- The documents — many marked secret — form part of the military’s internal investigation, and confirm much of what happened at Haditha, a Euphrates River town where Marines killed 24 Iraqis, including a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, women and children, some just toddlers.Haditha became a defining moment of the war, helping cement an enduring Iraqi distrust of the United States and a resentment that not one Marine has been convicted.
- No justice for Bradley Manning
- The US government has made an example of Bradley Manning to prevent others from challenging the American empire.
Private Bradley Manning was just 22 years old when he allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of US State Department cables and video evidence of war crimes to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. For that act of courage that revealed to the world the true face of the American empire, he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.
After waiting more than 18 months, half of which he spent in torturous solitary confinement that he was only removed from after an international outcry and the resignation of a top State Department official, Manning is finally getting a shot at justice - if we can think of a military court as justice - when his case moves to the pre-trial hearing phase this Friday. But whether Manning is ultimately found guilty or not is beside the point: All one needs to know about American justice is that if he had murdered civilians and desecrated their corpses - if he had the moral capacity to commit war crimes, not the audacity to expose them - he'd be better off today.
- Refusal to Veto Detainee Bill A Historic Tragedy for Rights
- US President Barack Obama’s apparent decision to not veto a defense spending bill that codifies indefinite detention without trial into US law and expands the military’s role in holding terrorism suspects does enormous damage to the rule of law both in the US and abroad, Human Rights Watch said today.
- White House Backs Away from Defense Bill Veto Threat
- The White House today announced that it will support passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contains harmful provisions that some legislators have said could authorize the U.S. military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians, including American citizens, anywhere in the world. The final version of the NDAA was agreed to earlier this week by House and Senate conferees.
- President’s Detention Plan Tests American Legal Tradition
- President Obama’s proposal for a new legal system in which terrorism suspects could be held in “prolonged detention” inside the United States without trial would be a departure from the way this country sees itself, as a place where people in the grip of the government either face criminal charges or walk free.
- Obama Apologists Ignoring the Rotting Corpse of Anwar al-Awlaki
- It’s been amusing to see how Obama apologists have taken Lawfare’s very helpful explainer on the NDAA’s detainee provisions to pretend that their president isn’t signing a bill that he believes authorizes the indefinite detention of American citizens.
- Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan
- President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.
- Detainees Will Still Be Held, but Not Tried, Official Says
- The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.
- 2011: A Year In The NRA's "Insane Paranoid" Conspiracy Theories
- Former National Rifle Association (NRA) chief Ray Arnet once said, "You keep any special interest group alive by nurturing the crisis atmosphere." The organization has long taken this sentiment to heart. For years, the NRA has warned that nationwide gun bans and confiscation were right around the corner. These threats made up in hysterical rhetoric for what they lacked in credibility.
But sometimes, your run-of-the-mill fearmongering just isn't enough. In 2011 the NRA repeatedly turned to one of their favorite weapons to keep alive this crisis atmosphere justifying their extremist political agenda and their own existence: conspiracy theories.
- Fox News Fails Third Grade U.S. Geography Test
- In the last two weeks, we've pointed out that Fox News' graphics department stunningly failed to accurately portray the fact that the unemployment rate dropped from 9 percent to 8.6 percent in November.
But Fox's graphics woes apparently aren't limited to misrepresenting the unemployment rate. Tonight, the network's premiere "straight news" political program, Special Report with Bret Baier, did a segment on possible paths to victory for President Obama's re-election campaign. And in one graphic, Fox mislabeled Utah as Nevada:
- Fox & Friends' 10 Stupidest Moments Of 2011
- Anyone who has had the misfortune to regularly watch Fox News' morning show, Fox & Friends, knows how unique a program it is. Hidden behind the three friendly, smiling faces of the show's co-hosts Brian Kilmeade, Steve Doocy, and Gretchen Carlson, lie some of the network's most aggressive and unrelenting misinformers. But just like last year, Fox & Friends punctuated its incessant campaign to promote conservative politics with some occasional funny and outrageous moments. Therefore, we present Fox & Friends' stupidest moments of 2011. Enjoy!
- 2011: The Year Of The Right-Wing Media's War On The American Worker
- This was a banner year in the right-wing media's campaign to belittle working Americans. In the early part of the year, media conservatives promoted anti-union laws in Wisconsin and Ohio, transitioned to attacking the National Labor Relations Board, and spent the entirety of the year demonizing union workers, low-income Americans, and the unemployed.
- VIDEO: Season's Greetings From Fox
- As winter descends, Fox is keeping with its annual tradition of using snowstorms and cold temperatures to mock global warming.
The suggestion that local winter weather somehow disproves global, long-term warming trends is a recurring theme at Fox, despite its faulty logic. During the hot summer months, Fox News' silence on global warming is deafening. But like clockwork, when the snow starts to accumulate so does Fox's climate coverage.
- Misinformer Of The Year: Rupert Murdoch And [Fox] News Corp.
- For years, Media Matters has documented the stream of purposeful misinformation that flows from Murdoch's American properties, most notably Fox News, where the misinformation has taken an epic turn for the worse under President Obama. Yet the corporate spectacle on display this year is even more troubling. This has been Murdoch overseeing a corrupt enterprise and one whose transgressions extend well beyond tapping into phone messages.
- No, the snow does not disprove global warming
- In the aggregate, Earth's atmosphere is getting warmer. But that affects particular climates in different ways. What's difficult about getting it to snow isn't temperature, but precipitation. And global warming is expected to increase precipitation. Meteorologist Jeff Masters explains:
- Virginia residents oppose preparations for climate-related sea-level rise
- IDIOT paranoid fearful republicans deny climate change and think efforts to mitigate damage from rising sea levels is "environmentalist conspiracy to take their land".
- While the latest round of UN climate negotiations failed to demonstrate the kind of ambition and urgency we need to take on the climate crisis, youth and civil society showed an incredible amount of courage. We saw more kinds of risky, creative, powerful activism than we've seen at any prior UN summit. We're pretty sure that's worth celebrating, not forgetting.
- The Most Anti-Environment House In History
- Reps. Waxman (CA-30), Markey (MA-07) and Berman (CA-28) today released a new report showing that House Republican leaders have pushed through an astonishing 191 votes to weaken environmental protections.
- Franken, Whitehouse Expose Climate Deniers on Senate Floor
- As a society, we have to understand that science is a way of understanding the truth about the way things actually are in the physical world independent of how we wish they would be, and if we want public policy that actually solves problems we’ve got to start by basing it on what we know from science.
- Why small delays on climate change can be costly
- When it comes to tackling climate change, a few years’ delay can make a huge difference. The International Energy Agency, for instance, has argued that global emissions need to peak by around 2017 if the world wants to keep global warming below 2°C. By contrast, the recently concluded U.N. talks at Durban set a goal of reaching a new climate agreement by 2020. That doesn’t sound like a huge difference — what’s a mere three years between friends? — but it actually makes the task much, much harder.
- Republican Presidental Frontrunner Newt Gingrich Tells Gay Iowan To Vote For Obama
- I asked him if he’s elected, how does he plan to engage gay Americans. How are we to support him? And he told me to support Obama...









