News Items

  • Affidavit by Daniel Ellsberg for Plowshare Activists Being Allowed a Defense of Necessity

    In 1971 I gave the U.S. Senate, the New York Times and the Washington Post copies of what have come to be known as The Pentagon Papers. I was arrested on twelve felony counts. My trial was dismissed because of government misconduct which figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon…These considerations bear on two other elements of the necessity defense, the “lack of legal alternatives” and the “imminence” of the harms to be averted. Again, I speak from my own experience, but not only mine, in saying that it is the perceived insufficiency of other means, by themselves not…

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  • A Long List of Democratic Candidates Requires a Large Catalog of Their Funders

    By Sam Haut: As the first debates for the Democratic primary begin, and the list of candidates has grown to 24, it can be difficult to contextualize where each candidate has received funding from over the course of their time in office. What follows is a list of the Democratic candidates and the top sources for how much money they’ve made and where those top sources come from.

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  • NATO and US Foreign Policy: Dangers Ahead

    RootsAction.org held a news conference Thursday on “NATO and U.S. Foreign Policy: Dangers Ahead” hosted by the Institute for Public Accuracy. Speakers include former State Department officials Matthew Hoh, Ann Wright, as well as Martin Fleck. The event was moderated by Norman Solomon.

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  • Media Advisory: “NATO and U.S. Foreign Policy: Dangers Ahead”

    At 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 2, 2019 at the National Press Club: On the same day that President Trump is scheduled to meet with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House, this news conference will focus on the U.S.-NATO relationship. Speakers include former State Department officials Matthew Hoh and Ann Wright.

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  • Statement by Floyd Abrams in response to Attorney General nominee William Barr’s remarks on the First Amendment

    “It’s one thing to say that there could be circumstances in which a journalist’s need to protect her sources could lead to a potential finding of contempt of court if she refused to obey a court order requiring such disclosure. But the notion that a journalist could properly be jailed for publishing material that the government thinks could ‘hurt the country’ is something else entirely and would be deeply threatening to First Amendment norms in general and journalistic freedom in particular.”

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  • Statement on NAFTA’s “Kafkaesque” Turn

    The supposedly concluded renegotiation of NAFTA has reached a Kafkaesque stage. As the United States Trade Representative has stated: “The United States and Mexico have reached a preliminary agreement in principle, subject to finalization and implementation.” Not only the negotiations have not been finalized, and without Canada, but the texts remain hidden from the public.

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  • What’s the Cost of Medicare for All?

    Even a Koch-backed think tank finds Medicare for all would cut health care spending. In a report released by the Mercatus Center, a single-payer health care system would offset costs with even greater savings. The Intercept and other media reporting on this are citing the work of Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler. They are distinguished professors of health policy at the City University of New York at Hunter College and lecturers in medicine at Harvard Medical School. They have written an analysis of the work of the Koch-backed think tank, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which is…

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  • Trump Team Hired Israeli Spy Firm Used by Harvey Weinstein to Attack Obama Officials on Iran Deal

    “Aides to Donald Trump, the U.S. president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a ‘dirty ops’ campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal. People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to ‘get dirt’ on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.”

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  • From the desk of Noam Chomsky

    From the desk of Noam Chomsky

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  • 15 Years Later: The Whistleblower Who Almost Blocked the Iraq War

    Media Advisory: Press Conference to Mark 15th Anniversary Of Leak by GCHQ Translator Katharine Gun Revealing US “Dirty Tricks” at UN for Iraq War When:  Thursday, 1 March 2018 at 11:00 a.m. Where:  Head office, National Union of Journalists Headland House, 72 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NB Who:  Katharine Gun, Thomas Drake, Matthew Hoh, Jesselyn Radack This press conference will take place the day before the 15th anniversary of the Observer’s publication of the explosive March 2, 2003 story “US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war” — based on a leak by GCHQ translator Katharine Gun — revealing the US National Security Agency’s UN surveillance memo that aimed to grease the way for the…

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  • What If Provisional Ballots Exceed the Margin of Victory?

    SCOTT NOVAKOWSKI Novakowski is a senior policy analyst with Demos and the author of the recent report “Provisional Ballots: Where to Watch in 2008.” He said today: “When implemented correctly, provisional ballots can enfranchise voters. However, when states adopt unnecessarily stringent standards for counting them and poll workers are not adequately trained in their administration,…

  • Initiatives

    CHRIS STROHM A reporter for CongressDaily [subscription required] who has been writing about initiatives on the ballot in Tuesday’s election, Strohm said today: “There are initiatives on a wide variety of issues including Michigan Proposal 2, which would repeal a ban and allow government funding of stem-cell research, and Montana Initiative 555, which would give…

  • Security and Auditability of Electronic Voting Machines

    PENNY VENETIS Venetis is plantiff’s counsel in a four-year lawsuit spearheaded by the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers School of Law. According to expert reports conducted as a part of the lawsuit, “approximately 10,000 voting machines used in 18 out of the 21 counties in New Jersey can be manipulated to throw an election.” The…

  • What About Constitutional Powers? Two Views

    MARJORIE COHN Cohn is the president of the National Lawyers Guild, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law. She recently wrote the piece “A Palin Theocracy.” Cohn said today: “The next president will almost certainly appoint one to three…

  • Voting Machines

    DAN WALLACH Wallach is an associate professor at Rice University and also the associate director of the National Science Foundation’s ACCURATE (A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections), a $7.5 million research effort across six different institutions to improve U.S. election systems. He said today: “Present-day electronic voting systems have a variety…

  • Attack on Syria

    BBC reports: “Syria has protested angrily to both the U.S. and Iraq after what it said was a U.S. helicopter raid inside its territory that killed eight civilians. Syria summoned U.S. and Iraqi envoys to condemn the ‘aggressive act.’ Iraq said the area targeted was used by militants to launch cross-border attacks in Iraq.” JOSHUA…

  • Greenspan Expert

    The lead piece in the Washington Post today is “Greenspan Says he was Wrong on Regulation.” (The piece is critiqued by economist Dean Baker, who continuously warned of the ramifications of the housing bubble since early in this decade.) ROBERT AUERBACH Professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Auerbach wrote the…

  • * Lawsuit in Response to Long Lines * Black Turnout

    JOHN BONIFAZ A coalition of Pennsylvania voters and civil rights groups, led by the NAACP State Conference of Pennsylvania, yesterday filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia seeking to ensure that voters receive emergency paper ballots on Election Day when 50 percent or more voting machines become inoperable at any polling site in the…

  • Is Obama a Socialist?

    JOHN R. MacARTHUR MacArthur is publisher of Harper’s Magazine and author of the new book “You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America.” MacArthur said today: “Obama’s number one bundler is Goldman Sachs. He is advised on economics by Robert Rubin, the extremely wealthy director and senior counselor of Citigroup, the former…

  • Long Lines on Election Day: A Form of Voter Suppression?

    LAWRENCE NORDEN Norden is the director of the Voting Technology Project at the Brennan Center for Justice. The Brennan Center, Common Cause and Verified Voting recently issued a 50-state report card that grades each state on its preparedness for election system breakdowns. Norden said today: “There’s no question that in the last few years, election…

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