In a new decision in support of the NSA’s phone metadata surveillance program, U.S. district court Judge William Pauley cites an intelligence failure involving the agency in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks. But the judge’s cited source, the 9/11 Commission Report, doesn’t actually include the account he gives in the ruling. What’s more, experts […]

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Austerity is often made to seem vital, the only route out of a fiscal disaster. But a closer look at the reality of the current crises—in municipalities like Detroit and Stockton, Calif., the state of Illinois, and even the U.S. Postal Service—reveals a much more deliberate progression. In each case, the same pattern develops: beleaguered […]

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  “We’re not blocking traffic, we are traffic.” The refrain, of the bicycle activist movement Critical Mass, comes from a (potentially apocryphal) story about one of their eponymous monthly street rides. As the story goes, the flotilla of dozens of bicycles—a “Critical Mass”—careen down a main thoroughfare of a major American city. They are confronted […]

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  My Christmas wish is to never hear the idiotic phrase “war on Christmas” ever again. Everyone knows the so-called War on Christmas is really a commercial racket run by a big eastern syndicate (aka Fox News) that created the controversy to drive up ratings. Which isn’t to say their aren’t hot holiday controversies, like […]

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(Robert Menendez | Source: AP) Just when President Obama was starting to believe that it was safe to go back into the water, AIPAC has come out with a new Iran sanctions bill designed to torpedo negotiations with Iran. And, once that is accomplished, it provides for automatic U.S. military backing for Israel if Prime […]

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