By FRED GARDNER - September 6/7, 2008

As Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden was responsible for the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines passed in 1986. “The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 had forced judges to harshly sentence within a narrow range,”...“So Biden knew in '86 that mandatory sentences were not needed... But he pushed for and passed mandatory sentencing anyway, because that’s what the narcs and prosecutors wanted. He held hearings at which they got opportunity to testify while opponents of mandatory minimums were kept out.”

By Andy Birkey , Minnesota Independent

With the Twin Cities set to host massive protests, an influx of media and thousands of Republicans and supporters, local corporate media are looking to fuel fears that things could get out of control. One activist group being targeted -- they say, unfairly -- is anarchists. They state that their plans do not include violence and that both their message and tactics are willfully misunderstood.

Challenging entrenched power in Congress.

Credit both titles to the book authors. Cindy Sheehan as a mother, peace activist, and now candidate to succeed Nancy Pelosi in California's Eighth Congressional District. Pelosi as both "guardian" and possessor of what Davids Cromwell and Edwards wrote about in their powerful critique of the media.

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - August 11, 2008

Republicans stand for war without end, a police state to make us “safe,” and “energy independence,” which means drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve and offshore of Florida’s Gulf Coast beaches...What [they] really mean by “energy independence” is prevailing over environmentalists. Republicans lump environmentalists in the same category with abortionists, gays, feminists, food stamp recipients, trade unionists and terrorists. To a Republican, saving America means prevailing over these people.

LA PAZ  - Bolivian President Evo Morales was Monday preparing a redoubled nationalization push and other socialist reforms after winning huge support in a weekend referendum. But his victory in Sunday’s vote, with more than 60 percent of voters backing his mandate according to unofficial results, was tempered by strong gains also handed to political enemies, leaving the country sharply divided.

The political arena has turn an old and familiar leaf. False hopes and false promises. Tell them what they want to hear. Like PT Barnum once said, "A sucker is born every minute"

Is it the limelight the Clintons can't seem to get away from or is it just more of the slimelight they are famous for?

By Medea Benjamin - Znet

On one side of this struggle is the impoverished indigenous majority in the western highlands who, along with Bolivia's first indigenous president Evo Morales, are trying to redistribute power and wealth towards poor communities. Pitted against them is a mostly white elite based in the eastern part of the country who want to keep tight control over the nation's wealth and are using their money and control of the media to foment widespread discontent...[T]he U.S. government...is aiding and abetting the opposition.

By CHRISTIAN WRIGHT - August 4, 2008

I remember in 1999 after the Columbine shootings when the whole country was up in arms about the need to get counseling to the weird kids before they get so frustrated they try to resolve their problems with violence...Today military recruiters are more often seen than college recruiters by a lot of kids...I can't think of a more fitting irony...of just how upside down our country has become...It's time to take it back. People's lives are more important than any election, or any politician’s career.

From Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah - Palestinian Information Centre

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas last week warned that he would dissolve the PA entirely if Israel released from its jails Palestinian parliamentarians affiliated with the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, the Israeli press reported Wednesday...Israel is detaining more than 45 Palestinian lawmakers in captivity to force Hamas to release an Israeli occupation soldier Palestinian fighters captured during a cross-border operation near Gaza more than two years ago.

Kelli Refer...and other organizers discuss an offer to abandon protests if the city spends $50 million [that would otherwise be used for new police weapons and a massive security operation at the Democratic National Convention] on community programs.

By John Pilger - Znet

In the New York Times on 14 July, in an article spun to appear as if he is ending the war in Iraq, Obama demanded more war in Afghanistan and, in effect, an invasion of Pakistan. He wants more combat troops, more helicopters, more bombs. Bush may be on his way out, but the Republicans have built an ideological machine that transcends the loss of electoral power - because their collaborators are..."bait-and-switch" Democrats, of whom Obama is the prince...Barack Obama is the American [Tony] Blair.

"Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them."

- Ryan Lizza, July 21 2008

by Ted Rall - Common Dreams

When [Republican Presidential candidate and Senator John] McCain was shot down during his 23rd bombing sortie, he was happily shooting up a civilian neighborhood in the middle of a major city. Vietnamese locals beat him when they pulled him out of a local lake; yeah, that must have sucked. But I can’t help think of what would have happened to Mohammed Atta had he somehow wound up alive on a lower Manhattan street on 9/11...Maybe he would have made it[?]...But I do know this: no one would ever have considered him a war hero.

By Derrick O'Keefe - July 19, 2008

I find it refreshing and hopeful that there can still be popular oppositional campaigns that actually call things by their right names. Faced with an in-your-face capitalist as president, the French people have picked an in-your-face anti-capitalist as their favourite politician from the opposition camp.