Among the items awaiting Congress when it returns from its August break is reconciling competing House and Senate bills reauthorizing No Child Left Behind. These bills passed early this spring. Each bill is being marketed as a huge step toward restoring state and local control over education. However, an examination of both bills shows that both provide local schools with only limited relief from a few federal mandates. The biggest problem with these so-called reform bills is that they do not...

All war is a crime. There is no such thing as a “good war.” As the great Benjamin Franklin said, “there is no good war; and no bad peace.” We are now in the midst of the annual debate over the atomic bombing of Japan by the United States. Seventy years ago this week, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, killing or injuring some 140,000 people. A few days later, a second atomic weapon was dropped on Nagasaki, causing 80,000 casualties. Most of the dead in both cities were civilians....

I’ve visited Hiroshima many times. There is a Japanese jail not far from the Hiroshima Peace Park, and in my guise as a diplomat working in Japan, one of my jobs was to visit Americans in jail, typically young men and women who’d smoked a little weed in drug-conscious Japan. I’d check up on their welfare, pass messages to and from home for them, that kind of thing. There were always enough of these folks in Hiroshima for at least quarterly visits, and I always took the opportunity to visit the...

“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.” —Thomas Jefferson Many years ago Ron Paul published a collection of his speeches to Congress regarding foreign policy in a book titled A Foreign Policy Of Freedom. That book illustrated Paul’s unique consistency as a Congressman to stand strong against the military industrial complex during his many years as a representative. Time and time again when the hawks would sweep in banging the drums of war, Ron...

It’s been a bad month for the angst-ridden US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power. Last week, she was “outraged” by Russia’s veto at the UN Security Council of an international criminal court into the downing of Malaysian airliner MH17 over eastern Ukraine. Three weeks prior, Power was again “outraged” by Russia’s veto of a draft resolution to declare the mass killing at Srebrenica during the Bosnian War in 1995 a “genocide.” On Srebrenica, Power said: Russia’s veto is heartbreaking for those...

On the 70th anniversary of the US government’s nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there are still people coming out in favor of the bombings. They’re saying that since the bombings shortened the war by bringing a quick surrender of Japan in World War II, the targeting of those two cities was morally and legally justified, especially since it saved the lives of US soldiers who would have been killed in an invasion of Japan. If those killings were justified, then was it wrong for the...

In 2012, just a year after President Obama decided that "Assad must go," then-State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned the Syrian military's use of unguided explosives in its fight against the US-sponsored insurgency. These weapons, deemed "barrel bombs," were, according to Nuland, "vicious things indiscriminately launched ... at targets without any concern about civilians."Claims that "barrel bombs" were a form of terror deployed uniquely by the Syrian government primarily...

It took two decades for Russia and China to understand that “pro-democracy” and “human rights” organizations operating within their countries were subversive organizations funded by the US Department of State and a collection of private American foundations organized by Washington. The real purpose of these non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is to advance Washington’s hegemony by destabilizing the two countries capable of resisting US hegemony. Washington’s Fifth Columns pulled off “color...

During my time in Congress, I regularly introduced legislation forbidding organizations that perform abortions from receiving federal funding. The US Government should not force taxpayers to subsidize an activity they believe is murder. Thus, while I was horrified by the recently released videos showing Planned Parenthood officials casually discussing selling the organs of aborted babies, I am glad that the reaction to these videos has renewed efforts to end federal funding of abortion. My...

Ronald Reagan used to be called the Teflon president, on the grounds that no matter what gaffe or scandal engulfed him, it never stuck: he didn’t suffer in the polls. If Reagan was the Teflon president, the military is America’s Teflon institution. Even people who oppose whatever the current war happens to be can be counted on to “support the troops” and to live by the comforting delusion that whatever aberrations may be evident today, the system itself is basically sound. To add insult to...

Everyone has to do some serious soul-searching when it comes to dealing with the cops. This is especially true for African-Americans, given that police departments seem to have attracted a disproportionate share of racial bigots to that line of work. But it’s also true for everyone else, given that the police have effectively been given a license to kill citizens with impunity. No one can escape the possibility of an encounter with the police, especially if driving on streets and highways. As...

We’re in the summer doldrums of the news cycle, a perfect time for our government and the media – or do I repeat myself? – to drop certain inconvenient stories down the Memory Hole. My job, of course, is to retrieve them…. Remember Ukraine? I seem to recall blaring headlines about a supposedly “imminent” and “massive” Russian invasion of that country: the Anglo-Saxon media was ablazewith a veritable countdown to D-Day and we were treated to ominous sightings of Russian troops and tanks...

Turkey’s peace process with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) began in the first three months of 2013, after nearly four decades of struggle in which an estimated 40,000 lives were lost. It ended, finally, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan formally declared it dead on Tuesday this week. He also indicated that the government now intends to launch prosecutions against the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democracy Party (HDP) and its leader, Selahattin Demirel, less than two months after he and 79 others...

Rahinah Ibrahim is a slight Malaysian woman who attended Stanford University on a US student visa, majoring in architecture. She was not a political person. Despite this, as part of a post-9/11 sweep directed against Muslims, she was investigated by the FBI. In 2004, while she was still in the US but unbeknownst to her, the FBI sent her name to the no-fly list. Ibrahim was no threat to anyone, innocent of everything, and ended up on that list only due to a government mistake. Nonetheless, she...

“The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official. The framers would be appalled.”—Herman Schwartz, The Nation Trying to predict the outcome of any encounter with the police is a bit like playing Russian roulette: most of the time you will emerge relatively...