Mother Jones

Correction

Editor's Note

Rymer discusses the myth of conservative competence, which has persisted as an uncontested verity. He contends that the longer the conservatives have run things, the less mature--and more ideological, theoretical, and divorced from practicality--they have become, abandoning common sense in favor of ideologically driven utopianism at the expense of the US as a nation. Moreover, he points out the ironic side effects of the conservative competence: that is, the more the right's mis-stewardship i...

Backtalk

Off Track

The Diddly Awards

Hitt lampoons several politicians, including Rep Tom DeLay vying for the fictional diddly awards, the Tom Cruise Award for most impressive media meltdown.

Dragon Tales

China today is attacked from opposite ends of the political spectrum: reviled on the left for low wages and outsourcing; feared on the right for rising military power. Here, Galbraith features the source of China's rising power.

In the Garden of Armageddon

Pitzer features Dr Mahdi Obeidi, Saddam Hussein's former nuclear and bioweapons scientist. Obeidi has with him the four prototypes of a machine that looks like a futuristic motorcycle, that can jump-start a covert bomb program.

Memory's Revenge

The planner of Operation Iraqi Freedom forgot another thing on the road to Baghdad: how veterans would affect their ability to get new recruits. Here, Wypijewski features the efforts of Rayniel and Jim Murphy to help students on thinking twice to saying yes to military recruiters.

A Guilty Man

Beiser features legislator Bill Wiseman. NEarly 30 years ago, as a young legislator, Wiseman wrote the bill that made Oklahoma the first jurisdiction in the world to adopt lethal injection as a means of execution. Wiseman pushed the concept into law in an effort to expiate his shame for having voted to restore the death penalty in Oklahoma, despite his deep moral opposition to it, by introducing lethal injections, he had hoped to at least make execution more humane.

The Ricochet

Sargent features the efforts of lawyers, in relation to the 1993 San Franciso shooting, to help get rid of illegal firearms. In 2004, Thelen, Reid & Priest team up with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to wage a landmark lawsuit against more than three dozen gun manufacturers and distributors.

The Fall of a True Believer

Jack Abramoff is a millionaire lobbyist who has been at the center of a full-blown national scandal, with revelations that he bled Indian clients to the tune of $82 million, even as he sometimes worked for their political competitors. Here, Yeoman details how Abramoff become a symbol of greed and corruption.

Accounting Coup

For 118 years, the US government has been ripping off Indians whose private lands it holds in trust. Now, Elouise Cobell wants the money back. Here, Whitty discusses the details of Cobell v. Norton, a federal lawsuit on behalf of a half-million Indians across America whose individual property is held in trust by the Department of the Interior, which oversees the BIA. Cobell filed her lawsuit in 1996 after years of kinder entreaties failed, demanding payment of all unpaid revenues from Indian ...

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Klein reviews Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich.

Out Front

Freedom = Silence

Now sixty-three and just released from prison, Wilbert Rideau, the self-taught award-winning writer and editor of The Angolite--a prison magazine that won national accolades--is facing the daunting odds of any ex-con: no Social Security and no retirement pension. Rideau's hopes of using the same profession that sustained him in prison to generate a livelihood outside of it have also been severely diminished by his trial judge, who in March, slapped him with a $127,000 bill to cover the costs ...

Trust Busters

Both House and Senate ethics rules bar lawmakers from "improperly using their official positions for personal gain." The rules also require members to disclose their financial interests, and those of their spouses and dependent children. But a substantial share of members of both houses trade enthusiastically, buying and selling stocks in industries they oversee, raising questions about whether they have an unfair advantage over the average investor. Kaplan elaborates.

On a Dream and a Prayer

Scherer features The Cause, a group of young activists who spends their days speaking to God. In recent months, the group, founded by California minister Tom Engle, have become a new public face of conservative protest--laying siege to the Florida hospice where Terri Schiavo died, and surrounding a Kansas City abortion clinic and the federal courthouse in Spokane WA, where they prayed for God to stop city funding for abortion groups. For nearly a year, they've come to Capitol Hill almost ever...

Shame Is for Sissies

In the US' capital, where the appearance of virtue is always for sale to the highest bidder, politicians and lobbyists invariably claim some noble goal to justify even the most sordid transaction. But counterfeit idealism wasn't the style of 63-year-old Edward J. von Kloberg III, the flamboyant lobbyist for some of the world's flamboyant dictators who killed himself in May. Here, Levine presents a brief profile of the man who lived without apology and died for love, ending a career that was u...

Courting Failure

Before, liberals regarded the US Supreme Court as a beacon of freedom and decency. In the middle decades of the past century, it struck down the whites-only primary, decreed an end to segregation in public schools, established the right to privacy in birth control and abortion, ensured that every defendant would have an attorney--and required Richard Nixon to share his nasty White House tapes with the rest of the country. Here, Kazin features the changes in US courts today.

Conflict Studies

The Green Zone

In the months following the fall of Saddam, the US government's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) launched the largest airlift of cash in its history, flooding Iraq with $12 billion to pay off American contractors to jump-start Iraqi ministries. A recent report by Rep Henry Waxman of California, however, reveals that the CPA acted like a kid burning through Monopoly money, handing out billions without bothering to keep track of where they went.

Recon

Media Jones

Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White/When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America

Dickerson reviews Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White by David R. Roediger and When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America by Ira Katznelson.

Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment

Gilson reviews Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment by Jacques Leslie.

Jesus Land: A Memoir

Chihara reviews Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Scheeres.

Elgin Avenue Breakdown Revisited

Young reviews Elgin Avenue Breakdown Revisited by The 101ers.

Counter Attack

When Soso Whaley, an animal trainer in Kensington, New Hampshire, saw an interview about Morgan Spurlock's documentary on McDonald's, Super Size Me, she was seized with outrage at the film's "anticorporate" perspective. Here, Cordes notes that Whaley made Me and Mickey D, a 55-minute film released to acclaim from the conservative press on how she lost 10 pounds and 40 cholesterol points while eating nothing but McDonald's for one month.

Thanks for Asking

Young reviews Thanks for Asking by Apsci.

Early 21st Century Blues

Young reviews Early 21st Century Blues by Cowboy Junkies.