Truthout: 12 March 2012

Sixty Thousand People Protest Gov. Scott Walker
Allison Kilkenny, In These Times: "This weekend marked the year anniversary of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signing disastrous anti-union plans that undermined collective bargaining rights for employees in his state. On Saturday, tens of thousands of union activists and supporters rallied at the state Capitol in Madison to mark the macabre commemoration."
Read the Article

George Lakoff | The Santorum Strategy
George Lakoff, Truthout: "The Republican presidential campaign is not just about the presidential race. It is about using conservative language to strengthen conservative values in the brains of voters - in campaigns at all levels from Congress to school boards. Part of the Republican strategy is to get liberals to argue against them, repeating conservative language."
Read the Article

President Obama on Drugs
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "Reformers are quick to criticize Obama's track record on weed, especially the medical kind, but his willingness to divert overseas drug war funding into domestic treatment and prevention programs does set him apart from conservative rivals. Considering the White House had to deal with a massive recession, two foreign wars and defending health care reform, it's also safe to assume Obama did not have much time to spend on changing Washington's attitude toward drugs or even solidifying his administration's own policies."
Read the Article

Chris Hedges | Supreme Court Likely to Endorse Obama's War on Whistleblowers
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "... [A] conviction of Bradley Manning, or any of the five others charged by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act of 1917 with passing government secrets to the press, would effectively terminate public knowledge of the internal workings of the corporate state.... What we will live under if the Supreme Court upholds the use of the Espionage Act to punish those who expose war crimes and state lies will be a species of corporate fascism. And this closed society is, perhaps, only a few weeks or months away."
Read the Article

On the News With Thom Hartmann: Reform and Labor Groups Announce Campaign Against Corporate Money in Politics, and More
In today's On the News segment: Exodus of advertising after Rush Limbaugh's misogynist remarks now affecting all of right-wing radio, a plurality of voters in Alabama and Mississippi believe Obama is Muslim, reform and labor groups announce new campaign against super PACs, and more.
Read the Article

Syria Plants Anti-Personnel Mines on Syria-Turkey Border
Roy Gutman, McClatchy Newspapers: "The Syrian military in the past month planted a band of anti-personnel mines along stretches of the border with Turkey, where last year more than 10,000 Syrian refugees fled the Assad regime's crackdown on the pro-democracy 'Arab Spring' uprising, Syrian witnesses said. After a family of five were reported severely injured in a new minefield last month, Syrian civilians, operating with primitive means ... unearthed hundreds of those mines and reopened the way to safety, volunteers said"
Read the Article

The Zero Percent Doctrine
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch: "[I]n 2003, the idea that the possession of nuclear weapons or simply of an 'active' nuclear program that might one day produce such weapons was a casus belli represented something new.... Whether he meant to or not, in his latest version of Iran war policy President Obama has built on the Bush precedent. His represents, however, an even more extreme version, which should perhaps be labeled the 0% Doctrine."
Read the Article

NYPD Under Fire for Surveillance of Occupy Protesters
Colin Moynihan, The New York Times News Service: "On Nov. 17, Kira Moyer-Sims was near the Manhattan Bridge, buying coffee while three friends waited nearby in a car. More than a dozen blocks away, protesters gathered for an Occupy Wall Street 'day of action,' which organizers had described as an attempt to block the streets around the New York Stock Exchange. Then, Ms. Moyer-Sims said, about 30 police officers surrounded her and the people in the car."
Read the Article

Blow the Whistle on the Air Force Academy and Your Dog May Get Poisoned
Matthew Harwood, Truthout: "... Mullin doesn't believe Caleb's poisoning was the random act of some dog hater; he believes it was a deliberate act of retaliation for blowing the whistle one too many times at his place of employment: the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA).... In early February 2011, Mullin leveled serious allegations against two powerful administrators at the Academy, Dean of Faculty Brig. Gen. Dana Born and Vice Dean Col. Robert Fullerton."
Read the Article

Absent Compassionate Release, Austerity Helps Some Prisoners Obtain Freedom
Victoria Law, Truthout: "Patricia Wright is 60 years old, legally blind and wheelchair-bound. She also has Stage 4 cancer, which has spread to her breasts and to her brain. In November 2011, doctors removed one of three tumors from her brainstem and placed a steel plate in her head.... If Wright were anyone else, she would go home and recuperate among family and loved ones But she is in prison, having been sentenced to life without parole in 1997."
Read the Article

Tax on Out-of-State Political Money Could Outflank Citizens United
Rob Hager, Truthout: "If a Supreme Court majority has stepped outside the scope of its own authority - and has gotten away with it due to a complacent and corrupt Congress which has the power to rein it in, but will not use it - there is, at least, a strong constitutional argument to be made that the court's unconstitutional election law edicts are not binding on the states under the supremacy clause of the Constitution unless and until Congress says they are."
Read the Article

Julie Gillard's Rise Marks the Triumph of Machine Politics Over Feminism
John Pilger, Truthout: "In 1963, a senior Australian government official, AR. Taysom, deliberated on the wisdom of deploying women as trade representatives. 'Such an appointee would not stay young and attractive forever [because] a spinster lady can, and very often does, turn into something of a battleaxe with the passing years [whereas] a man usually mellows.' On International Women's Day on March 8, such primitive views were worth recalling; but what has happened to modern feminism? Why is it so bereft of its political, indeed socialist roots that any woman who 'achieves' within an immoral system is to be admired?"
Read the Article

The Precarious Jobs Recovery
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "Jobs are coming back fast enough to blunt Republican attacks against Obama on the economy and to rob Romney of the issue he'd prefer to be talking about in his primary battle against social conservatives in the GOP. But jobs aren't coming back fast enough to significantly reduce the nation's backlog of 10 million jobs."
Read the Article

Dean Baker | Affirmative Action for School Reformers?
Dean Baker, Truthout: "Nearly everyone in a top policymaking position today was among the group of economists who could not see the $8 trillion housing bubble that wrecked the economy when it collapsed. Economics is clearly not the only field where failure seems the best track forward. The top ranks of the so-called school reform movement are packed with people who have prospered in spite of failure."
Read the Article

Click here for more Truthout articles

TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

Woman Who Is Lead Plaintiff Against Requiring Health Insurance Goes Bankrupt With Unpaid Medical Bills
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: "Brown is behaving like the Tea Party senior 'moochers' who denounce 'socialized medicine' while shouting, 'Don't mess with my Medicare!' They want to boast that they are rugged individuals, but fall back on the luxury of depending upon others to cover their personal health care costs."
Read the BuzzFlash Commentary

Six in Ten Criticize War in Afghanistan; Most Favor Abandoning Training Mission
Read the Article at ABC News

Fox News Declares Paul Krugman a "Menace to Society"
Read the Article at The New York Times

How Do You Clean Up After a Nuclear Disaster?
Read the Article at Frontline

Right-Wing Pundits Make Excuses for a Weak Field of Candidates
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

DOJ Objects to Texas Voter ID Law; Says It Would Have Unfair Impact on Hispanics
Read the Article at Talking Points Memo

After Quakes, Ohio Plans Tough Gas-Drilling Rules
Read the Article at The Associated Press

Gas Prices Rise Due to Market Speculation, Damages Obama in Polls
Read the Article at The Washington Post

Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines

© Scoop Media