The Neo-Con Aftermath
By Helen Thomas

Where are the neo-conservatives who brought on this economic and political mess?

They are evidently hiding in their think tanks or taking asylum in academia. Anyway, they are in safe havens, satisfied that they achieved their stated goals of regime change by toppling their nemesis - Saddam Hussein. Though none of those neo-cons wore the country's uniform, they pushed others to get into the fight.

It was the neo-cons who decided America should have an empire in the 21st century. Their design for the world has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths - not to mention the wounded and displaced.

Many of the neo-cons may have been kicked out of top government positions, but their influence in former President George W. Bush's administration was enormous. They convinced Bush of the need for torture. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has not ended the unlawful practice.

It's not surprising that the neo-con aspiration to get Saddam coincided with Israel's purpose, or that Saddam was accused of holding weapons of mass destruction. Iraq had none. Hans Blix, the former head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, begged Bush to let him go into Iraq to prove Iraq had no such lethal weapons. Bush refused. He wanted to invade Iraq.

Bush once told an interviewer that only war presidents are remembered in history. He will go down in history all right. Ironically, Bush and his cohorts - and the world in fact - know that only Israel had a nuclear arsenal in the Middle East. Top American officials, from Obama on down, have lost their credibility by refusing to say that Israel is a nuclear power.

The next target for the neo-con empire builders is Iran, another major enemy of Israel. If Iran succeeds in developing a nuclear bomb, the United States is supposed to attack Iran. So far, Obama has resisted the neo-con orders, but who knows for how long.

Their agenda was laid out in Project for the New American Century. Their "Statement of Principles" promotes increasing military spending; modernizing our armed forces; strengthening ties to democratic allies to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values; promoting the causes of political and economic freedom abroad; and accepting responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, prosperity and principles. These are goals not easily won without war.

By the end of 2006, PNAC was "reduced to a voice-mail box and a ghostly website," with "a single employee" "left to wrap things up," according to the BBC News. In 2006, Gary Schmitt, former executive director of the PNAC, stated that PNAC had come to a natural end.

The PNAC was a platform for a new American colonialism - and the neo-cons continue to lobby in Congress. They also are welcomed on the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post for their ultra-right points of view.

Others on the neo-con team include Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Kagan, both former Reaganites and Bush propagandists.

The neo-cons stated that the failure to depose Saddam would have resulted in a "decisive surrender in the international war on terrorism." They did not estimate the cost in American lives and money - and they probably didn't care.

Critics of the neo-cons have called them "chicken-hawks - men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war." They accuse the neo-cons of taking it a step further than the conservatives, who believe in maintaining a strong national defense. The neo-cons can only succeed in promoting their goals by blurring the lines between policing the world and maintain a strong national defense.

While many Republicans have begun to question the old neo-con foreign policy consensus that dominated Bush's GOP, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is the new neo-con hopeful.

While the neo-cons have achieved some of their goals, they have betrayed the good will of Americans and the decency of the country. They should be ashamed!
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.

Secret Vows Controlling GOP Mindset
By James Donahue

It was a newsy report when Republican presidential contenders Michele Bachmann and Rich Santorum revealed that they have signed something now dubbed the "Marriage Pledge," a vow of opposition to gay marriage, prostitution, and pornography. And with Republican members of Congress in deadlock with President Barack Obama and the Democrats over the issue of raising taxes on wealthy Americans to help stave off a looming budget crisis and raising the national debt ceiling, reports of a secret "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" have begun to leak into the news.

So just what is in these pledges and how are they affecting . . . or threatening to affect the decisions by our elected leadership? The Taxpayer Protection Pledge is a vow reportedly taken by 41 senators and 236 Congressional representatives . . . all but three of them Republicans . . . that they will stand opposed to any tax increase. And if Congress eliminates tax breaks for special interests, the pledge demands that they be "matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates."

The taxpayer pledge is the brainchild of Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group that has secretly risen to power within a shadow government that prevails in Washington. That pledge, which Republicans appear to be so loyal to they are willing to let the nation go into economic collapse rather than allow the Obama Administration to fulfill his election promise to eliminate the Bush era tax cuts for Americans earning $250,000 a year or higher, appears to be the root of the financial deadlock occurring in Washington.

The scary point to this story is that Norquist is not an elected public official. He is a silent power figure operating in the shadows, and wielding enough influence that Republicans believe they must take his demands for a pledge against taxes or risk not being elected to office.

Now that a new presidential election looms in 2012, we learn of yet another pledge, already taken by two ultra-conservative candidates, Bachmann and Santorum, that supports the thread-bare "sanctity of marriage" between a man and woman, opposes marriage among homosexuals, and goes so far as to declare war against anything threatening "normal" marriage such as prostitution and pornography.

This new "Marriage Vow" is a lengthy document put forth by Bob Vander Plaats, head of Family Leader, an ultra conservative organization headquartered in Iowa. Signing the pledge is required before candidates get an endorsement by Vander Plaats' group. While he once ran unsuccessfully for governor in Iowa, Vander Plaats is not an elected political official. But like Norquist, he appears to be wielding a growing secret power within another wing of the shadow government that is having an impact on the legislation occurring in Washington.

While the Taxpayer Protection Pledge is a simple, two point document as described above, the Marriage Vow is much more complex in its ramifications.

Those that take this vow pledge to "defend and to uphold the institution of marriage as only between one man and one woman," swear to "personal fidelity to my spouse," and support "official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices."

The pledge supports "prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended 'second chance' or 'cooling-off' periods for those seeking a "quickie divorce."

It declares "rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control."

After these and numerous other declarations opposing gay marriage and supporting the Christian concept of marriage and child rearing in the home, the Vander Plaats pledge tacks on these zingers for good measure:

"Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA's $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.

"Fierce defense of the First Amendment's rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy."

While most Americans would not argue against some of the doctrines outlined in the Marriage Vow, the document as a whole speaks out against the changing mores of American society, which are already beginning to be reflected in laws protecting the rights of gay marriage, divorce and the protection of women and children following the breakdown of marriage.

The frightening aspect of the two organizations that appear to be gaining control of elected political leadership through secret vows is that documents other than the Constitution appear to be now guiding the thoughts and actions of the men and women in power.

We are witnessing the dangerous result of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge even now, as the Republican controlled House stands firm against raising taxes against the very people who have stolen the wealth and now hold the keys to the kingdom.

We have suspected the existence of a secret shadow government working behind the scenes in Washington for a long time. Now that these two power figures have been revealed, we must wonder what other vows are our elected representatives being goaded into taking? How many boots must our Senators and Congressmen kiss before they can gain those coveted offices in our nation's capital?

The biggest question of them all is: if not the people we think we elect, who really runs our country?
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.

Congrats To The Gang Of Six, The Powerful, The Wealthy, And Multinational Corporations
By Bernie Sanders

If there was ever a time in the modern history of America that the American people should become engaged in what's going on here in Washington, now is that time. Decisions are being made that will impact not only our generation but the lives of our children and our grandchildren for decades to come, and I fear very much that the decisions being contemplated are not good decisions, are not fair decisions.

There is increased understanding that that defaulting for the first time in our history on our debts would be a disaster for the American economy and for the world's economy. We should not do that.

There also is increased discussion about long-term deficit reduction and how we address the crisis which we face today of a record-breaking deficit of $1.4 trillion and a $14 trillion-plus national debt.

One of the long-term deficit reduction plans came from the so-called Gang of Six. We do not know all of the details of that proposal. In fact, we never will know because a lot of the decisions are booted to committees to work out the details.

It is fair to say, however, that Senators Coburn, Senator Crapo and Chambliss deserve congratulations. Clearly, they have won this debate in a very significant way. My guess is that they will probably get 80 percent or 90 percent of what they wanted. In this town, that is quite an achievement, but they have stood firm in their desire to represent the wealthy and the powerful and multinational corporations. They have threatened. They have been smart. They have been determined. And at the end of the day, they will get almost all of what they want. That is their victory, and I congratulate them.

Unfortunately, their victory will be a disaster for working families in this country, for the elderly, for the sick, for the children and for low-income people.

Based on the limited information that we have, I think it is important to highlight some of what is in this so-called Gang of Six proposal that the corporate media, among others, are enthralled about.

Some may remember that for a number of years, leading Democrats said that we will do everything that we can to protect Social Security, that Social Security has been an extraordinary success in our country, that for 75 years, with such volatility in the economy, Social Security has paid out every nickel owed to every eligible American. I heard Democrats say that Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. That is right because Social Security is funded by the payroll tax, not by the U.S. Treasury. Social Security has a $2.6 trillion surplus today. It can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 25 years. It is an enormously popular program. Poll after poll from the American people says doesn't cut Social Security. Two and a half years ago when Barack Obama, then a senator from Illinois, ran for president of the United States, he made it very clear if you voted for him there would be no cuts in Social Security.

What Senators Coburn, Crapo and Chambliss have managed to do in the Gang of Six is reach an agreement where there will be major cuts in Social Security. Don't let anybody kid you about this being some minor thing. It is not. What we are talking about is that Social Security cuts would go into effect virtually immediately. Ten years from now, the typical 75-year-old person will see their Social Security benefits cut by $560 a year. The average 85-year-old will see a cut of $1,000 a year. Now, for some people here in Washington, maybe the big lobbyists who make hundreds of thousands a year, $560 a year or $1,000 a year may not seem like a lot of money, but if you are a senior trying to get by on $14,000, $15,000, $18,000 a year and you're 85 years old, the end of your life, you're totally vulnerable, you're sick -- a $1,000 per year cut in what you otherwise would have received is a major, major blow.

So I congratulate Senator Coburn, Senator Crapo, Senator Chambliss for doing what president Obama said would not happen under his watch, what the Democrats have said would not happen under their watch.

But it's not just Social Security. We have 50 million Americans today who have no health insurance at all. Under the Gang of Six proposals, there will be cuts in Medicare over a 10-year period of almost $300 billion. There will be massive cuts in Medicaid and other health care programs. There will be caps on spending, which mean that there will be major cuts in education. If you are a working-class family, hoping that you're going to be able to send your kid to college and thinking that you will be eligible for a Pell grant, think twice about that. Pell grants may not be there. If you're a senior who relies on a nutrition program, that nutrition program may not be there. If you think it's a good idea that we enforce clean air and clean water provisions so that our kids can be healthy, those provisions may not be there because there will be major cuts in environmental protection.

Some people think that's not so good, but at least our Republican friends are saying we need revenue and we're going to get $1 trillion in revenue. But wait a minute,. If you read the proposal, there are very, very clear provisions making sure that we are going to make massive cuts in programs for working families, for the elderly, for the children. Those cuts are written in black and white. What about the revenue? Well, it's kind of vague. The projection is that we would rise over a 10-year period $100 billion in revenue. Where is that going to come? Is it necessarily going to come from the wealthiest people in this economy? Is it going to come from large corporations who are enjoying huge tax breaks? That is not clear at all. I want middle-class families to understand that when we talk about increased revenues, do you know where that comes from? It may come from cutbacks in the home mortgage interest deduction program, which is so very important to millions and millions of families. It may mean that if you have a health care program today, that health care program may be taxed. That's a way to raise revenue. It may be that there will be increased taxes on your retirement programs, your I.R.A.'s, your 401(k)'s. But we don't have the details for that. All we have is some kind of vague promise that we're going to raise $1 trillion over the next 10 years, no enforcement mechanism and no clarity as to where that revenue will come from.

That is why it is so terribly important that the American people become engaged in this debate which will have a huge impact on them, on their parents and on their children. The American people must fight for a fair deal. At a time when the wealthiest people in this country are doing phenomenally well and their effective tax rate is the lowest on record, at a time when the top 400 individuals in this country own more wealth than 150 million Americans, at a time when corporate profits are soaring and in many instances corporations, these same corporations pay nothing in taxes, at a time when we have tripled military spending since 1997, there are fair ways to move toward deficit reduction which do not slash programs that working families and children and the elderly desperately depend upon.

This senator is going to fight back. I was not elected to the United States Senate to make devastating cuts in Social Security, in Medicare, in Medicaid, in children's programs while lowering tax rates for the wealthiest people in this country.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 after serving 16 years in the House of Representatives. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. Elected Mayor of Burlington, Vt., by 10 votes in 1981, he served four terms. Before his 1990 election as Vermont's at-large member in Congress, Sanders lectured at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and at Hamilton College in upstate New York. Read more at his website.

The Needle And The Damage Done

Endangering children, increasing mistrust and instability around the world, militarizing medicine, polluting every notion of a greater common good or human fellow-feeling -- and all for absolutely nothing (aside from the perpetuation of the pointless dominance of a witless, brutal, all-devouring elite): that pretty much sums up the foreign policy of our rotting, blundering, bankrupt empire.
(c) 2011 Chris Floyd

Neocons Fume Over US Boat To Gaza

We U.S. boaters have just begun; we will get to Gaza. But watch out for Israeli-sponsored provocations, which could become the prelude to even more violence in the months ahead. (c) 2011 Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Letting Bankers Walk

So when officials tell you that we must rush to settle with the banks for the sake of the economy, don't believe them. We should do this right, and hold bankers accountable for their actions.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times

The Quotable Quote...

America's Disappeared

The only way the rule of law will be restored, if it is restored, is piece by piece, extradition by extradition, trial by trial. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice and John Ashcroft will, if we return to the rule of law, face trial. The lawyers who made legal what under international and domestic law is illegal, including not only Rizzo but Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, David Addington, William J. Haynes and John Yoo, will, if we are to dig our way out of this morass, be disbarred and prosecuted. Our senior military leaders, including Gen. David Petraeus, who oversaw death squads in Iraq and widespread torture in clandestine prisons, will be lined up in a courtroom, as were the generals in Argentina, and made to answer for these crimes. This is the only route back. If it happens it will happen because a few courageous souls such as the attorney and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, are trying to make it happen. It will take time-a lot of time; the crimes committed by Bianco and the two former officers sent to prison this month are nearly four decades old. If it does not happen, then we will continue to descend into a terrifying, dystopian police state where our guards will, on a whim, haul us out of our cells to an amusement park and make us ride, numb and bewildered, on the kiddie train, before the next round of torture.
(c) 2011 Chris Hedges, the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times, spent seven years in the Middle East. He was part of the paper's team of reporters who won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of global terrorism. He is the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His latest book is, ""Death Of The Liberal Class."

President Obama's Big Deal

And this explains why we are looking to gut Social Security and Medicare in response to Wall Street's wreckage of the economy. The basic story is that the average worker and retiree will have to sacrifice because of the damage that the Wall Street crew did to the economy. That is what democracy in America looks like now.
(c) 2011 Dean Baker is a macroeconomist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University.

The Dead Letter Office...

Harry flips the bird to the hungry, the poor, the sick and elderly.

Rupert Murdoch Has Gamed American Politics Every Bit As Thoroughly As Britain's
By John Nichols

Australian-born billionaire Rupert Murdoch has manipulated not just the news but the news landscape of the United States for decades. He has done so by pressuring the Federal Communications Commission and Congress to alter the laws of the land and regulatory standards in order to give his media conglomerate an unfair advantage in "competition" with more locally focused, more engaged and more responsible media.

It's an old story: while Murdoch's Fox News hosts prattle on and on about their enthusiasm for the free market, they work for a firm that seeks to game the system so Murdoch's "properties" are best positioned to monopolize the discourse.

Now, with Murdoch's News Corp. empire in crisis-collapsing bit by bit under the weight of a steady stream of allegations about illegal phone hacking and influence peddling in Britain-there is an odd disconnect occurring in much of the major media of the United States. While there is some acknowledgement that Murdoch has interests in the United States (including not just his Fox News channel but the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post), the suggestion is that Murdoch was more manipulative, more influential, more controlling in Britain than here.

But that's a fantasy. Just as Murdoch has had far too much control over politics and politicians in Britain during periods of conservative dominance-be it under an actual Tory such as former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major and current Prime Minister David Cameron or under a faux Tory such as former Prime Minister Tony Blair-he has had far too much control in the States. And that control, while ideological to some extent, is focused mainly on improving the bottom line for his media properties by securing for them unfair legal and regulatory advantages.

Over the past decade, as media reform groups have battled to prevent FCC and Congressional moves to undermine controls on media consolidation, Murdoch and his lobbyists been a constant presence-pushing from the other side for the lifting of limits on the amount and types of media that one corporation can own in particular communities and nationally.

The objection was never an ideological one. Media owners, editors, reporters and commentators have a right to take the positions they like. Where the trouble comes is when they seek to turn politicians and regulators into corporate handmaidens-and when they build their empires out to such an extent they can demand obedience even from those who do not share their partisan or ideological preferences.

And the corruptions of the process created by Murdoch's manipulation are not merely a British phenomenon.

Murdoch's political pawns in the United States have been every bit as faithful to the mogul and his media machine as the British pols.

When he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee in May of 2003, at a point when he was the chief global cheerleader for George Bush's war with Iraq ("We basically supported...I will say supported the Bush policy," the media mogul would later admit), Murdoch was seeking to secure ownership of the nation's largest satellite television company while pressing for FCC rule changes that would allow him to own newspapers and broadcast outlets in the same cities and for an easing of controls on the extent to which one corporation could dominate television viewership nationally.

Did Murdoch have a hard time of it?

Not hardly.

News reports at the time described the response to the Australian-born media mogul's appearance as "just short of fawning."

The then-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, greeted Murdoch by thanking the media executive for developing the Fox News network. "When my wife doesn't get a good dose of Fox News every day she gets grumpy," chirped Sensenbrenner, "so there are some of us who appreciate what you are doing."

Murdoch was invited to sing the praises of his various operations, and he did just that, claiming, "Innovation and consumer choice are built into our DNA." The whole point of Fox, Murdoch explained, was to "dethrone" more traditional media outlets-outlets that did actual news reporting (Fox is dominated by talking-head commentators) and that were not expressly ideological (in the sense that Fox places itself at the service of the corporate-dominated and militarist wing of the GOP).

That sat well with the Republicans on the committee. "Thank you for what you've done," Utah Congressman Chris Cannon told Murdoch. "Thank you for your risk-taking."

Sensenbrenner was so determined to create a favorable transcript of Murdoch's visit-which he promised to forward to the Justice Department and the FCC, which were examining anti-trust and regulatory issues relating to the expansion of the News Corp. empire-that he prevented Democrats on the committee from asking basic questions.

The ranking Democrat, Michigan Congressman John Conyers, complained that he was prevented from questioning Murdoch about "the connections between [Fox News chairman and CEO] Roger Ailes and the White House. What the hell is that all about? It's like there's a direct line between the administration and Ailes. You can see it. There are plenty of political and policy implications in that."

Conyers was absolutely right. So, too, were consumer groups that complained aggressively about the expansion of Murdoch's media dominance and political reach. But News Corp. got the go-ahead to take over the largest satellite company (DirecTV) and the FCC (which Murdoch had personally lobbied) approved the ownership rule changes he sought.

Ultimately, the DirecTV deal turned out to be problematic for Murdoch, and the courts tripped up the FCC's rule changes.

But Murdoch kept at the latter fight, continuing to push for the FCC to rewrite media ownership rules so that one corporation can own the daily newspapers, the weekly "alternative" newspaper, the city magazine, suburban publications, the eight largest radio stations, the dominant broadcast and cable television stations, popular Internet news and calendar sites, billboards and concert halls in even the largest American city.

This "company-town" scheme-a top goal of Murdoch and his lobbying team, as it complemented their US operations in cities such as New York-was again approved by the FCC in 2008, only to again be up-ended by United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit earlier this month.

Notably, while the Murdoch-friendly 2008 rule change was approved by a Republican-dominated FCC, it was defended this year by current FCC chair Julius Genachowski, an appointee of President Obama.

As in England, Murdoch and his managers have for many years had their way with the American regulators and political players who should have been holding the mogul and the multinational to account. Sometimes Murdoch has succeeded through aggressive personal lobbying, sometimes with generous campaign contributions (with Democrats and Republicans among the favored recipients), sometimes by hiring the likes of Newt Gingrich (who as the Speaker of the House consulted with Murdoch in the 1990s) and Rick Santorum (who as a senator from Pennsylvania was a frequent defender of big media companies), sometimes by making stars of previously marginal figures such as Michele Bachmann.

Former White House political czar Karl Rove, who prodded Fox News to declare George Bush the winner of the disputed 2000 presidential election and who remains a key player in Republican politics to this day, still works for Murdoch, as does former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a prospective GOP vice presidential candidate.

But Murdoch is not the rigid partisan some of his more casual critics imagines. He often discovers unexpected political heroes of heroines-such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a former target whose 2000 US Senate run in New York and whose 2008 presidential run earned surprisingly generous coverage from the New York Post and Fox after Murdoch determined that she was on the rise politically. The Clinton embrace was classic Murdoch. He plays both sides of every political divide. But when he is not aiding and abetting the party of the right he looks for conservative and centrist figures (Britain's Blair, America's Clinton) within traditional parties of the left. The point, always, is to assure that those with power are pro-business in general and pro-Murdoch (or, at the least, indebted to Murdoch) in particular.

The strategy has been so successful that, even now, there is some debate about the extent to which Murdoch's influence will diminish in the United States.

Criticism of the media Machiavelli has been muted, and not just from the Republican presidential contenders who are afraid of getting on the wrong side of the Fox team and the equally punitive Wall Street Journal editorial page. Democratic leaders had almost as much trouble finding anything bad to say about Murdoch's alleged wrongdoing-let alone his manipulations of American political life.

After the current scandal began to unfold, a few Democrats with histories of questioning big-media companies, called for inquiries into News Corp. wrongdoing.

Senators Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, and Barbara Boxer asked for an investigation of whether News Corp's extensive use of phone hacking could have violated US laws. "The reported hacking by News Corp. newspapers against a range of individuals-including children-is offensive and a serious breach of journalistic ethics," says Rockefeller said in a statement. "This raises serious questions about whether the company has broken U.S. law, and I encourage the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated."

Similarly, Senator Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, asked Attorney General Eric Holder and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Mary Schapiro on Wednesday, to consider whether News Corp.'s allegedly bribery of foreign law enforcement officials violated US law.

"The limited information already reported in this case raises serious questions about the legality of the conduct of News Corp. and its subsidiaries under the [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act]," explained Lautenberg. "Further investigation may reveal that current reports only scratch the surface of the problem at News Corp. Accordingly, I am requesting that DOJ and the SEC examine these circumstances and determine whether U.S. laws have been violated."

New York Congressman Peter King, who represents many families of 9/11 victims, was a lonely Republican advocate for an inquiry.

These requests prompted the US Department of Justice to pursue a limited investigation, with Attorney General Holder saying, "There have been members of Congress in the United States who have asked us to investigate those same allegations and we are progressing in that regard using the appropriate Federal law enforcement agencies."

Holder, a frequent target of abuse from Murdoch media, has taken an appropriate if cautious first step.

An even more appropriate inquiry would go to the heart of the matter and ask: How did Murdoch get such favorable treatment from Congressional committees and regulatory agencies that are supposed to serve the public interest?

Such an inquiry would, undoubtedly, consider the unsettling tale of how former Senate minority leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, seemed to lose interest in challenging media consolidation-an issue on which he had been a good player-after Murdoch's publishing house offered Lott a $250,000 book deal for the senator's forgettable memoir, Herding Cats. It would also consider the strange case of then–Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's decision to take a break from her work at a critical early stage in the war on terror-on a day when a international outcry had stirred with regard to a failed attempt to assassinate a key Al Qaeda leader-to spend a leisurely afternoon briefing Murdoch's editors from around the world.

But the most critical focus of any inquiry into Murdoch's influence over US political and regulatory players would be on those figures, such as the slavishly devoted Congressman Sensenbrenner, who remain in positions where they can do the mogul's bidding.

No doubt, Murdoch's misdeeds deserve to be examined-thoroughly, and aggressively.

So, too, however, do the actions of those American politicians and regulators-Republicans and Democrats-who appear to have been every bit as obedient to Rupert Murdoch as their British counterparts.
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.

The Arts Of Life They Changed Into The Arts Of Death
Bachmann, Palin and Robertson and the limits of logic
By Phil Rockstroh

As of late, Pat Robertson has been waxing apocalyptic regarding mankind's imminent reckoning with wrathful divinity, while liberals have been sharing scary bedtime stories by the ghostly light of computer screens…telling sleep-banishing tales of Michele ("Crazy Eyes") Bachmann, now stalking primary states, assailing common sense and chewing the scenery of sanity during appearances on the twenty-four/seven Creature Feature Theatre, otherwise known as, Cable News programming.

Granted, the sense of unease displayed by right wing, fundamentalist Christians regarding the state of the nation is understandable; although, their attribution as to the origin and cause of the destructive drift of U.S. culture is so far off the mark they would fail to get wet if they fell into a baptismal pool the size of Lake Michigan.

Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Pat Robertson et al, these late empire zealots of shopping mall, militarism, and heterosexual hegemony, harbor a comic, yet mortifying vision of the conditions they believe would bring rebirth and renewal to the nation. Believing, it seems, all that is good and decent can be salvaged, if only the U.S. would be transformed into an earthly analog of their fantasy of an immaculately scrubbed and deodorized, caucasoid heaven (which, of course, to all others, seems a nightmare world where W.A.S.P. faces are permanently affixed on the whole of multi-visaged humanity -- a death mask made of white bread) -- a creepy, blood-bereft, restricted country club Hyperborea, sustained by holy militarism, where well-turned out, obedient children of the lord await the Second Coming -- a cartoon universe deus ex machina -- vis-a-vis the arrival of their version of Jesus Christ -- who seems to resemble a cross between a muscle-blessed, Hollywood super hero and an eternally vigilant, sin-scouring Tidy Bowl Man.

Invoking an impassioned narrative of blood, thunder and descending, supernatural balm, fundamentalism is an attempt, albeit desperate and misguided, to mitigate the uncertainty and angst incurred by the poetry-decimating literalism of the industrial/consumer age.

This system of belief, internalized in the psyches of the populace of the U.S., falls into the Calvinist/Puritan tradition and therefore carries a nostalgic longing for the imagined innocence of lost paradise, regards imperfection as sin and the imagination as suspect, and believes that a vengeful, omniscient God banished humanity from paradise because of our serpent-gifted lust for life and longing for knowledge.

These lost souls of wanting credulity and noxious certitude believe their shame is their ticket back to paradise... If only they could just hate themselves (and the world enough) -- then they will be made perfect in the perfect love of The Lord. They are, of course, insane.

Accordingly, what events and circumstances are responsible for this free-floating psychotic episode extant as the belief system of contemporary, fundamentalist Christianity?

"And all the Arts of Life they changed into the Arts of Death in Albion."
 ~~~~ Jerusalem, Chapter 3., William Blake.

Early in the Industrial Age, William Blake apprehended humankind had begun to negotiate existence "[a]mong these dark Satanic mills." Blake was not mortified by the mill itself: He was repelled by the imprint the machine left on the mind. This was the factor that he deemed Satanic i.e., positing the image as metaphor for the manner that Satan, the mythical embodiment of the human psyche's unconscious drives, desires and compulsions (and attendant rationalizations) can imprison the human psyche and chain it in his service.

Recognizing and rejecting the principles of the mechanized age for its dehumanizing implications, Blake warned against a view of the world that reduces human life to the sum of machine parts -- for the metaphoric hell-bound train of thought that it is…usurping individual identity by commandeering the hours of fleeting existence by placing one's body at the service of greed-driven, nature-decimating agendas.

"Kept ignorant of its use, that they might spend the days of wisdom 
in sorrowful drudgery, to obtain a scanty pittance of bread:
 In ignorance to view a small portion and think that All,
 And call it Demonstration: blind to all the simple rules of life." ~~~ Jerusalem, Chapter 3. William Blake.

As circumstances stand at present, Blake exhibited caution in his augury: An island of garbage, larger than the state of Texas, floats in the Pacific Ocean. Increasing numbers of U.S. children, obese from corporate processed food, are so unhealthy they're falling prey to the illnesses of middle age. The topsoil of the American mid-west has all but disappeared due to the shortsighted greed of industrial mega-farming.

This is why (to cite only a few examples) the present paradigm's days are numbered. And this is not Old Testament-variety raving…spittle flinging, white beard flapping in the harsh desert wind, dark prophetic fantasy. The examples above simply augur the mundane trajectory inherent to systems locked in entropic runaway.

Fortunately, there is a type of hope that resides at the depths of hopelessness…the perennial truth that arrives when one relinquishes all hope that one's ossified understandings and moribund means of existing in the world cannot be maintained nor salvaged.

"I came into a place void of all light,
which bellows like the sea in tempest,
when it is combated by warring winds."
 ~~~ The Divine Comedy, The Inferno, Canto V, lines 28-30.

Dante's epic poem, The Divine Comedy, resonates on a number of levels. It is important to note how the poet limned the suburbs of Hell…as being, a place reserved for those souls who refused to choose either good or evil -- and, seemingly, a prime location for Wal-Mart big box stores.

"This miserable state is borne by the wretched souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise." 
~~~ The Divine Comedy, The Inferno, Canto III, lines 34-36.

(Apropos, I offer this completely gratuitous fantasy: Of Sam Walton, ruthless emblem of the age of corporate despotism, with his reptilian rictus forever affixed in a forced smile of tyrannical good cheer, condemned for all eternity to be a greeter at the gates of Hell.)

In contrast, Dante counseled, we are provided with a more propitious option: to walk through Hell, as opposed to remaining locked in the stasis of an insular, unexamined existence.

Dante evoked the descent into the underworld to intimate the understanding that darkness is an aspect of human nature and that self-awareness arrives only after an exploration of the hidden, self-censored regions of one's psyche. Only after passing through the inner most circle of the frozen hellscape does it become possible for Dante to look upward and gaze upon Beatrice’s splendor among the spheres of Heaven.

His Journey began, lost in a dark woods, with his path block by a hungry she-wolf and fierce lion. Then, led there by the pagan poet, Virgil, the adamantine gates of Hell (posting that famous sign regarding hope forever abandoned) slammed shut behind him. But the poet's descent deep into the unsavory aspects of his nature made possible those glimpses of beatific light.

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world, 
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.

"But the darkness pulls in everything--
shapes and fires, animals and myself, 
how easily it gathers them! --
powers and people -- and it is possible a great presence is moving near me I have faith in night." ~~~~ Rainer Maria Rilke.

Otherwise, as is the case with the Puritan/Calvinist imagination, an individual risks becoming purity-obsessed and light-intoxicated i.e., lacking in the will and ability to see the dark side of their nature; hence, one is prone to project one's own motives on the actions of others.

Possessed by this state of mind, an individual is capable of inflicting a great amount of damage on his own psyche. Witness: the raging, lower order demons, inhabiting their own personal hellscapes, as channeled by the likes of Bachmann, Palin, and the Reverend Robertson.

Yet, rationalistic devices such as reductionist reasoning and humanistic psychology have proven useless in breaching the high walls of delusion bulwarking fundamentalist, free-floating crazy.

Why? Reductionism is a bi-product of the western Puritan/Calvinist tradition, and as such is prone to the pathologies inherent in the cosmology…wherein there exists: an habitual winnowing down of perception to controllable, exploitable bits; the dismissing of all things (the veracity of imagination, the emanations of nature and the souls of animals) that do not serve narrowed agendas (which are defining characteristics of its scion -- the corporate state -- and those within its institutions who have internalized its raison d'etre).

Both Fundamentalist and reductionist mindsets are cemented in certitude. In fact, each is the shadow side of the other; hence, hyper-rationalists and religious literalists are locked in contemptuous embrace. Both evince, with their obsession with the other, a longing for rapprochement with their missing half, yet their encounters become a courtship dance of animus and antagonism, whereby their mutual yearning for union is expressed as a compulsion to transform the other.

Therefore, the rationalist is driven to proffer balms of superstition-purging logic, as, in turn, the religious true believer frets over the doomed-to-eternal-damnation, mortal soul of the salvation-bereft rationalist. Yet both causation-clutching logicians and credulous lambs of the lord share this trait: both have banished from their respective belief system the appropriation of empathetic imagination and a poetic approach to mystery.

Accordingly, the ideal use of poetic insight, intellectual rigor, and quicksilver wit is to deploy these tools (at times, weapons) of the mind -- in the manner the hubris-hating gods intended -- to confront bullies, rednecks, liars, prigs and hypocrites (including our own self-serving casuistry), to disarm (or, at least, annoy) the brutal, conniving and witless, and, in general, paraphrasing Whitman, "to cheer up slaves and to horrify despots.”

Yet, today, if a poet were to merge his body with the body of America, instead of discovering a Body Electric, he would find himself endowed with the hulking, putrefying corpse of a shambling zombie. Accordingly, he must tear a rotting arm from the monster and beat his own laughing corpse with it. Creating...a movable autopsy...a Book Of The Dead for a dying empire.

Worse, in the world beyond U.S. self-reference, the earth's oceans are dying -- as, on a personal level, Fukushima's isotopes penetrate our bones like parasitic beetles boring into the trunks of dying trees.

And this is not simply a view of the world. In fact, this is the state of the world.

Don't defend the indefensible -- the soul-defying banality of the present system. The neo-liberal superstate is unsustainable and will bring on its own demise.

Instead, like a mourner in a New Orleans funeral march, dance with the dread involved. The music of sorrow is more real than the magical thinking required to believe an insane system is salvageable. Don't stand, back pressed to the wall, frozen in rationalization and equivocation…Exalt in the unfurling mystery of it all.

Crackpot realists demand solutions and Christian Fundamentalist pray for finality. I demur. I stand in awe of the ragged glory immanent in sublime futility.

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." ~~~ Samuel Beckett.

I suspect this attitude arrives from the southerner/Native American collision of genes in me. One's broken places allow the spirit in. No need to fix the problem, for the problem is the solution. No call for satanic caulk to seal the cracks in one's soul that reveal one's character.

And why is this important, particularly, at a time when our opponents are unflagging in their certitude? Because even when our reason to fight has merit, and nuance is banished, the larger truth that life itself contains paradox and is comprised of ambiguity remains. Thus, fascist fantasies of infallibility are toppled and the misguided trudge toward the mirage of paradise is waylaid...perhaps leveling a measure of humanizing grace.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." ~~~ Goethe
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.

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