Russ McBee

Salon has obtained a confidential memo written for certain members of Congress that outlines a proposal for an inquiry modeled on the Church Committee; this modern version of Church would focus on the malfeasance of the Bush administration, and it hints at Constitutional and legal violations which go far beyond those already documented: The ...

I ran across these two quotes from Angela Davis, both of which bear remembering: First, on President Bush: When Bush says democracy, I often wonder what he's referring to. Then, dear Angela pretty much sums up our shallow culture's obsession with style over substance: It is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation ...

A Supreme Court decision from 2007 (PDF here) mandated that the Environmental Protection Agency was required under the Clean Air Act to determine if anthropogenic carbon dioxide represents a threat to human health. In December, the EPA sent an email to the White House outlining its findings; the White House simply refused to open the email, ...

Today, President Bush rescinded an executive order signed by his father which affirmed the ban on offshore oil drilling (with the exception of a small area off Southern California and a specific region of the Gulf of Mexico). The move was almost entirely symbolic (and political), since federal law also bans offshore drilling (except in those two ...

I've often thought that President Bush probably read ''The Trial'' and ''1984'' at some point and mistook them for how-to manuals. Today's signing of the FISA bill tends to support that theory. On the heels of yesterday's capitulation by the Senate on telecom immunity and warrantless spying, President Bush wasted no time in signing this abrogation ...

The Senate predictably caved today and passed the FISA reform bill, which included immunity for the telecommunications companies that had conspired with intelligence agencies to spy on Americans without warrant. Bruce Afran, an attorney representing plaintiffs suing the telecom companies over their collaboration, described today's vote as ...

In this interview with Amy Goodman, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) promises to filibuster the horrid FISA amnesty bill when it reaches the Senate. First, he outlines the most potent objections to the bill: Sen. Russ Feingold: Well, this is a great blow to the rights of the American people. And much of the publicity has been about a very ...

The Bush administration's mismanagement of the Census Bureau is posing a threat to the integrity of the 2010 census. Among other problems, there's this: Lawmakers must also ensure that the final census funding bill includes a provision from the House version that would require the bureau to spend $8 million to $10 million of its budget on the ...

Major General Antonio Taguba, who conducted an extensive inquiry into the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, has spoken out again on the Bush regime's lawlessness. In his preface to a new report from Physicians for Human Rights, he says this: In order for [detainees] to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was ...

This morning, the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Boumediene v. Bush, holding that Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts. As SCOTUSblog said: The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights. If Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so ...