be just

House boosts military budget in time of austerity - Yahoo! News WASHINGTON – Money for the Pentagon and the nation's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is proving largely immune from the budget-cutting that's slamming other government agencies in the rush to bring down the deficit. On a 336-87 vote Friday, the Republican-controlled House overwhelmingly backed a $649 billion defense spending bill that boosts the Defense Department budget by $17 billion. The strong bipartisan embrace of the measure came as White House and congressional negotiators face an Aug. 2 deadline on agreeing to trillions of dollars in federal spending cuts and raising the borrowing limit so the U.S. does not default on debt payments.

 The Revolution Has Begun: Video    :      Information Clearing House: ICH By Mark A. Goldman We the people…believe that the crimes committed by prior administrations is unfinished business. Those who committed these crimes need to be brought to justice and justice needs to be done. We repudiate the current administration for allowing these criminals to avoid accountability and we pledge to right this wrong. We the people…believe that the current administration has also committed grievous crimes, including murder, war crimes, crimes against humanity, various crimes against the peoples of other nations and crimes against citizens of the United States, including direct attacks on the US Constitution and the rule of law, a general failure to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and what it stands for. Those who have committed these crimes also need to be brought to justice and the Constitution restored to its rightful place in the world. We t...

  It's Time to Get Outraged    :      Information Clearing House: ICH Fifty-nine-year-old Richard James Verone has a tumor in his chest and two ruptured disks, but no job or health insurance. He is one of those 50 million Americans I mentioned earlier. Verone told reporters he asked for only a dollar to show that his motives were medical, not monetary. Because of his "preexisting" medical conditions, no private insurer will have anything to do with him. He wasn't destitute enough to qualify for Medicaid, the government program for low-income Americans, or old enough to qualify for Medicare, the government program for people 65 and older. Verone and millions of other Americans who have a history of illness are considered by private insurers to be "uninsurable." Insurance company underwriters consider them an excessive risk to profits. Even insurers that operate as nonprofits, like many Blue Cross plans, refuse to sell coverage to a third or more of Americans ...

Children not exempt from widespread torture in Israeli detention | The Electronic Intifada Sleep-deprived and suffering from a broken leg, 16-year-old Muhammad Halabiyeh endured days of torture at the hands of Israeli soldiers and police officers, who punched him repeatedly in the face and abdomen, shoved needles into his hand and leg and threatened the Palestinian teenager with sexual abuse.

Bradley Manning, American Hero by Tom Engelhardt -- Antiwar.com Dick Cheney got one (as secretary of defense), so did Donald Rumsfeld (back in 1977), not to speak of Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, Walt Rostow, and General H. Norman Schwartzkopf (for Gulf War I). Of course, so did Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, and (posthumously) César Chávez, not to speak of Estée Lauder. President George W. Bush hit the trifecta in a single ceremony, awarding one to General Tommy Franks (who commanded U.S. forces in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and who, the president said, “led the forces that fought and won two wars in the defense of the world’s security and helped liberate more than 50 million people from two of the worst tyrannies in the world”), another to George Tenet (who oversaw the CIA through the torture and black-sites era), and a third to L. Paul Bremer III (the American proconsul in Baghdad during our ill-fated occupation of Iraq, whom th...