This week, Congress passed a budget calling for increasing federal spending and adding $1.7 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years. Most so-called “fiscal conservatives" voted for this big-spending budget because it allows Congress to repeal some parts of Obamacare via “reconciliation." As important as it is to repeal Obamacare, it does not justify increasing spending and debt. It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the Obamacare repeal would be used to justify increasing...

It did not take long before we knew there was no hope of change from President Obama. But at least he went into his inauguration with an unprecedented number of Americans on the Mall showing their support for the President of Change. Hope was abundant.But with Trump, we are already losing faith, if not yet with him, at least with his choice of those who comprise his government even before Trump is inaugurated.Trump’s choice for Secretary of State not only sounds like the neoconservatives in...

President Barack Obama's administration ending its eight-year rule by expanding the sharing of intercepted communications and data between federal agencies may feel a little bit like a final giant middle finger to the many critics of the massive, secretive surveillance state.Attorney General Loretta Lynch just signed off on changes that will increase the ability of the National Security Agency (NSA) to share some raw intercepted data with other agencies before the process of filtering out...

Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich sent a letter this week to President Barack Obama requesting that Obama “grant the application for clemency submitted by Chelsea Manning and commute her sentence to time served.” The result of Obama taking this action would be the whistleblower’s prompt release from prison. Noting that Manning “has already spent more time in prison than anyone previously convicted for providing information to the media,” the two former US House Members who have both run for...

"American soldiers rolled into Poland on Thursday, fulfilling a dream Poles have had since the fall of communism in 1989 to have US troops on their soil as a deterrent against Russia." That's how the AP begins its report on the first deployment of US soldiers into the central European country, previewed here earlier in the week as "One Of Largest Deployments Since The Cold War," even as Russia warned that the move represented a threat to its national security, and the Kremlin said "Russia...

In a truly remarkable bit of honesty and candor regarding the U.S. national-security establishment, new Senate minority leader Charles Schumer has accused President-elect Trump of “being really dumb.”Was Schumer referring to Trump’s ideology, philosophy, or knowledge about economics or foreign policy?None of the above. According to an article in The Hill, he told Rachel Maddow on her show that Trump was dumb for taking on the CIA and questioning its conclusions regarding Russia.“Let me tell...

Okay, first let’s get one thing out of the way: I adore Meryl Streep. Judge all you want, but The Devil Wears Prada is a classic and I won’t apologize for saying it.Streep’s anti-Trump speech on Sunday night at the Golden Globes was a sublime performance. It was delivered with emotion and grace. A real tear-jerker for anyone worried about the oncoming era of Trump.And yet... it also stank. It reeked, in fact. Of pure, unadulterated hypocrisy. Because Streep, sadly, is that common breed of...

Is the United States the victim of an unprovoked cyber and media attack by Russia and China or are the chickens coming home to roost after Washington’s own promotion of such activity worldwide? On Thursday Director of National Intelligence James Clapper asserted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that while no foreign government had been able to interfere with actual voting machines, “US agencies are more confident than ever that Russia interfered in America’s recent presidential...

Thanks to Barak Obama’s most recent expression of his low character and a foreign policy weirdly akin to fantasy-baseball gone bad, thirty-five US-resident Russian diplomats and their families targeted for rapid deportation feared a frantic search in the holiday crunch for open seats on flights to Moscow.On Friday, Russia sent an Ilyushin 11-96 to collect everyone and the families’ panic that they might not make their deportation deadlines receded. The embassy’s two retreats, one in New York...

President-elect Donald Trump will face pervasive doubts about his legitimacy from the day he takes office. His opponents will likely portray him as governing in unprecedented and reckless ways. The best response to such charges is to open the books and expose how the Obama administration commandeered far more power than most Americans realized.Trump should follow the excellent precedent set by President Obama. In 2009, shortly after he took office, Obama released many of the secret Bush...

Last week, as the mainstream media continued to obsess over the CIA’s evidence-free claim that the Russians hacked the presidential election, President Obama quietly sent 300 US Marines back into Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. This is the first time in three years that the US military has been sent into that conflict zone, and it represents a final failure of Obama’s Afghanistan policy. The outgoing president promised that by the end of his second term, the US military would only be present...

North Korea has "entered the final stage of preparation for the test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile(ICBM)." So crowed North Korea’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, in his New Year’s Day message aimed at tough-talking US president-elect, Donald Trump.In case there was any doubt about Pyongyang’s meaning, Kim warned his nation would continue to build its ‘capability for preemptive strike’ as long as the US and its allies continued their nuclear threats and "war games they stage on...

James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence, on the basis of his comments to the Senate committee on Thursday about RT, would appear to agree with Alex Jones in thinking ‘there’s a war on for your mind’. I happen to disagree. I think there’s a race to the bottom, in order to see how much the American deep state and Congressional supporters of Obama’s neo-liberal ideology can condescend to ordinary Americans.The truth behind the ‘media wars’ is far less exotic, let alone dramatic...