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Jim Freeman's op-ed pieces and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, International Herald-Tribune, CNN, The New York Review, The Jon Stewart Daily Show and a number of magazines.
Thursday, October 2, 2008 WHO NEEDS CONGRESS? DAVID IGNATIUS (1 comments)
Betting on the sagacity of Congress is risky, to say the least. So let's assume the worst and imagine that the $700 billion bailout doesn't pass anytime soon. What happens then? Is it true that "this sucker could go down," as President Bush put it last week? Or are there other pathways out of the financial crisis?
Wednesday, October 1, 2008 THE TRICKLE-UP BAILOUT--BUY THE HOUSES, NOT THE DERIVATIVES (5 comments)
The government could offer to refinance all mortgages issued in the past five years with a fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage at 6 percent. No credit scores, no questions asked; just pay off the principal of the existing mortgage with a government check.
Saturday, September 20, 2008 An Open Letter to All Republicans From a Former Religious Right Activist (2 comments)
Dear Republicans: This election all Republicans who love America must vote for Obama. A vote for business-as-usual and a continuation of the Neoconservative/Religious Right/ party of corporate American alienation is a vote against America. As a former Republican activist, I appeal to your patriotism and honor.
Thursday, September 18, 2008 HAROLD MEYERSON--WALL STREET DESERVES TO DIE
At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, what good was Lehman Brothers, anyway? And if Merrill Lynch was so bullish on America, why is it that, despite the torrent of foreign investment that flowed in to Lehman, Merrill and their Wall Street peers over the past half-decade, so few jobs were created in America during that period of "recovery"?
Wednesday, September 17, 2008 BUSH WRECKS FAMILY CAR IN DRUNKEN ECONOMIC CRASH
Abroad, Bailout Is Seen as a Detour From Capitalism.
PARIS - Is the United States no longer the global beacon of unfettered, free-market capitalism?
Tuesday, September 16, 2008 GARRISON KEILLOR--WE ARE NOT FRUIT FLIES, WE ARE VOTERS (2 comments)
Garrison Keillor: Palin Is Bush with Big Hair
The hustling Evangelical with ethics issues and a chip on her shoulder could be our first woman president.
Friday, September 12, 2008 WHAT MAKES PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN? [9.9.08] By Jonathan Haidt (4 comments)
...the second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats "just don't get it," this is the "it" to which they refer.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008 Fannie-Freddie Rescue Imperils Some Banks (1 comments)
The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac threatens the financial health of several dozen of the banks that bought shares in the two companies, regulators say, including some institutions active in the Washington region and banks focused on less-profitable community development lending.
Sunday, September 7, 2008 Bush's India Nuclear Deal--Risking Armageddon for Cold, Hard Cash
While everyone has been abuzz about Georgia, the Beijing Olympics and Sarah Palin, perhaps the most important development in the world has been unfolding with almost no attention. India and the United States, along with deep-pocketed corporations, have been steadily pushing along a lucrative and dangerous new nuclear pact, the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement.
Friday, September 5, 2008 A CON-GAME IN PIN STRIPES (1 comments)
These people are not your friends. They have already racked up half a trillion dollars in credit losses, wiped out five years of shareholders' profits and taken the wind out of the sails of the global economy.
Thursday, September 4, 2008 IN THE WORDS OF MY SPEECHWRITER . . . (1 comments)
Today, selling term papers to students to use as their own is still illegal, but selling speeches to politicians to use as their own remains a legitimate enterprise.
Sunday, May 4, 2008 Who Will Tell the People? Thomas L. Friedman (1 comments)
We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents' generation - work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means - have given way to subprime values: "You can have the American dream - a house - with no money down and no payments for two years."
Thursday, May 1, 2008 FEAR IS A TAX AND WE'RE EAGERLY PAYING IT
Security is an obsession that defies natural limits. And we submit because we like it. Al-Qaeda likes it, too. Never before have so few terrorized so many with so little.
Thursday, May 1, 2008 Dockworkers Protest Iraq War
Thousands of dockworkers at West Coast ports stayed off the job on Thursday in what their union said was a call for an end to the war in Iraq.
Monday, April 28, 2008 STANLEY FISH--MUCH ADO--BARACK AND WILLIAM AYERS
Moreover, I have had Bill and his wife Bernardine Dohrn to my apartment, was a guest lecturer in a course he taught and joined in a (successful) effort to persuade him to stay at UIC and say no to an offer from Harvard.
Sunday, April 27, 2008 "DEAR SENATOR OBAMA . . . " by Karl Rove (3 comments)
President Bush's former senior adviser offers advice for fighting the 'elistist' label.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008 E.J.DIONNE--THE STREET ON WELFARE
Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.
Sunday, March 2, 2008 JAMES CARROLL--AMERICA'S GHOST STORY
Military power, that is, functions in America the way state religion has functioned in other societies. The Pentagon is the temple of this religion. It has dogmas, rituals, high priesthood, saints, cults of sacrifice, sacred language and a justifying narrative - what theologians call "salvation history."
Saturday, March 1, 2008 A Brand of Politician: To a True Maverick, It's an Earned Label
A San Antonio human rights lawyer and former state legislator who wrote a fervidly liberal newspaper column almost until the day he died in 2003 at 82, Maury Maverick Jr. considered himself a zealot for freedom.
Thursday, February 28, 2008 DAVID IGNATIUS--THE FADING JIHADISTS
The data are crystal clear, We have taken a fire that would otherwise burn itself out and poured gasoline on it.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008 THE NIGHTMARE FROM "THE DAYDREAM BELIEVERS"
OF THE GROWING library of books on what has gone wrong since George W. Bush came to power, one of the more insightful is Fred Kaplan's new "Daydream Believers, How A Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power."
Tuesday, February 26, 2008 A WAR WE MUST END--JOHN PODESTA
Even a cursory examination of American history reveals the complexity of concluding a war that has taken on such a stark partisan tint.
Sunday, January 27, 2008 Judiciary Committee should move to impeach Bush and Cheney (4 comments)
Can a President disobey the law in order to protect the country in wartime? No, says Former Representative Elizabeth Holtzman who served on the House Judiciary Committee during proceedings toward Nixon's impeachment. The Constitution requires the president to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, she explains in this still seminal essay on the need to impeach Bush and Cheney for subverting the Constitution.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 'Hidden Costs' Double Price Of Two Wars, Democrats Say
The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new study by congressional Democrats that estimates the conflicts' "hidden costs"-- including higher oil prices, the expense of treating wounded veterans and interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007 PAKISTAN--Hitting the Mute Button on the Freedom Agenda
Just last Thursday, President Bush spoke of his Freedom Agenda spreading democracy across the globe: "We are standing with those who yearn for liberty."
Yesterday, the Bush administration unveiled a pragmatic new foreign policy: The Stand by Your Man Agenda.
Sunday, November 4, 2007 MIKE MUKASEY--YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?
Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime
By Evan Wallach
Sunday, November 4, 2007; B01
Sunday, November 4, 2007 GEORGE F. WILL--Congress's Unused War Powers
Americans are wondering, with the lassitude of uninvolved spectators, whether the president will initiate a war with Iran.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 HONEY, THEY SHRUNK THE CONGRESS
The founders wanted the "people's branch" to be strong, but the Bush administration has usurped a frightening number of Congress's powers - with very little resistance. The question is whether members of Congress of both parties will do anything about it.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007 Anti-Terrorism on Trial
We've seen this kind of regime before. In the McCarthy era, the government, working behind closed doors, created lists of "subversive organizations" and then held individuals responsible for any association with such groups, often using secret evidence to support its charges. Such actions invited abuse, harmed innocents and infringed on the very rights the government claimed to be protecting.
Sunday, October 21, 2007 Finally, Action! Ron Paul Introduces Bill to Defend Constitution!
NAOMI WOLF-It's not every day that there is something concrete you can do to save democracy in one powerful stroke and make sure your kids don't come of age in an American in which we are no longer protected by the rule of law.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007 Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets (1 comments)
SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.
Thursday, October 4, 2007 Baghdad in New York--Immigration Raids
Armed squads bursting into homes in the dead of night with shotguns and automatic weapons, terrorizing families and taking away anyone who lacks identity papers, even if they have raided the wrong house. It may sound like Baghdad, but it is the suburbs of New York City
Tuesday, October 2, 2007 Putin--President, then Premier, then President Again
MOSCOW, Oct. 1 -- President Vladimir Putin on Monday gave the clearest indication yet that he intends to continue ruling Russia after his term expires next spring, possibly by becoming prime minister, an office that analysts here say he could make as powerful as the presidency.
Monday, October 1, 2007 Scandal du Jour, Air Force Arranged No-Work Contract
Commonwealth Research and its parent company, Concurrent Technologies, are registered with the Internal Revenue Service as tax-exempt charities, even though their primary work is for the Pentagon and other government agencies.
Sunday, September 30, 2007 THE CONSTITUTION IN PERIL--NEWSWEEK (2 comments)
The War on Terror didn't start as an attack on Americans' rights, but several new books argue that's exactly what happened.
