Guantánamo and Yemen: Obama Capitulates to Critics and Suspends Prisoner Transfers by Andy Worthington January 7, 2010 For the last 12 days, since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab slipped through every security net going, and allegedly tried and failed to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, Republican critics of Barack Obama have tried every trick in the book to undermine the president’s authority, with former Vice President Dick Cheney claiming that the incident demonstrated that Obama’s “low key response” to the failed attack “makes us less safe,” and numerous lawmakers and pundits — joined by a few easily frightened Democrats — stating that no more Yemeni prisoners should be released from Guantánamo, following the transfer to Yemeni custody of six men the weekend before the failed attack. Supporters of Guantánamo, and critics of releasing any more of the 198 men still held, were fired up in particular by an inaccurate report on ABC News, in which it was stated that two former Guantánamo prisoners were amongst the leaders of the al-Qaeda-inspired group in Yemen ...
The Myth of War Prosperity, Part 2 by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2010 Part 1 | Part 2 Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy by Robert Higgs (Oxford University Press: 2006); 240 pages; $35. So the New Deal was far from a success. But most conservatives and even many leftist scholars will concede this; they simply adopt a different, and even more widely accepted fallacy, the one of “war prosperity,” which Higgs canvasses in chapter 3. “According to the orthodox account,” he writes, the war got the economy out of the Depression. Evidence for this claim usually includes the great decline in the standard measure of the unemployment rate, the large increase in the standard measure of real gross national product (GNP), and the slight increase in the standard measure of real personal consumption. ...
Private: Commentaries – 2010 by Future of Freedom Foundation January 1, 2010 December 2010 Hoekstra Receives CIAs Bootlicking Award by James Bovard Plumbing New Depths on Guantanamo by Andy Worthington The Power of Ideas on Liberty by Jacob G. Hornberger Time to Rein in Federal Spending by Laurence M. Vance The Jacob Hornberger Show: Public Schooling vs. Educational Liberty by Jacob G. Hornberger Guantnamo Prisoners Sacrificed in Political Horse-Trading by Andy Worthington Beware the Campaign for War against Iran by Sheldon Richman Cut the Tax Cuts by Laurence M. Vance Make Bill of Rights Day America's Anti-Politician Day by James Bovard The Jacob Hornberger Show: "The Libertarian Society" by Jacob G. Hornberger Guantnamo: A Dismal Week for America by Andy Worthington Economic Liberty Lecture Series by Bart Frazier Wikileaks: Suppressing the Investigation of Torture by Andy Worthington A Libertarian View of the Estate Tax by Laurence M. Vance We All Have a Stake in the Outcome of this Battle by Jacob G. Hornberger A Message from Jacob Hornberger ...
Hornberger’s Blog, January 2010 by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2010 Friday, January 29, 2010 The Constitution Doesn’t Give Rights to Anyone, including Americans by Jacob G. Hornberger An interesting and revealing exchange regarding rights and the Constitution took place recently between defense attorney Bruce Fein, who spoke at FFF’s 2008 conference “Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties,” and Guantanamo military prosecutor Edward White. Fein is representing a ...
Terrorism Is a Cost of Empire by Jacob G. Hornberger December 28, 2009 To justify the federal government’s massive post-9/11 infringements on civil liberties, the proponents of Big Government have sometimes said, “There hasn’t been another major terrorist attack on the United States since 9/11. ” I have responded with the following: “But if there had been another major terrorist attack, you Big Government advocates would be using ...
Murder is Murder, Whether by Pinochet or the CIA by Jacob G. Hornberger December 10, 2009 Thirty-five years after military strongman Augusto Pinochet took power in a coup in 1973 in Chile, the Chilean people have just discovered that Pinochet ordered the murder of former Chilean president Eduardo Frei Montalva. Even though Pinochet is dead, criminal indictments have been issued against people who allegedly participated in the assassination. Of course, Chileans ...
Obama’s Message to Schoolchildren by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2009 When President Obama announced last August that he would address American schoolchildren in a nationwide televised speech, the Right went bananas. August, of course, was the height of the health-care controversy, and conservative leaders and media commentators imagined that Obama was going to make an overt pitch for his quest for government control over medicine and medical insurance, as ...
Hornberger’s Blog, December 2009 by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2009 Thursday, December 31, 2009 Fight Cuban Tyranny with American Freedom by Jacob G. Hornberger Once again, the U.S. government’s 112-year obsession with controlling Cuba rears its ugly head. This time, it involves the arrest by Cuban authorities of an American subcontractor who works for a company named “Development Alternatives, Inc.” According to the New York Times, (see here and ...
The U.S. Invasion of the Vatican by Jacob G. Hornberger November 11, 2009 Suppose President Obama expressed disapproval with the Vatican’s method of electing the Pope. It’s not democratic enough, the president says. Why should a small group of Catholic cardinals be the only voters? Why shouldn’t all Catholics get to vote for the Pope? Isn’t that what democracy is all about? Obama demands that the Vatican open ...
Frightening Voters into Submission by James Bovard November 1, 2009 Former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge has a new book out that reveals that he almost resigned because the Bush administration was hustling bogus terror alerts before the 2004 election. Ridge’s revelation was not surprising to people who had closely followed the tactics Bush used to snare a second term. During the 2004 campaign, residents of swing states were under ...
Hornberger’s Blog, November 2009 by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2009 Monday, November 30, 2009 The U.S. Government Is Taking Us Down by Jacob G. Hornberger President Obama has decided to up the ante in Afghanistan by acceding to his generals’ request to send an additional 34,000 troops to that beleaguered nation. What better proof that those of us who opposed the initial invasion of Afghanistan were right? The decision to treat the ...
Drug-War Assassinations by Jacob G. Hornberger October 28, 2009 The U.S. government has now extended its assassination program to the drug war. According to the New York Times, the Pentagon now has an assassination list for suspected drug dealers in Afghanistan. No arrests. No hearings. No attorneys. No judges. No trials. Just kill them. Great! So now the occupation of Afghanistan has expanded not ...
