DAILY KOS: From January 20 through January 31, 2010, the Daily Kos website commissioned a poll of self-identified Republicans which was conducted by Research 2000. A total of 2003 self-identified Republicans were interviewed nationally by telephone. The results will be, to say the least, startling to progressives.
Category: Big Picture
Group Proposes Free Speech for People Amendment
FREE SPEECH FOR PEOPLE AMENDMENT: The group has written a resolution in support of the “Free Speech for People Amendment†and is collecting signatures on it at its website.
National Priorities Project Releases FY2011 Budget Analysis
NATIONAL PRIORITIES PROJECT: President Obama issued his Fiscal Year 2011 budget on February 1, 2010 – a 2,585-page proposed blueprint for addressing the social agonies caused by record-high job loss, a continued sluggish economy and state deficits.
Nuclear Industry May Not Give Up on Yucca Mountain
STEVE TETREAULT: The nuclear industry’s trade group is signaling it might not go along with the Obama administration’s plan to withdraw from Yucca Mountain and make it difficult, if not impossible, to revive the proposed nuclear waste repository ever again.
Obama’s Afghan “Strategy”  Another American Tragedy
JOSEPH GERSON: Shortly after President Obama’s Afghanistan War escalation speech, I was contacted by the Voice of America’s Russian Language Service. They wanted to interview me. These are the questions they asked: What do you think about Obama’s new strategy for Afghanistan? Were you surprised by it? Do you think it would be possible to carry out all Obama’s objectives by 2011? Would Afghanistan, you think, cease being a failed state?
International Criminal Court Complaint Filed Against Bush & Co.
FRANCIS A. BOYLE: Champaign, U.S.A./The Hague, Netherlands — Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, U.S.A. has filed a complaint with the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) in The Hague against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the “accused”) for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” perpetrated upon about 100 human beings.
Middle East Conflict: Fighting to Improve the Past
VALERIE SATUREN: With the rising power of Hamas and a rightward shift in Israeli politics, a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians appears farther out of reach than it has in decades. Meanwhile, the window of opportunity is closing on a two-state solution to the conflict.
Lowering the Bar: How Young is Too Young to Recruit?
JON LETMAN: How old is old enough for students to be approached by military recruiters? High school? Junior high? Fourth grade? How about ten weeks into kindergarten?
Privatizing the Military: Full Speed Ahead Under Obama
JEREMY SCAHILL: A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it.
Government Hinders Gaza Freedom March
JEAN ATHEY: We are in the Middle East, seeking a nonviolent solution to the blockade of Gaza. Free Gaza actions are occurring all over Cairo, and so the police, who are often in riot gear, have had a busy day — they show up wherever we go. They are incredibly young, maybe 18 or 19. Typically, they surround us with moveable steel fences, which they line up behind and they watch us with what seems to be curiosity, not malice.
100 Ways You Can Help Stop Violence
WORDS TO LIVE BY: Practical ideas for living and teaching peace.
New Afghan War Cost Analysis
JO COMERFORD: The president’s $30 billion figure for getting those 30,000-plus new surge troops into Afghanistan is going to prove a “through-the-basement estimate.†As for the dates for getting them in and beginning to get them out? Well, it’s grain-of-salt time there, too. According to Steven Mufson and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, some of the fuel storage facilities being built to support the surge troops won’t even be completed by the time the first of them are scheduled to leave the country, 18 months from now.
Are Americans a Broken People?
BRUCE E. LEVINE: Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set them free” but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States?