Did the Shoe Thrower Hate America for Its Freedom and Values? by Jacob G. Hornberger December 16, 2008 Notice an important aspect of the shoe-throwing incident in Iraq: No one is suggesting that the reason that the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush did so because of his hatred for America’s “freedom and values.” That was the line that Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other U.S. officials immediately issued and repeated ad infinitum, ad nauseam ...
Democracy, American-Style by Jacob G. Hornberger December 15, 2008 American schoolchildren are receiving some valuable lessons in democracy, American-style. There is the matter of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is accused of soliciting bribes in return for the appointment of a U.S. Senator to replace Barack Obama. I really don’t see what all the hub-hub is about. After all, bribery is the name of the game ...
Is Mexico’s Drug War a Model for the U.S.? by Jacob G. Hornberger December 12, 2008 Throughout the decades-long history of the drug war, its proponents have had a favorite line when confronted with the abject failure of the war: “Well, it really hasn’t been waged at all. If they really fought it hard, we would have won long ago.” Thus, no matter how many people were incarcerated, no matter how ...
Stimulating a New Planet by Jacob G. Hornberger December 11, 2008 In the 1951 sci-fi movie “When Worlds Collide,” a giant asteroid is headed toward our solar system and is going collide with Earth, destroying the planet and everyone on it. However, a smaller planet, whose atmosphere is similar to that of Earth, is circulating around the asteroid and provides hope for a ...
Enemy Combatants and Freedom of Speech by Jacob G. Hornberger December 10, 2008 Some Americans favor the federal government’s post-9/11 assumption of power to arrest Americans and treat them as “enemy combatants” in the “war on terrorism.” It doesn’t matter to them that the Pentagon now has the power to round up Americans, keep them in prison camps indefinitely, torture them, and deny them all the rights ...
Hitler Favored Public Works Too by Jacob G. Hornberger December 9, 2008 As part of his plan to revive the economy, President-elect Obama is promising the largest public-works project since the Interstate Highway System. I realize that some people get upset when comparisons are made to Adolf Hitler but wouldn’t we be remiss if we didn’t recognize that public works was one of Hitler’s core programs for Nazi Germany? And yes, ...
The Nullification of the Bill of Rights by Jacob G. Hornberger December 8, 2008 Last Friday the U.S. Supreme decided to hear the Ali al-Marri case, about which we have written extensively during the past several years. See my November 25 blog post entitled “The al-Marri Case Affects Us All,” which includes links to most of the commentaries we have published on the al-Marri case. The case involves the power of the U.S. ...
Chemical Ali and U.S. Hypocrisy in Iraq by Jacob G. Hornberger December 5, 2008 Saddam Hussein’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed, also known as “Chemical Ali,” has just received a death sentence by an Iraqi court. According to the Washington Post, the punishment was for “his role in crushing a Shiite revolt in 1991, after the Persian Gulf War.” The context in which the crushing of that revolt took place is an interesting one and ...
Welfare-State Dependency in America by Jacob G. Hornberger December 4, 2008 How pathetic to see the executives of American automobile companies on their knees before the members of Congress, begging them to use taxpayer monies to bail them out of their financial difficulties. What a fine example of what the welfare state has done to Americans. Self-reliance? Alas, a quaint and obsolete term that has no ...
Why Not Expand Torture to the Drug War? by Jacob G. Hornberger December 3, 2008 The pro-torture advocates claim that torture is an important tool in the arsenal of the U.S. military that is necessary to keep us safe from terrorist attacks. The idea is that if the military captures a terrorist who has information about a pending terrorist attack, the torturers will be able to torture the information ...
Lying About the Iraq Invasion by Jacob G. Hornberger December 2, 2008 In reflecting on his war on Iraq in an interview this week with ABC, President Bush made some revealing statements. He first said that “the biggest regret of all the presidency has been the intelligence failure in Iraq. I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.” He was, of course, referring to Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which ...
Hornberger’s Blog, December 2008 by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2008 Wednesday, December 31, 2008 Stop Foreign Aid to Israel (and Everywhere Else) by Jacob G. Hornberger I can already hear the pro-empire, pro-intervention crowd making their announcement after a terrorist attack in the United States by a victim of the Israeli bombing in Gaza: “The attack had nothing to do with anger and hatred arising from the unconditional financial and military aid ...
