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Jeff Cohen really nails the MSM in his article, Snowden Coverage: If U.S. Mass Media Were State-Controlled, Would They Look Any Different?
I'm hearing from a lot more people who are starting to see that MSNBC is not the friend of true progressives. They're friends with the Democrats-- Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, etc.
Here at Opednews, we're in full frontal attack mode-- going after the Dems and the Republicans, ie., both wings of the corporatist duopoly party.
Opednews has built a unique, citizen journalism site where average people's voices are heard. Check out new OEN writer Charles Orloski's article, Day of the Rooster. Orloski isn't famous. He's a regular person. But his article says a lot about the average American's life today.
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  Daily Headlines
By Jeff Cohen
Snowden Coverage: If U.S. Mass Media Were State-Controlled, Would They Look Any Different? 
The Edward Snowden leaks have revealed a U.S. corporate media system at war with independent journalism. Many of the same outlets -- especially TV news -- that missed the Wall Street meltdown and cheer-led the Iraq invasion have come to resemble state-controlled media outlets in their near-total identification with the government as it pursues the now 30-year-old whistleblower.
The U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority is a serial killer of American democracy -- first Bush v. Gore, then Citizens United, now gutting the Voting Rights Act -- but another part of this crime story is the Right's grotesque last stand for white supremacy.
By Rev. Dan Vojir
The Rants You Hear Are Not God's: Christian Right Enraged That SCOTUS Acquiesced To The Creator, Allowing Gays To Marry. 
DOMA Down! Prop 8 Pooped-on! Religious Right Raving! That's progress!
Which countries leaders have been more forthcoming regarding Ed Snowden's whistleblowing saga; the U.S. making threats to Russia & China for refusing to extradite him back to the U.S. to face charges of espionage & theft or Russian Pres. Putin saying Snowden is a human rights activist fighting for the spread of information & the Chinese Peoples Daily saying Snowden's fearlessness tore off Washington's sanctimonious mask?
The Court has not gone so rogue as might immediately seem to be the case in a nation that our civics teachers tell us is committed to democratic values. Rather, the Court's conservative majority has taken advantage of a gap in the Constitution that must be addressed.
Disaster Porn is all the rage now. Slick videos - and some not so slick - purport to show the inevitable collapse of the economy, even the world from economic/political/
Affirmative action has been under attack since the 1970s. And since then, the objective of the political Right has been to steadily weaken it, in part through an ideological assault suggesting that it is really not necessary. To conclude that affirmative action is no longer necessary one must be looking at a different United States of America.
If the link between the dollar and imperialism is that of monopoly collusion, then all those against American imperialism welcome alternative currencies and exchanges beyond the greenback. I describe five such options, with commentary.
By Bill Quigley
Spying by the Numbers: Hundreds of Thousands Subject to Government Surveillance and No Real Protection Hundreds of thousands in US spied upon every year by government.
By Greg Palast
Ku Klux Kourt kills King's Dream Law: Replaces Voting Rights Act with Katherine Harris Act 
They might as well have burned a cross on Dr. King's grave. The Jim Crow majority on the Supreme Court just took away the vote of millions of Hispanic and African--American voters by wiping away Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The article announces the 2013 Whistleblower Week Conference being held in Washington, DC July 29-31, 2013.
Article focused on my actual workingman experience, struggles, lottery-playing, social breakdown, planned-starvation, and an attempt to get a grip.
More than 10,000 asteroids and comets that can pass near Earth have now been discovered. The 10,000th near-Earth object, asteroid 2013 MZ5, was first detected on the night of June 18, 2013.
New lines of engineered bacteria can tailor-make key precursors of high-octane biofuels that could one day replace gasoline.
By William Dunkerley
Government Scandal Erupts in British Litvinenko Spy Case British coroner makes false and misleading representations to Lord Chancellor.
Einstein's oft-repeated, and dogged insistence that "God does not play dice" is scientifically wrong-headed for a number of reasons.
Recent disclosures of the National Security Agency spying on Americans tells of the government's invasion of the rights of citizens but it fails to speak to the issue of who is really behind the spying nor what the ultimate purpose is. National security is the justification but that explanation merely gives cover to the grandest plot ever made against democracy in the world. Readers need to study the Book of Daniel.
Justice Roberts has been opposed to the Voting Rights Act for three decades, ever since he was a young lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department. His sweeping and radical decision yesterday was more about ideology than the law, constitutional principles or congressional deference be damned.
Those two decisions today seemed to restore just a bit of sanity to a Court that is owned and operated by the same insanity that determined corporations are "people" with the same rights (and none of the obligations) enjoyed by real people -- citizens; people; warm-blooded mammals who walk upright.
By Hank Kalet
Judicial activists attack the vote Today's decision on the Voting Rights Act demonstrates that the court's conservative wing are the activists of which conservative court critics have warned.
What is a poor National Security State to do? Well, they might consider behaving themselves. Stop doing all the terrible things that grieve people like me and Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning and so many others. Stop the bombings, invasions, endless wars, torture, sanctions, overthrows, support of dictatorships, the unmitigated support of Israel. Stop all the things that make the United States so hated.
There's little doubt that the country's president, Rafael Correa, would relish the chance to welcome Snowden and irritate Washington. Correa has been a leading purveyor of anti-United States rhetoric in Latin America, reviving the down-with-gringos banner-waving once so popular in the region. But Correa's embrace of Snowden--if it comes to be--could produce blowback for the heavy-handed Ecuadorean leader by focusing global attention on his own, far-from-laudable policies regarding transparency, press freedoms, and refugees.
Despite U.S. government pressure, Russian President Vladimir Putin is balking at demands that he extradite Edward Snowden from Moscow to face espionage charges for leaking secrets about America's global surveillance operations. Still, Snowden's status remains dicey, as Marjorie Cohn explains.
By Mike Kirchubel
Yes, Al, there is a Santa Claus Congressional investigations into President Obama's "scandals" are being conducted by House Oversight Committee Chairman, Republican Darrell Issa. Like an evil Santa Claus, he entices right-wingers with his brightly-colored packages, but they are bitterly disappointed when they find them filled with coal.
The question we should be asking is not why do folks like Ellsberg, Snowden and Bradley Manning do the right thing, but rather why aren't we bringing charges against the many others with access to such damning data of government malfeasance who remain silent?
While the Syrian civil war started over the Assad regime's brutal response to demonstrators, it has morphed into a proxy war between Syria, Iran, Russia, and government of Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq on one side, and the US, France, Britain, Israel, Turkey and the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on the other.
By earl ofari hutchinson
Don't Expect GOP to Back Congressional Boost to Voting Rights Act The instant the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act by knocking out the key provision requiring Justice Department preclearance before a locale can alter or institute new voting procedures the call went up for Congress to restore some version of this requirement.
By Mary Shaw
Marriage and Death on Wednesday's Agenda "Wednesday, June 26, promises to be a big news day, for good or for bad..." Latest Articles
Political Decency, America's Masters, and the "Traitor" Edward Snowden
Americans choose -- one way or another -- the kind of government we get, whether by refusing our attention, defaulting to ignorance, or in embracing charlatans indentured to the cabal of greed and lust for power now in charge -- or by opening our eyes, grasping the reality, and braving the risks, difficulties and hard work required to actually gain and maintain the ideals of our earliest schooling.
What Is Patriotism? Are We Getting It from Our Political Leaders Today?
This article explores the lack of true patriotic focus by America's elected leaders.
The Stock Market Jitters on Good News for Retirees!
Chairman Bernanke's optimism on the economy is examined here. Wall Street likes low tax rates, interest rates, and deficits. National saving equals private, government, and foreign saving. If the deficit rises, so will interest rates and crowd out investment. So our grandchildren will face higher taxes and have less capital. But higher interest rates are good for people whose main source of income is interest-earning assets.
Virtually nothing was known at the time about the National Security Agency. The Beltway joke was that "NSA" stood for "no such agency." The conditional part of Church's warning -- "that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people" -- is precisely what is happening, one might even say: is what has already happened. That seems well worth considering.
Most Americans do not want to go to war and they do not want either the radical Shia or the radical Sunnis to win. But, fully in character, Professor Obama won't sell that understanding to his fellow citizens just in case he decides to change his mind. How do you run a democracy that way? But whoever said that American foreign policy is run democratically? At least not yet.
This analysis offers background information on the Iranian elections and the issues facing the new Iranian president, from both within and without.
If you can't measure it you can manage it. But improper use of measurement can cause a complete failure in business.
Whatever the reason for Washington's blather, it certainly is not doing the US government any good. Far more interesting than Snowden's revelations is the decision by governments of other countries to protect a truth-teller from the Stasi in Washington.
On the tragic decision by SCOTUS this morning to rescind Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
It is beyond laughable to hear Sec. of State Kerry or the White House criticizing other countries for "not respecting the rule of law" says TCBH! journalist Dave Lindorff
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon is facing a dilemma. Should he sign a bill that was intended to help many state residents get coverage for cost-effective health care that insurers often refuse to pay for? Or veto the bill because it is loaded with amendments that will benefit insurers and force many Missourians to pay far more for medical care than they do now?
Was Jose Navarro, a federal poultry inspector who died two years ago at the age of 37, a victim of increasingly noxious chemicals used in poultry and meat production? Chemicals like ammonia, chlorine and peracetic acid that are frequently employed to kill aggressive bacteria in meat and poultry?
Rebecca Solnit, How to Act Like a Billionaire
National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, now charged with violating the Espionage Act, has opened a Pandora's box of American global surveillance for the rest of us to be stunned by. Every day a new revelation, a new set of secrets or information, seems to pour out from somewhere -- without Hope, that last denizen of Pandora's famous container, yet in sight.
The NSA and Obama justify their ubiquitous, warrantless surveillance as necessary to fighting their "War on Terror." But overthrowing the 4th Amendment's standard of "probable cause" and using "improbable cause" by treating everyone everywhere as a suspect is as sensible as trying to solve a murder by having as your suspects the entire world's population.
A classic healthcare-lobbying shootout between the government and the medical device industry over cost containment in Medicare -- the $508 billion program pols tell us costs too much -- is in the making. Most of the media, except for a few alert trade publications have been snoozing on this one. And it's a fascinating tale that gets to the heart of the problem in American healthcare--what to do about its high price.
Was Tamerlan Tsarnaev a Double Agent Recruited by the FBI?
Since 2001, the FBI has deployed thousands of sting operations in which "the government provides the plot, the means and the opportunity" for a terrorist act. Many things about the Marathon bombing this Spring point to this kind of explanation, including the strange behavior of one of the brothers in the year leading up to the bombing, and also the strange behavior of law enforcement authorities during and after the event.  Best News Links from the Web
The White House delivered a terse warning to Russia and President Vladimir Putin Tuesday afternoon, saying it had a "clear legal basis" to expel National Security Agency leak source Edward Snowden from the country.I would like not to deal with such issues because it is like shearing a pig: there's lots of squealing and little fleece," Putin said. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said that the pending U.S. charges against him should be enough to warrant expelling Snowden, and warned Russia of the potential harm to bilateral relations between the two countries if it did not comply.
Obama takes on power plants as part of new climate plan
President Barack Obama tried to revive his stalled climate change agenda on Tuesday, promising new rules to cut carbon emissions from U.S. power plants and other domestic actions including support for renewable energy. There was nothing about the damage being done by the fracking activities. While he mentioned Keystone XL Pipeline, but don't get too excited about its not being passed.
On June 21, 2013, Moyers & Company reported on the most influential corporate-funded political force most of America has never heard of -- ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. This video report, an expanded and updated version of the original report of September 2012, reveals how the national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations presents itself as a "nonpartisan public-private partnership." But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.
Then come those days where progress and humanity seem to lurch and stumble around like confused animals, where, if you have any sort of progressive inclination whatsoever, you are left feeling like you've been both kissed and mauled, flattered and mugged, b*tch-slapped and proposed to, all while riding a burning roller coaster, on a Wednesday, drunk. So it is that this generation's nastiest, least compassionate Supreme Court, rigged like a poison grenade with the likes of Antonin Scalia, Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, first slapped civil rights back a generation by invalidating a vital part of the Voting Rights Act this week, a hugely successful piece of legislation that protected minorities and the poor from getting screwed over at the polls by rich white southerners.
The NRA board is populated with a smattering of criminals whose objection to gun laws might be rooted not in their concern for law-abiding gun owners, but their desire to protect fellow criminals. Let us meet the criminals in high places within the NRA's leadership:
The same reporters involved in the Iraq truth-telling a decade ago exposed the existence of the Obama administration's program that obligates government workers to spy on their colleagues or face punishment, dismissal, and possibly criminal charges. The Insider Threat Program targets not only national security departments and agencies but most federal bureacracies from the Peace Corps to the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture Departments.
Insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades opened fire on the Kabul offices of the CIA early Tuesday in a coordinated attack in one of the capital's most heavily fortified neighborhoods, which is also home to Afghanistan's presidential place and the main headquarters for the U.S.-led international military coalition. There was no word on damages to the CIA offices or casualties to its guard force, and it was uncertain whether the CIA had been the main target of the attack.
Representative Edward J. Markey, a Democrat who has toiled for almost 40 years in the House in both the majority and minority, won a promotion to the Senate on Tuesday in a victory over Gabriel Gomez, a Republican who has never served in elective office. Markey, 66, replaces John Kerry, who stepped down earlier this year to become secretary of state, and he will provide a reliable vote for President Obama's agenda, which seemed to be just what voters wanted.
Top House Republican Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) fired the first major political shots over NSA leaker Edward Snowden Tuesday morning, ripping the Obama administration as "more and more incompetent." Hong Kong defied U.S. requests and allowed Snowden to leave the country en route to Russia on Sunday. When pressed, Ryan said he would have done a "better job" following up with Hong Kong and China on extradition requests. He was unclear on specifics or what he would have done differently.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday gutted a key part of the landmark Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965 to end a century of attempts by former slaveholding states to block blacks from voting. The ruling upended important legal protections for minority voters that were a key achievement of the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s led by Martin Luther King Jr. The decision also placed the burden on Congress - sharply divided along party lines to the point of virtual gridlock - to pass any new voting rights law like the one sought by Obama.
The Oregon Department of Agriculture confirmed the insecticide Safari caused the deaths of approximately 50,000 bees in Wilsonville, OR, earlier this week. A landscaping company sprayed 55 linden trees in a Target parking lot to control for aphids, said Dan Hilburn, the plants division director at the department of agriculture. They bees have been dropping from trees since the spraying.
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