Sometimes I wonder how super-smart people can be so obtuse when it comes to the drug war. A recent example of this phenomenon is Ioan Grillo, a contributing editor for the New York Times. Grillo is the author of two books on the drug war: El Narco: Inside Mexico’s...

Last December the Washington Post published secret Pentagon documents showing the official lies that have undergirded the US war on Afghanistan for the past 18 years. The opening paragraph of the article puts the matter bluntly: “A confidential trove of government...

Many years ago, I was giving a lecture on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to a class at a public high school here in Virginia. During the course of my talk, I made the following statement: “The First Amendment does not give people the right of free speech.” I...

There is something important to note about US interventionism in faraway lands: None of the people that the US government is killing, maiming, or destroying is invading and trying to conquer the United States. Neither are the governments of the nations in which the...

The US Constitution brought into existence a federal government whose powers were limited to those enumerated in the Constitution itself. If a power wasn’t enumerated, it simply could not be exercised. That’s because our American ancestors didn’t trust governmental...

Pentagon officials are assuring Americans that the Pentagon’s recent assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani will make Americans safer. There is at least one big problem with that formulation, one that, unfortunately, many Americans still don’t...

It is supremely ironic that Pentagon officials take an oath to support and defend the Constitution because they intentionally destroyed the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution when they set up their “judicial” system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In fact, the...

Of all the ludicrous aspects of the Cold War, among the most ridiculous was the notion that Cuba posed a threat to US “national security.” For some 30 years, the US deep state (i.e., the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA) maintained that Cuba was a communist “dagger” pointed at...

Not long after President George W. Bush declared a “war on terrorism,” I wrote that this war would end up being as perpetual as the federal government’s war on drugs. Some 18 years later, the US government’s killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria confirms how right...

Ever since the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, it has been an article of faith that Americans should thank the troops for their service in those two countries. Yet, with the exception of libertarians and few leftists, the fact is that during the two decades of...

I confess that I still don’t get what exactly is going to be the particular offense for which President Trump is going to be impeached. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of impeaching Trump and removing him from office, but only for grave crimes, such as...

Notice something important about the hoopla regarding President’s Trump withholding of US foreign aid to Ukraine while he was requesting Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden for possible corruption: Nobody in Washington, D.C., or...

Since he became president, Donald Trump has killed thousands of people in Afghanistan and the Middle East in wars that are illegal under our form of government, given that he has never secured the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war to wage such...

After 18 years, there is a possibility that the Pentagon is finally going to permit a “trial” of five men who are accused of conspiracy to commit the 9/11 attacks. If so, the proceedings will prove what a charade the Pentagon’s entire “judicial system” at Guantanamo...

Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson is worried. He thinks that maybe — just maybe — the US government is not spending enough on defense. In a column entitled, “Here’s Why We Could Be Under-Spending on Defense,” Samuelson has come up with a complicated formula...

Democratic Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are calling on the US Congress to reevaluate US foreign aid to the Israeli government. Their reason? Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, denied entry into Israel for the two of them, owing to their public...

The US Empire, which controls much of the world through hundreds of military bases in foreign countries, through foreign regimes run by domestic US puppets, and through foreign dependency on US foreign aid, got its start in 1898 during the Spanish American War. It was...

Upon hearing that a man dressed in a military-style outfit was shooting people with an assault rifle at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California on Sunday, I imagine that there were at least some Californians saying to themselves, “That’s impossible. It’s illegal in...

Recently released secret documents from Chinese company Huawei provide insights into how the US Empire rules the world. According to the Washington Post, the documents reveal that Huawei secretly helped North Korea “build and maintain the country’s commercial wireless...

Listening to President Trump accuse Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of supporting al-Qaeda reminds me of how conservatives behaved toward libertarians who dared talk about motive immediately after the 9/11 attacks. At the time of those attacks, some of us...