John Peeler: The defeat of Martha Coakley in the race to succeed Ted Kennedy certainly shows the folly of taking victory for granted and failing to mount a serious campaign. But it also puts on display the complete political incompetence of the Obama administration and the national leadership of the Democratic Party and the Congress.

Palin and other conservatives want us to ignore the fact that shrinking the government and deregulation doesn’t help the small business person and the average worker; it turns the country over to massive corporations like Exxon Mobil. That’s what Riki Ott is telling us.

Now, paying off the opposition does seem to have calmed things down in parts of Iraq (recent Baghdad bombings notwithstanding), and thereby provided us with an opening to carry through with the agreement we made with the Iraqi government to get our troops out of there. Maybe it can work in Afghanistan too.

You should use the clout and credibility from the prize to convene serious, multiparty negotiations aimed at verifiably eliminating nuclear weapons from all arsenals, backed up with cooperative intelligence-gathering to ensure that non-state actors do not acquire or independently develop such weapons.

Our very presence as occupiers undermines the possibility that any government we support could ever achieve legitimacy and stability, because they will always be seen as puppets of the United States.

Will argues that we should take the Iraqi government at its word and wind down our involvement there, as specified in the 2008 security agreement: “The United States should treat this as a Dirty Harry moment: Make our day.”

It is up to us to defend and improve our democracy more effectively than the Germans of 80 years ago. This implies not only vigilance and willingness to do political battle, but as important, a willingness to acknowledge and respond to the real concerns of honest conservatives who might otherwise be seduced by Rush Limbaugh and his colleagues.

The more we insist on staying when we’re clearly not wanted, the more we reinforce the widely held Iraqi suspicion that we really intend a long-term, colonial-style occupation.

A key provision of the Voting Rights Act (first adopted in 1965), provides that jurisdictions with a history of racial and ethnic discrimination must get prior federal approval before changing election laws. Many, but …

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s overwhelming victory in Iran’s presidential election disappointed many who had hoped for a president who is not an international embarrassment and loose cannon. That is the image portrayed in the western media, …

The recent release of memoranda used by the Bush administration to justify various aggressive interrogation techniques for use on suspected terrorists has led to widespread calls for prosecution, either against those who wrote the memos, …

During the recent Summit of the Americas, in Trinidad, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela gave President Obama a copy of Open Veins in Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, by Eduardo …

Drug wars in northern Mexico, fed by guns and money from the United States, and spilling over into this country, remind us that the trade in illegal drugs remains a huge problem.
We have been engaged …

After the shameful, embarrassing performance of the Bush administration in denying the most basic human rights to detainees at Guantánamo, Bagram, Afghanistan, and at CIA black sites elsewhere, the record of the Obama admininstration on …

It’s been going on for sixty years. Or a century. Or a millennium. Or more. It depends on how you look at it, but the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation defiantly resists resolution, yielding an unending harvest of …

by John Peeler –
Is George W. Bush really the worst President in our history? It’s easy to think so, what with the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks, the bungling of the war in Afghanistan, …

by John Peeler –
As President-Elect Obama goes about naming more and more of his cabinet and senior advisers, many of his left-of-center supporters are expressing increasing unease at the absence of certified progressives in the …

Venezuela held regional elections on Sunday, 23 November, and opposition candidates made substantial gains against the governing party of President Hugo Chávez, winning at least five governorships (of 22), including the two most populous states …

This Democratic victory should be seen primarily as a rejection of the sectarian conservatism of the George W. Bush Administration. There is certainly a mandate to reimpose sensible regulation on the economy, to do something …

This week, John Peeler presents “Testaments,” a series of poems that take the form of valedictory statements by each of the postwar presidents, in the poetic manner of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology.
George W. …

This week, John Peeler presents “Testaments,” a series of poems that take the form of valedictory statements by each of the postwar presidents, in the poetic manner of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology.
Bill Clinton
They …

This week, John Peeler presents “Testaments,” a series of poems that take the form of valedictory statements by each of the postwar presidents, in the poetic manner of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology.
Ronald Reagan
A …

This week, John Peeler presents “Testaments,” a series of poems that take the form of valedictory statements by each of the postwar presidents, in the poetic manner of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology.
George H. …

This week, John Peeler presents “Testaments,” a series of poems that take the form of valedictory statements by each of the postwar presidents, in the poetic manner of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology.
Jimmy …

This week, John Peeler will present “Testaments,” a series of poems that take the form of valedictory statements by each of the postwar presidents, in the poetic manner of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology.
Gerald …

This week, John Peeler will present “Testaments,” a series of poems that take the form of valedictory statements by each of the postwar presidents, in the poetic manner of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology.
Richard …

This week, John Peeler presents “Testaments,” a series of poems that take the form of valedictory statements by each of the postwar presidents, in the poetic manner of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology.
Lyndon B. …

This week, John Peeler will present “Testaments,” a series of poems that take the form of valedictory statements by each of the postwar presidents, in the poetic manner of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology.
John …

by John Peeler –
This week, John Peeler presents “Testaments,” a series of poems that take the form of valedictory statements by each of the postwar presidents, in the poetic manner of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon …

by John Peeler –
“Testaments” is a series of poems that take the form of valedictory statements by each of the postwar presidents, in the poetic manner of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology.
 Harry S Truman
I …

It is widely known that Barack Obama decided to forgo public financing for his general election campaign, while John McCain chose to accept it. This reflects Obama’s greater success in fund-raising, and it also represents …

With less than two weeks until polls open for the 2008 election, the consensus is that Barack Obama is headed for a decisive victory. In the Electoral College, he is likely to win about two …

President Barack Obama will face a daunting international scene in January as a direct consequence of George Bush’s ill-conceived adventure in Iraq. Having argued forcefully that the war should never have been fought, and having …

Guantánamo Bay, September 11, 2026. Defeated Republican presidential candidate Bjorn Looser was sentenced to death today after a secret trial, on charges that were not specified. According to the current interpretation of a law passed …

There is an “Alice-in-Wonderland” quality to the current debate on Iraq. As the war became increasingly unpopular after 2003, the Bush administration took to arguing that we couldn’t leave because it wasn’t going well. We …

The recent escalation of violence between Israel and its Palestinian and Lebanese enemies illustrates yet again a perennial feature of this excruciating conflict: on both sides, those who refuse to compromise hold the trump cards.
Both …

Recently, a coalition of right-wing pastors decided to make a frontal assault on the long-standing policy that charitable institutions, including churches, are prohibited from endorsing candidates if they want to keep their tax-free status. These …

We have seen much hyperventilation of late about uncontrollable waves of less than fully white, non-English speaking immigrants inundating our southern borders, and hijacking not only our jobs, but our very culture.
The Republican Party finds …

Because the treatment of detainees in the prison for “unlawful combatants” at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was found by the Supreme Court to be contrary to both US law and international law, …

by John Peeler –
The recent crisis between Georgia and Russia, and the ineffectually truculent response of the Bush administration, illustrate the utter bankruptcy of the Bush foreign policy, and the need for a fundamental reexamination. …