart bypass surgery.

From Reuters:

A new video game to be released Monday allows players to simulate[?] the assassination of President Kennedy.

The release of "JFK Reloaded" [cute title, eh?] is timed to coincide with the 41st anniversary of Kennedy's murder in Dallas and was designed to demonstrate a lone gunman was able to kill the president.

"It is despicable," said David Smith, a spokesman for Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, the late president's brother. He was informed of the game on Friday but declined further comment.

Kirk Ewing, managing director of the Scottish firm Traffic Games, which developed the game, said he understood some people would be horrified at the concept, but he insisted he and his team had nothing but respect for Kennedy and for history.