Help us push back against TIME Magazine’s distortion of women’s issues in Afghanistan. Tomorrow, TIME Magazine will treat newsstand customers everywhere to one of the most rank propaganda plays of the Afghanistan War. The cover features a woman, Aisha, whose face was mutilated by the Taliban, next to the headline, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan." [...]

Pamela Geller has some crazy ideas, which the corporate media seem content to disseminate uncritically.

Shrimper Diane Wilson might be going to jail for her high-profile protests against BP. Why is she so sure it’s worth it?

The idea that our inborn predispositions dictate how we live our lives was once seen as antiquated and even reactionary. No more.

This summer, NOM -- an anti-gay marriage group -- took their hate on the road. The Courage Campaign has captured their bigotry on camera.

Members of the Fed have started warning that full-blown monetary deflation may be coming. That, not the deficit, could really put the US economy in ruin.

FBI files show bureau may have tried to get Zinn fired from Boston University for his political opinions

Did you hear about this act of alleged terrorism in France? Two employees of the U.S. embassy in France have left hospital following medical tests in Paris after they handled a ?suspicious? envelope. Both employees ?are fine and have left the hospital? Paul Patin, a U.S. embassy spokesman, said in a telephone interview. They were exposed to [...]

What is the penalty for bankers who tell $40 billion lies? Somewhere between nothing and a rounding-error on your bonus. The SEC just hit two Citigroup executives with fines for concealing $40 billion in subprime mortgage debt from investors back in 2007. The biggest fine is going to Citi CFO Gary Crittenden, who will pay $100,000 [...]

This post originally appeared at No More Mister Nice Blog. You may know about today’s Phyllis Schlafly story (if not, I’ll discuss it below), but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Time magazine, June 1, 1992: IF FOR NOTHING ELSE, DAN QUAYLE DESERVES POINTS for audacity…. the Vice President dared to argue last week in [...]

I guess the once-important ADL is admitting that it’s an organization dedicated not to combatting hatred and bigotry, but simply another organ pushing far-right, Islamophobic conspiracy theories. Note the many caveats they’ve inserted in the following release: We regard freedom of religion as a cornerstone of the American democracy, and that freedom must include the right of [...]

This originally appeared on the Political Animal. Following up on an item from yesterday, it appears Republican reverence for all things related to the 9/11 attacks is officially over. Congress turned thumbs down on the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act on Thursday night, raising doubts it will ever pass. Most Republicans refused to back the measure, calling [...]

A huge swath of Republican politicians have had ties to white supremacist groups like the Council for Conservative Citizens. 1. Jesse Helms, unabashed racist Jesse Helms was the last unabashed racist politician in this country. His ascension to Congress was largely due to his willingness to pick at the scab of slavery and segregation, and to [...]

Shirley Sherrod plans on suing Andrew Breitbart. Someone get her a good class action attorney. She should sue them all.Shirley Sherrod plans to sue Andrew BreitbartFormer Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod plans to sue conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart for posting an edited video clip of Sherrod appearing to say she discriminated against white farmers. The [...]

Since SB 1070 passed, immigration lawyers have been flooded with questions. Here are some answers.

AP: The Commerce Department, in revisions issued Friday, estimates the economy shrank 2.6 percent last year — the steepest drop since 1946. That’s worse than the 2.4 percent decline originally estimated. The economy’s plunge underscores why the unemployment rate surged to 10.1 percent in October, a 26-year high. The revisions in gross domestic product, or GDP, now show [...]

Hopefully, there’s nobody out there who is so stupid as to accuse me of defending alleged Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hassan because I find this outrageous on principle*:Banks won’t take Fort Hood shooting suspect’s paychecks As he sits in the Bell County Jail, accused of the Nov. 5 Fort Hood shooting that left 13 dead, Maj. [...]

New York Congressman Charles Rangel now faces 13 charges of breaking House rules as well as federal statutes. The charges, which were formally issued Thursday by the House Ethics Panel, do not come as a surprise. As had been expected, Rangel stands accused, among other things, of improperly using “his letterhead, staff and franking privilege to solicit donations [...]

This post originally appeared on Think Progress. Three U.S. service members were killed in Afghanistan yesterday, bringing the death toll for July to at least 63, making it the deadliest month thus far in America?s longest war. Meanwhile, Pakistan?s ambassador to the United Nations told CBS News yesterday that the U.S needs to change [...]

California’s law mandating that DNA samples be taken from all felony arrestees is facing a legal challenge from the ACLU of Northern California.

Thursday’s Daily Show was yet another case study in Fox News absurdity. The network’s bloviating came quickly after Obama appeared on “The View” — a move that apparently equals a monumental “snubbing” of the Boy Scouts of America. Is it just us, or are these pundits really running out of things to hate? Watch it:The Daily Show With [...]

Written by Steph Harold for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice. Most of us don?t think we?ll ever have an abortion, until we become one of the one in four women in the US who has an unwanted pregnancy.  And if we think about it at all, we assume we?d [...]

This post originally appeared on Mother Jones. The Six Flags amusement park chain has had its share of bad press lately, what with kids getting decapitated or having their feet chopped off on roller coaster rides, filing for bankruptcy and other Dan Snyder-related disasters. But the latest flap is more political. Tea partiers and other anti-Islam [...]

With only a few months to go until the election, the campaign to legalize marijuana in California has only $50,000 in cash on hand. The question now is: How can it win?

Natural gas drilling operations have mucked up food from Colorado to Pennsylvania. So why is no one paying attention?

Technology is a part of your sex life, whether you like it or not. Here are some things to keep in mind if you want to protect your privacy.

If public schools or Medicare providers were held to the same standards as military contractors, they’d never have to beg for cash. Need money? Sure! — Congress would say — what’s a few missing billions of tax dollars? Congress agreed to pump an extra $33 billion into Afghanistan this week, even as a new report revealed [...]

The Economist has a great article, “Rough Justice in America.” Go and read the whole thing. This jumped out at me: ?You?re (probably) a federal criminal,? declares Alex Kozinski, an appeals-court judge, in a provocative essay of that title. Making a false statement to a federal official is an offence. So is lying to someone who then [...]

This post first appeared on Think Progress. In May, the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) and the Cordoba Initiative proposed plans to build a community center two blocks away from Ground Zero in New York City that would include ?a mosque, performance art center, gym, swimming pool and other public spaces.? [...]

This is absolutely the best campaign platform ever:

By Eduardo Barraza, Editor of Barriozona Magazine, Race-Talk contributor Ruling does not eliminate the entire SB 1070 law, rather prevents its most damaging provisions. Phoenix, Arizona, July 28, 2010 – As a threatening hurricane that weakens before reaching its path of destruction, the potential crackdown effects of Arizona immigration law SB 1070 were at least temporarily diluted by U.S. District [...]

This post first appeared on No More Mister Nice Blog. (Apologies for strong imagery in this post.) The cover of the new issue of Time — with its photograph of a young woman whose nose and ears were cut off by the Taliban, accompanied by headline “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan” — [...]

This post first appeared on the Washington Monthly. It seems like the kind of bill that should pass pretty easily. As the job market continues to struggle, Democrats have a proposed a package to aid small businesses, including tax breaks, new incentives, and an attempt to expand credit through a lending program [...]

A new report says 84 percent of women are either solely or jointly responsible for household financial decisions.

This post first appeared on Hullabaloo. Rush Limbaugh has been saying the oil spill is nothing more than a little leak that has caused almost no damage. Time Magazine is backing him up saying since the news that the slick “disappearing” evidence points to the fact that the whole [...]

Sign our petition to politicians to end the Afghanistan War on Rethink Afghanistan’s Facebook page. President Obama managed to show just how nimble and how disingenuous an administration can be in his response to the WikiLeaks fiasco: Obama, speaking from the Rose Garden after a meeting with congressional leaders to discuss funding for the war and other [...]

This post first appeared on Think Progress. Politico reports that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who many previously thought would co-sponsor comprehensive immigration reform this year, is considering radically changing the 14th amendment. Graham may introduce a constitutional amendment that would overturn the portion of the Constitution which states ?[a]ll persons born or [...]

Wonderful: Ousted USDA official Shirley Sherrod said in a speech to the National Association of Black Journalists in San Diego this morning that she will sue Andrew Breitbart, the conservative journalist and activist who posted the out-of-context video of her that resulted in her forced resignation. After the incident, an aggressively unchastened [...]

Thanks, Team Obama: The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual?s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.The administration wants to add just four words—?electronic [...]

By Mikhail Lyubansky, Race-Talk contributor My facebook and twitter friend @clyde_online, a community organizer in DC, has been pestering me to define U.S. white culture. Up until now, I’ve demurred. Frankly, there are other things I’d rather write about. Besides, though I’m certainly aware of the status and meaning that our civilization has [...]

This post originally appeared on Daily Kos.Bob Marshall, outdoors editor for The Times-Picayune, takes Bobby Jindal to task for Jindal’s demagoguery on BP’s oil spill:At a press conference supporting his wish to narrow Gulf passes with rock jetties in an attempt to keep oil out of interior marshes, Gov. Bobby Jindal said this: [...]

This post originally appeared on Think Progress. At the end of the year, President Bush?s tax cuts are set to expire. President Obama and many Democrats in Congress favor extending those tax cuts for the middle class. But Republicans — seemingly not worried about the $700 billion cost — want tax cuts for the [...]

On Wednesday’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart took audiences through the day’s political corruption highlights: While John Kerry has been accused of parking his yacht in Rhode Island to avoid taxes, Congressman Charlie Rangel seems to have no idea what repercussions his laundry list of crimes might yield. And, lest we forget, Blago. At trial, his attorneys [...]

Until very recently, food was invisible as a political issue. Something is stirring. Pollan reviews five books that address the heart of the food movement.

FROM feckless fathers and teenaged mothers to so-called feral kids, the media seems to take a voyeuristic pleasure in documenting the lives of the “underclass”. Whether they are inclined to condemn or sympathise, commentators regularly ask how society got to be this way. There is seldom agreement, but one explanation you are unlikely to hear [...]

Why does the mainstream media ignore that when covering it? The immigration mess in this country is not a fake problem. But the debate surrounding how you solve it is completely artificial. Immigration reform has been the most politically divisive issue in this country for going on six years. That is insanely idiotic [...]

Coming on the eve of another war funding vote, many wondered if the the memos leaked by Wikileaks on the details of the Afghanistan deployment might make a difference. At the first test, the answer appears to have been no. The House approved $33 billion for a 30,000-troop escalation in Afghanistan this week and in doing [...]

This post first appeared on Mother Jones. “WASHINGTON (AFP) – With BP’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico finally capped, the focus shifts to the surface clean-up and the question on everyone’s lips is: where is all the oil?” NEW ORLEANS (Mother Jones) – I don’t know who the fuck these everyones [...]

This post first appeared on Daily Kos. Michael Hirsh: There has been, in recent days, a groundswell of support for Elizabeth Warren, one of the top candidates to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. One less-noted reason for all this outspoken fervor is that, for many liberal critics, Barack Obama?s economic [...]

While a federal judge struck down important parts of Arizona’s draconian immigration law today, namely the obligatory police check of immigration status, the battle over Arizona’s immigration crisis has hardly come to a screeching halt. Over the past three years, publicity hound Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a Massachusetts-raised former DEA bureaucrat, has been leading “crime suppression [...]

This post first appeared on Think Progress. This afternoon, in a long-awaited decision, federal district court judge Susan Bolton enjoined several major provisions of Arizona?s immigration law, SB-1070. While it was speculated that Bolton would block parts of SB-1070 relating to warrantless arrests and document requirements, the judge also ended up striking [...]

The world’s largest online community of artists, deviantART, is running an amazing contest that brings together creative spark and real vision. The CoolClimate Art Contest ends on Aug. 23, and we thought it would be right up some of our more artistic AlterNet readers’ alley. From the guidelines: We are searching for the brightest and most creative [...]

Rosie the Riveter defiantly rolls up her blue work shirt to show off a brawny bicep. She?s a symbol of American strength. She worked in a manufacturing job, one of millions that constructed the defense machine that won World War II for the Allies. She said, ?We can do it.? And America did.Now, however, shuttered U.S. [...]

This post first appeared on No More Mister Nice Blog. Democrats want to allow the Bush tax cuts for the rich to lapse, while renewing the cuts for other taxpayers. Republicans, of course, want to keep the whole tax cut package — including the cuts for the rich, which the general [...]

In one sense, I agree with Steve Clemons, who wrote last month of the many terrible and entirely foreseeable consequences that would follow an attack on Iran and concluded that those worried by the prospect should “stop hyperventilating.” Clemons, who’s very well connected to the intelligence and defense communities, wrote: While there are individuals in the [...]

The Associated Press reports that Judge Susan Bolton has stopped several controversial parts of the Arizona law from going into effect tomorrow:U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled that the controversial sections should be put on hold until the courts resolve the issues. The ruling came just as police were making last-minute preparations to begin enforcement of [...]

This post first appeared on Hullabaloo. I’m afraid that Garry Wills is right: Most presidents start wondering—or, more often, worrying—about their ?legacy? well into their first term. Or, if they have a second term, they worry even more feverishly about what posterity will think of them. Obama need not wonder about his [...]

This post first appeared on Balloon Juice. Of course the egomaniacs in the Senate are now against reforming the filibuster: Senate Democrats do not have the votes to lower the 60-vote threshold to cut off filibusters.The lack of support among a handful of Senate Democratic incumbents is a major blow to the effort to [...]

We all woke up this morning in an America, as divisive and as riddled with inequality, as the day before he took office.It was shortly after the Skip Gates incident that President Obama?s approval ratings with white voters first started to plummet. As of last week, only 37 percent of white respondents approve of his [...]

Take a look at this sign (via Think Progress) which was produced and displayed publicly by NOM (National Organization For Marriage) supporter Larry Adams at a recent rally in Indianapolis as part NOM’s Summer for Marriage Tour 2010, and tell me this isn’t one of the worst examples of hate speech [...]

Written by Amanda Marcotte for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice. There are many goofy aspects to this Life Site News story arguing that because a slim majority of teenagers don?t have sex, we don?t need to teach them about contraceptive methods. Perhaps the most puzzling is why they came out [...]

This post originally appeared on the Washington Monthly. The chances of the Senate taking up a comprehensive immigration reform bill this year are about zero. But there is time, and at least some political will, to tackle smaller measures related to the larger policy.Some immigrant rights groups are shifting the strategy in their [...]

Pan Left members Jason Michael Aragón and Mary Charlotte Thurtle have been producing the documentary Under Arpaio that deals with the effect Sheriff Joe Arpaio has on Maricopa County, Arizona and the nation. In light of the enormous spotlight being put on Arizona at this time from SB1070, this statement from Jason and Mary [...]

This post originally appeared on Think Progress. Over the weekend, news broke that three months after his oil company?s rig set off the largest oil spill in American history, BP CEO Tony Hayward would be stepping down. In his resignation statement, Hayward stressed that, ?BP will be a changed company as a result of? [...]

Why aren’t more people seriously alarmed by WikiLeaks’ recently released documents? On Tuesday’s Daily Show, Stewart re-hashed the story of one brave “Bradass” who accumulated mountains of classified evidence and emailed it to WikiLeaks — all while lip-synching Lady Gaga. Now if only the pundits would stop talking about the “newness” of the documents and see them [...]

Inspired by Virginia Sen. Jim Webb’s musings, it was penned by Adam Serwer over at The American Prospect (via LGM): There are a number of things about Senator Jim Webb’s op-ed “The Myth of White Privilege” to dislike, starting with the fact that one of the awesome things about the existence of white privilege is that you can [...]

This post first appeared on Daily Kos. Remember the Council of Conservative Citizens? They were Trent Lott’s buddies back in the day, and are a modern-era, suit-and-tie version of the KKK (”CCC” … get it?). The Anti-Defamation League has more info on those racists here. In any case, those guys aren’t happy [...]

Events were held across the country Monday to mark the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act. At a ceremony at the White House, disability rights activists made the point that passing the law was only the start. “Civil rights laws do not self-enforce, ” said Marca Bristo, “They only [...]

In other words, the Supreme Court of the United States, with the basic facts of the case agreed to by all nine Justices in Screws vs. the U.S. Government, says not one word about Bobby Hall being lynched. Why? Because it never happened. [...]

At least this guy is honest, and doesn’t try to hide his profoundly un-American views (via TPM): Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, currentlyrunning third in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary race, says he’s not sure if Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion apply to the followers of the world’s second-largest faith, Islam. At a recent event in Hamilton [...]

This post first appeared on No More Mister Nice Blog. Ah, remember the innocent days of, say, early 2010, when Jane Hamsher could write this (emphasis added)? … Granted, the tea party messaging can be pretty schizophrenic and has often served as a grab bag of anti-Obama sentiment. But their primary message has [...]

This post first appeared on Booman Tribune. When you hear the Republicans talk about fiscal responsibility, you should really just laugh in their faces. Consider this: A US federal watchdog has criticised the US military for failing to account properly for billions of dollars it received to help rebuild Iraq. The Special Inspector [...]

This post first appeared on Think Progress. While working on his article published yesterday in the New York Times highlighting the right-wing media?s ?misleading coverage,? reporter Brian Stelter did some background research into cable news viewership demographics. While he didn?t include the findings in his story, he found them notable enough [...]

Daniel Schultz writes in the The Revealer: A church down in Gainesville is planning to hold an “International Burn A Quran Day” on 9/11, part of its larger “Islam is of the Devil” campaign. The pastor talks about the point of the event in an interview with the Friendly Atheist: Do you think Muslims will turn [...]

No reformers question whether Elizabeth Warren is the best candidate to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She’s a lauded scholar, an inspiring advocate who will draw talented and dedicated reformers to the new agency and she came up with the whole idea for creating the CFPB in the first place. Nominating a dedicated [...]

New Hampshire “Mama Grizzly” Kelly Ayotte loses moderates’ support following Sarah Palin’s smarmy Facebook endorsement (from Public Policy Polling): Kelly Ayotte’s seen her appeal to moderate voters crumble in the wake of her endorsement by Sarah Palin and her lead over Paul Hodes has shrunk to its lowest level of any public polling in [...]

There is a tendency among People Who Pay Close Attention To Things to think other Americans are also paying attention — to decent information — and are therefore somewhat in the know. That leads to people trying to get away with ridiculous claims, such as this: ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 [...]

This post first appeared on Hullabaloo. Matthews asked Paul Ryan (R-AynRandFanboy) today if we should let the Bush tax cuts expire: I don’t think it’s a good idea, especially when we’re trying to come out of a jobless recovery and slow growth recovery. We’ve got unemployment at almost 10%, the last thing [...]

On Fox News Sunday, Howard Dean called the network racist for hounding Shirley Sherrod and trying to scare white people by parading around the three black panthers left in the country. In an interview on the Young Turks today, Dean stood by his comments, saying that stoking the racial fears and resentments of the right-wing [...]

This post originally appeared on Think Progress. Not exactly a shock: Seventeen percent of potential regional tourists have indicated they have canceled or delayed a trip to Louisiana because of the ongoing oil spill and pollution problems resulting from the Deepwater Horizon-BP rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a study commissioned [...]

Written by Sarah Seltzer for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice. Teen mom and abstinence spokeswoman Bristol Palin has risked the disapproval of two feuding families to romantically reunite with Levi Johnston, the repentant, formerly spurned (and spurning) father-of-her-child. Ironically, the glee that this clandestine second betrothal causes among Palin [...]

By Duchess Harris, Race-Talk contributor,Exactly one year ago, I published a book entitled, Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton. My publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, has decided to re-print in paperback and they?d like me to change the title to ?…from Kennedy to Obama? and add a chapter about the President. I?ve been blogging since April [...]

On Monday’s Daily Show, Stewart introduced his own edited version of Sherrod’s now infamous speech. After that, he took the two responsible parties to task — first, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, for his his mealy-mouthed regrets; then White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, for his passive agressive apology. According to Stewart, the brouhaha never should have [...]

I made the Hunter S. Thompson joke as we circled the Strip in the airport shuttle. If not for the connection to the Good Doctor, Las Vegas would seem an incongruous place for a left-leaning convention. The place pumps enough energy into glittering, flashing neon lights to warm half the globe, and feminist bloggers enjoying cocktails [...]

This post originally appeared on Think Progress. This Thursday, SB-1070, Arizona?s radical new immigration law, will go into effect. Despite an incoming lawsuit from the Obama administration?s Department of Justice, Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) has maintained that her state ?will prevail,? claiming that she is simply defending the border integrity and safety of her [...]

In a despicable piece of purported journalism, American Spectator contributor Jeffrey Lord, a former political director for Ronald Reagan, accuses Shirley Sherrod of being untruthful about the lynching of her relative, Bobby Hall, in the 1940s. Turns out that Hall was merely delivered by a local sheriff to a white mob outside a courthouse — [...]

I was in Las Vegas for Netroots over the weekend, and although I’d seen these express security lines that the Department of Homeland Security offers well-heeled business- and first-class travelers in the past, it had never occurred to me just how outrageous that is, on principle, in a supposedly equal society. DHS is a government agency, financed [...]

This post is by Suman Raghunathan of the Progressive States Network: In the wake of AZ SB 1070?s passage in late April, a far right network of groups and legislators announced plans to move bills in state around the country.  But the list of states rejecting those bills continues to grow and efforts to get anti-immigrant proposals on [...]

This post originally appeared on Hullabaloo. Did you know that you can attend Glenn Beck University for the amazing deal of only $9.95 per month? The thing is that most of would probably agree that $9.95 a month is $9.90 more than we would be willing to spend. The good news is that you don’t even have [...]

This post originally appeared at Media Matters for America. Right-wing media figures have tried to absolve themselves for attacking Shirley Sherrod by pointing out that the White House fired her. However, regardless of the White House’s actions, these media figures are far from blameless; as Salon’s Joan Walsh noted, media figures “pounc[ed] on” Sherrod without seeking [...]

There are times when the best policy isn’t politically attractive, but this is a perfect example of bad policy that would certainly come back to haunt its advocates at the polls, as it absolutely should: A growing number of Democrats believe reducing spending needs to be the party’s No. 1 priority – even above fostering job [...]

This post is by Scott Keyes and originally appeared on Think Progress. Since President Obama first took office, Republicans have stood lock-step in opposition to his legislative agenda. In March 2010, Republican senators waged arecord number of filibusters for a two-year term – after just 14 months. Given the GOP?s dearth of ideas, it?s understandable that [...]

Talking-Points Memo reports: [Ken] Buck is the Tea Party candidate running against establishment pick Jane Norton in Colorado?s Republican Senate primary. His latest gaffe is being caught on tape by a Democratic operative saying, ?Will you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I?m on the camera?? according [...]

Doesn't it seem likely that the reason all of us can't see God is because there is no God?

• The Bicycle's Big Comeback: Why Two-Wheelers Are Key for Reducing Oil Dependence