Category Archives: Politics

Our Diminished Democracy

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In his White House Watch column for the Washington Post, Dan Froomkin does a good job of summing up the Bush administration’s disastrous response to September 11. In doing so, though, he also  summarizes how these actions reflect not just a response to difficult circumstances, but rather a conscious power grab on the part of Cheney and his advisors.

Froomkin’s daily column remains a valuable resource for following the misdeeds of the current administration. Every installment raises a painful question: why isn’t the media more interested in exposing this lawbreaking?

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Bush’s Failures, All in One Spot

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Brad Reed has a thorough breakdown of the Bush administration’s criminality and ineptitude in a  Alternet story, “The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Administration.” It’s depressing to look back at eight years of lows, but copious links and a quick-hit analysis do a good job of summing everything up.

Sometimes I think about the colossal task it”ll be to sum up for my children the immense awfulness of the Presidency. “We get it, we get it,” they’ll say, to which I’ll only be able to point back at resources like this and say, “No, you don’t get it at all.”

Fighting Presidential Lawlessness

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Senator Chris Dodd gave a Congressional speech yesterday denouncing the Democratic capitulation on the recently introduced surveillance “compromise,” highlighting how expanded surveillance opportunities and no-questions-asked amnesty for telecommunications companies that illegally enabled unlawful spying are part and parcel of the Bush administration’s tapestry of misconduct. For those unfamiliar with the issue, the whole speech is worth reading to get a sense of why this latest bill matters.

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The Federal Budget in One Poster

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Graphic designer Jess Bachman has created a pretty amazing image that breaks down the discretionary budget for the federal government, from the $515 billion going to the Deparment of Defense to the $13 million going to the Office of Governmental Ethics (unsurprisingly, the latter is the smallest one on the board).

 

The visual design is striking. It’s also impressive how the poster crams a lot of detail into a small space. It’s perfect for starting an argument with your conservative uncle about which areas should be cut!

The Worst of the Worst?

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The McClatchy newspaper group has done excellent independent reporting on the excesses and illegalities of the Bush administration. A recent series, Guantanamo: Beyond the Law, highlights the travesty of the United States’ Cuban-based detention center. As a comprehensive series of stories, interviews, photos and videos makes clear, many of the prisoners that have spent years detained in harsh conditions had little or no connection to terrorism. Many were instead turned over to U.S. forces for reward money or revenge for local slights.

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