Daphne Eviatar Interview

Daphne Eviatar is an lawyer, journalist, and senior associate at Human Rights First. We talk about the Obama administration’s policy on due process and her recent article on Section 1024 of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Brian Dooley Interview

Brian Dooley is the director of the Human Rights Defenders program at Human Rights First. He has worked with several Irish and international non-governmental organizations including Amnesty International and Public Citizen. In the early 1980s he defied the apartheid laws in South Africa by working as a community organizer and English teacher in a South African black township. Recently he was denied entry to Bahrain. We talk about the ongoing human rights crisis in that country and what can be done to stop it.

The 8 Most Awesome Drone Stories of 2011!

Compiling this list is always difficult. There are just so many needy nations, upon which our beneficent empire could deliver death from above, that you can’t help but be disappointed by how relatively few we actually oblige. And, of course, this compendium is both wholly subjective, and admittedly incomplete. Perhaps your favorite assassination didn’t make the cut, or you’ll take umbrage with my ranking system. Or maybe one of our awesome Predators killed your entire family with a Hellfire missile, and you’re being a whiny little bitch about it. What can I say? Everyone’s a critic.

Although there’s been 70 unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in Pakistan alone this year, it’s my contention that the bulk of our terrorist-thwarting, freedom-loving, Chuck Norris-style ass-kickings produce only a few gems worth mentioning. Fortunately, our incredibly wise and moral Nobel Peace Prize-winning President Barack Obama has unleashed more C.I.A. drones than did his predecessor, and the Pentagon has asked Congress for nearly $5 billion for UAVs in 2012, so next year’s list is already looking good.

Well, without further ado, I’m proud to present to you The 8 Most Awesome Drone Stories of 2011:

Let Us All Compare the President to a Human Penis

So Megan Fox Mark Halperin got suspended from Transformers 3MSNBC for calling Michael Bay President Obama Hitler “kind of a dick.” But the only thing I could find unprofessional about his saying that was that it’s a comment which is way overdue.

There’s nothing wrong with calling the President a dick, especially when he is one. And there are plenty of reasons to call this President a dick. Here is an unfortunately all-to-abbreviated list of reasons why.

Marcy Wheeler Interview

Marcy Wheeler is the author of Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy. She blogs at FireDogLake about legal and foreign policy issues. We talk about the President’s new policy of extrajudicial paramilitary strikes. We also explore the extent of Marc Thiessen’s dickishness.

Rachel Maddow on Shutting Down the State-Run Press in Libya

I’m still trying to get caught up from stuff that happened a week or so ago, so you’ll have to bare with me if you’ve already heard about this.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow usually does a decent job at reporting. She definitely has a perspective, and it’s usually completely in line with the Democratic Party line. Sometimes she criticizes them for giving in too much to Republicans and for being the wimps they are, but more often than not her editorializing crosses over into the same kind of partisan propaganda you get at Fox.

Jeremy Scahill on Ed Schultz

Hey, let’s all watch this video from 2003 last week where  Fox News MSNBC blowhard Ed Schultz scolds Jeremy Scahill for not blindly trusting President Bush Obama over the war in Iraq Libya.

It’s really pretty amazing to see how blatantly Schultz copies the defense for war used so recently by his political adversaries while Bush was in power. But then he pretends it’s totally different because of how Obama went through the UN to get authorization for the use of force. So apparently the only problem Schultz can really say he had with the Iraq war was that no such authorization was sought, and not that it was a pointless waste of lives and money to try to force democracy on a country externally.

WikiLeaks v. State Department

There’s been another major WikiLeaks data dump. The previous ones which made the news here in America focused on the wars inAfghanistan and Iraq. But this one shifts focus from the Pentagon to the State Department, releasing around 250,000 lightly classified documents which reveal the inner workings of US diplomatic relations.

It’s the “End” of the Iraq War

The President is delivering a speech later today to announce the supposed end of the Iraq war. But as far as I’ve gathered, there isn’t even a substantial change in our foreign policy inre: Iraq today. Or even yesterday, or the day before. There was an announcement made by MSNBC a week and a half ago where the last full US combat brigade left Iraq.

The 5 Worst Quacks Around Today

I’m going to have to limit this list to people who are currently practicing some form of quackery, because if I tried to make a historical list I’d feel compelled to handicap for that person’s period in history. So Isaac Newton, who was literally one of the smartest people ever, believed in alchemy. The great 17th century astronomer Johannes Kepler believed in astrology. Lots of the ancient Greek philosophers believed in demons. Demons that controlled their thoughts. Seriously.

But you’ve really got to cut those people some slack because of how primitive human understanding was in their times. If you’re living in a technologically advanced society today, as the five below are, you really have no excuse for that kind of ignorance. So to make it a level playing field, here are what I think are the worst purveyors of antiscientific pseudomedicine around today.