By Dave Lindorff

President Obama, in his visit to China, held a “town meeting” with
Chinese students in which he praised openness and lectured them on the
value of freedom of information, saying that he is a “supporter of
non-censorship” and that open access to information was a “source of
strength.”

And yet America is hardly free of censorship. Heck, the president
himself has gone to court to prevent the release of photographs of US
troops torturing captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Talk
about censorship! But it goes way beyond just such crude, totalitarian
style control over information.

In this video (full length 1:13:15) scroll ahead to 53:55 to hear veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern question Congresswoman Jane Harman on her vote for the Authorization to Use Military Force. McGovern also asks her about her rather dramatic shift two years ago to a position of opposing warrantless spying and civil liberties abuses, and whether that shift should be credited to the primary challenge made by Marcy Winograd, which Winograd is renewing next year.

At about 1:01 Harman responds. She claims not to have altered her views whatsoever, which is of course demonstrably false. As McGovern points out, her initial response to the publication of a report on warrantless spying was that it should have been kept secret. On the Authorization to Use Military Force, Harman claims great gullibility and ignorance. She points out that only Congresswoman Barbara Lee voted against it, and claims no one could possibly have known what horrors it would be used for. This is the same law President Obama claims gives him the power to imprison people without charge.

By Dave Lindorff

Next time you see a junkie sprawled at the curb in the downtown of
your nearest city, or read about someone who died of a heroin overdose,
just imagine a big yellow sign posted next to him or her saying: “Your
Federal Tax Dollars at Work.”

Kudos to the New York Times, and to reporters Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, for their lead article
today reporting that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan’s
stunningly corrupt President Hamid Karzai, a leading drug lord in the
world’s major opium-producing nation, has for eight years been on the
CIA payroll.

By Dave Lindorff

Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton and other big city cops
are calling for a new system of “citizen watch” programs, allegedly to
help them spot hidden terrorists. I view this new call for a nation of
private spies with a deep suspicion born of experience with the LAPD
and its historic penchant for spying on law-abiding residents of that
city.

It's time to repeal telecom immunity for illegal spying, restore privacy protection to library and bookstore records, and roll back the worst abuses of the PATRIOT ACT.

Repeal telecom immunity and roll back PATRIOT ACT abuses

By Dave Lindorff

Bill Clinton was the worst thing to happen to the Democratic Party
and to progressives since that racist warmonger Woodrow Wilson won the
presidency and dragged the US into the utterly pointless and incredibly
bloody First World War.

Clinton, by posing as a progressive, confused and undermined, and
ultimately betrayed the liberal/progressive wing of the party,
shattering what was left of the New Deal coalition and leaving the
American left adrift and riven by the conflict between those who
thought the Democratic Party was the only viable vehicle for
progressive reform and those who thought it was hopelessly in the grip
of corporate interests.

Barack Obama offers the hope of bringing that era of debilitating confusion to an end.

By David Swanson

Drafted in preparation for panel discussion at Veterans for Peace national convention August 7, 2009, on topic of "Holding the Architects of Illegal Wars and War Crimes Accountable."

Seven years to the day after the Downing Street Minutes meeting at which top British officials famously discussed U.S. President George W. Bush's intent to launch a war against Iraq whether or not any means could be found to legalize it, on July 23rd, the United Nations hosted a discussion of ways in which wars of aggression are given pseudo-legal cover. Included were remarks by Jean Bricmont and Noam Chomsky. It is not hard to imagine how different such discussions would be were the architects of the Iraq War ever held accountable for it in any way.

By Dave Lindorff

If this were the democracy that the Founding Fathers thought they
were creating, word from CIA Director Leon Panetta that his agency had
lied to Congress and specifically that it had lied repeatedly from
9-11-2001 through the end of 2008 concerning an as-yet undisclosed
secret program, would have virtually every member of Congress in a
state of rebellion, demanding answers.

After all, the CIA is required by law to report to at least the
majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees and to the majority and minority leaders of both houses of
Congress about such things.

But not only did the spy agency not report on what it was up to; it lied about what it was up to.

By David Swanson

The book I just read is in the running, in my estimation, for second-best text on how to undo the imperial presidency. (Can't be first, of course.) It's called "Madison's Nightmare: How Executive Power Threatens American Democracy," by Peter M. Shane, and it's much more about what the problem is than how to solve it, but the two things are not really separable, and the analysis of the problem here is invaluable.

By David Swanson

In probably the most disturbing testimony to hit Capitol Hill since Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee in May and refused to rule out lawless detention or to agree that government officials can sometimes be prosecuted for their crimes, on Wednesday Holder appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and, among much else, refused five times to agree that warrantless spying is illegal and unconstitutional. I spoke to Holder in April, and he assured me that I would be proud of my country. When?