Today's Stories

October 8, 2009

Saul Landau
A Late September Morning With Fidel

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Dark Omens for the US in Afghanistan

October 7, 2009

Brendan Cooney
Are Republicans Breaking US Law in Honduras?

Paul Craig Roberts
Dead Labor: Marx and Lenin Reconsidered

Dean Baker
Bernanke's Recovery: Unemployment Up, Wages Down (But the Banks Have Been Saved ... Sort Of)

Jonathan Cook
A Third Intifada?

John Stanton
HTS: Congress Rewards Failure, Puts Personnel in Harms Way

Joanne Mariner
Tortured Language

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cherry Blossoms

Stephen Lendman
The Gaza War's Effect on Women

Sen. Russell Feingold
Time to Draw Down in Afghanistan

Mary Lynn Cramer
Doublespeak on Health Care

Website of the Day
How to Bag a Wolf by Aerial Assault

October 6, 2009

Mike Whitney
Dollar Hysteria: Is the Sky Really Falling?

Gareth Porter
The Iranian Rift in the IAEA: Leaked Paper Based on Disputed Intel

Jonathan Cook
How Israel Buried the UN's War Crime Probe

Boris Kagarlitsky
My Hour as Talking Head in Moscow

Iain Boal
The New Crisis at Pacifica

Ron Jacobs
Why Are We in Afghanistan?

John Ross
Wave of Anarchist Bombings Strikes Mexico

Michael Dickinson
Panic in Istanbul: Smoke, Mayhem and the World Bank

Stephen Fleischman
Beware the Predator

Ira Glunts
The Audacity of Nope

Missy Beattie
Outside Looking In

Website of the Day
Round Up the Usual Suspects

October 5, 2009

Pam Martens
Wall Street Titans Use Aliases to Foreclose on Families While Partnering with a Federal Agency

Mike Whitney
Dead Man Walking: Welcome to the US Economy

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Feds Imprison the Innocent

Harry Browne
Ireland Says, "Yes, Please"

Sara Mann
My Little Town: Nothin' But the Dead and Dyin'

Omar Barghouti
Dissolve the Palestinian Authority

Shamus Cooke
A Jobless Recovery?

Brenda Norrell
A Dirty New Low for Peabody Coal

Fred Gardner
Situation NORML: Reconciling Medical Pot Use and Legalization

Binoy Kampmark Copenhagen Blues: McChrystal and the Afghan Trap

Website of the Day
In Goldman Sachs We Trust?

October 2-4, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Geezer Renditions

Saul Landau
News From Raul Castro

Diana Johnstone
After the German Elections: Is Socialism Really Dead in Europe?

Greg Moses
Cramming for the Downside

William Blum
The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Another Cold War Myth

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Nuclear Program: Where's the Proof?

Russell Mokhiber
Welcome Back, Michael Moore

John Ross
Chomsky in Mexico

Ellen Brown
IMF Catapults From Shunned Agency to Global Central Bank

David Ker Thomson
Cop Shocks

David Macaray
The Audacity of Toyota

Gary Engler
Unions in a Rut

Robert Fantina
Meet the New Boss (Same as the Old Boss)

Lisa Stolarski / Naomi Archer
Pittsburgh: Still a (Coal) Company Town

Anthony Papa
Here is Your Chance to Help End the Failed War on Drugs

Joe Allen
The Good Wife: Bad View of a Corrupt System

Harry Browne
Tarantino Scalps His Audience

Ron Jacobs
Collective Fiction

Charles R. Larson
Cultural Warriors: Austrialian Aboriginal Art Triennial

David Yearsley
Hanns Eisler's Great National Anthem for East Germany is Available: Make It America's

Poets' Basement
Taylor, Gardner and Landau

Website of the Weekend
Wrongful Convictions of Youth

October 1, 2009

Andy Worthington
A Truly Shocking Gitmo Story

Carl Ginsburg
The Great Marginalization

Mary Lynn Cramer
Seniors on the Chopping Block

Col. Douglas Macgregor
The Bog of History in Afghanistan

Brian M. Downing
The Paradox of Financial Disorder

John V. Walsh
Mao's China at 60

Ramzy Baroud
The Big Diversion

Norman Solomon
Starting Another Year of War in Afghanistan

Dan Bacher
Undamming the Klamath

Brenda Norrell
Lazy Journalists are the Darlings of the Corporations

Website of the Day
Neoliberalism as Water Balloon

September 30, 2009

Vijay Prashad
McChrystal's Afghan Desolation

Gareth Porter
U.S. Story on Iran Nuke Facility Doesn't Add Up

Andy Thayer
The Fiasco Behind Chicago's Olympics Bid

Paul Craig Roberts
Another War in the Works

Dean Baker
Medicare Buy-In: What's Wrong With Giving People a Choice?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Mission Impossible

Laura Flanders
Punch in the Streets, But Not in the Suites

Dave Lindorff
The Baucus Excuse

Seumas Milne
Why British Workers Are Angry

Martha Rosenberg
What Integrity Means to Pfizer

Website of the Day
Why You Should Boycott Hyatt Hotels

September 29, 2009

Marshall Auerback
A Neoliberal Hijacking

Alan Farago
Recovery Without Feeling

Jeff Sher
Shopping for Health Care

Bruce Jackson
60 Minutes and the General

Gareth Porter
Fears of Defeat in Afghanistan

Jonathan Cook
Palestinians in the Israeli Army

Bouthaina Shaaban
Arabs in the International Balance

Dave Lindorff
Looking Under the TARP

Stephen Soldz
Spreading Hysteria About Swine Flu "Hysteria"

Sara Mann
The Party of No Meets the Island of No

Website of the Day
Cosmos, Autotuned

September 28, 2009

Laura Carlsen
The Sound and Fury of the Honduran Coup

Anthony DiMaggio
The U.S., Iran and Nuclear Terror

Paul Craig Roberts
More Lies, More Deceptions

Neve Gordon
On Palestinian Civil Disobedience

Bill Quigley
Street Report From the G20

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's LBJ Moment

Nicola Nasser
Stuck Between Two Failures

Ben Rosenfeld Murder in New Orleans: Remembering Kirsten Brydum

Website of the Day
The Short March

September 25-7, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ruin of His Presidency

Daniel Wolff
Speculating on Education

Rev. William E. Alberts
How "White Magic" Makes the Ism of Race Disappear

Mike Roselle
Send Lawyers, Guns and Money

Saul Landau
Covert Memories From Miami

Eshan Azari
Why Afghan Intellectuals Live in National Despair

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Pentagon Feedlot

Robert Jensen
Is Obama a Socialist?

Jonathan Cook
Sleeping with the Enemy

Nelson P Valdés
Cuba, Hurricanes and the Internet

David Michael Green
Dumping Dubya

Ramzy Baroud
The Goldstone Report and Israeli Impunity

John V. Whitbeck
The Partition Straightjacket

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trial Delayed ... Again

David Ker Thomson
The Lady Vanishes

Seth Sandronsky
Obama and Race Management

Jim Goodman
Why are Farmers Afraid of Michael Pollen?

Charles R. Larson
From Oppression to Opportunity

David Yearsley
Froberger's Travels

Kim Nicolini
Hardcore Capitalism

Lorenzo Wolff
Transparent Pink

Website of the Weekend
An Emergency Appeal in the Fight Against Big Coal

September 24, 2009

Steven Higgs
Even in Indiana, Doctors Support National Health Insurance

Christopher Brauchli
Death Pays

Marshall Auerback
The Shortfall at the FDIC

Stephanie Westbrook
Italy's Fallen Soldiers

Nadia Hijab
Know Your Dictator

Sen. Russell Feingold
Fixing the Patriot Act, Restoring the Constitution

David Macaray
Goodbye "Norma Rae"

Binoy Kampmark
Curry Bashings in Oz

Joe Allen
Dancing With the Hammer

Website of the Day
The Most Corrupt Members of Congress

September 23, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Economy is a Lie, Too

Gabriel Kolko
The United States in Afghanistan: Eight Years Later

Uri Avnery
The Waldorf-Astoria Summit

Shamus Cooke
The First Shots of the Trade War

Missy Beattie
The Sound of Money

Gareth Porter
Taliban Rising

Mark Weisbrot
How Much Repression Will Hillary Clinton Support in Honduras?

Dr. Susan Block
The Murder of Annie Le

Norm Kent
Pot and the Right to Pursue Happiness

Richard Neville
Apocalypse Porno

Website of the Day
In Carver Country

September 22, 2009

Franklin C. Spinney The Huge Hole in Gen. McChrystal's Afghan Counterinsurgency Strategy

Russell Mokhiber
Who's the Pimp?

Greg Grandin
Zelaya's Brazilian Gambit

Nikolas Kozloff
Salvaging Democracy in Honduras Will Be Tricky

John Ross
Mexico Convulsed by Paranoia

Ron Jacobs
Gen. McChrystal's Salespitch

Tariq Ali
The Afghan Folly

Dave Lindorff
NYT Trashes Single-Payer

Harvey Wasserman
Tom Friedman's Idiocy Atomique

Vijay Prashad
Is Anything Better Than Nothing?

Kareem Shora
After the CIA Torture Report

Website of the Day
Did a State Dept Official Sell Nuclear Secrets?

September 21, 2009

JoAnn Wypijewski
Will Trumka or the Steelworkers Push Labor Into Battle?

Carl Finamore
Backstage at the AFL-CIO Convention

Uri Avnery
Sliming Goldstone and His Report

Nikolas Kozloff
Joe Wilson's Immigration Hypocrisy

Paul Simpson, M.D.
Why Your Doctor May Have PTSD

Alan Nasser
New Deal Liberalism Writes Its Obituary

Ray McGovern
CIA Torturers Running Scared

Dave Lindorff
Thoughts on Saving an Old Barn

Lina Thorne
Women, War and Afghanistan

Jeb Sprague
Confronting the G20

Website of the Day
Petition: Save the Yellowstone Grizzly

September 18-20, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
When Gossip Came Back and Our Modern Age was Born

Russell Mokhiber
Meet the Real Death Panels

Mike Whitney
The Post-Bubble Malaise

David Michael Green
Can America be Salvaged?

Jonathan Cook
Boycott Derails Jerusalem Rail Line

Nadia Hijab
Sinking the Goldstone Report

Mark Weisbrot
Recession, Recovery and Reform: Will Anything Change?

Michael Winship
Let's Make a Deal, Beltway Edition

Michael Leonardi
The Nuclear Dump in the Mediterranean Sea

Andy Worthington
The Kuwaiti Who Met Bin Laden

Fred Gardner
The Prohibitionists' Manifesto

David Macaray
What Happens in Congress Stays in Congress

David Rosen
System Failure and the Garrido Case

Jason Mark
Hacking the Sky

Mike Ferner
In Praise of Senator Baucus

Farzana Versey
The Great Indian Rope Trick

Ron Jacobs
Dr. Guillotin and Dr. Faustus: an Interview with Marc Estrin

elin o'Hara slavick
Flags for Hiroshima: Artist's Statement

Gilad Aztmon
Vengeance, Barbarism and Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds

David Yearsley
Mendelssohn as Organ Maestro

Charles R. Larson
Darkness, Dignity and Hope in Liberia

Lorenzo Wolff
Dialing Up The Clash

Website of the Weekend
Meet Your Conservative Movement

September 17, 2009

Joshua Frank
Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler

Brenda Norrell
Cry Me a River: Uranium and Genocide in Indian Country

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis, One Year Later

Pam Martens
The Filmmakers vs. the Capitalists

Franklin Lamb
Palestinian Camps Are Ready to Erupt

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: An Insult to Humanity

Jed Bickman
Drone War Over Pakistan

Alan Farago
The Mayor of Coconut Creek Gets Butterflies

Website of the Day
C.R.O.C.

September 16, 2009

Ray McGovern
Torture and Accountability

Stephen Green
America's Strange Health Care Debate

Andy Worthington
Is Bagram Obama's New Secret Prison?

Dean Baker
Short Sellers: the Unsung Heroes of the Financial Crisis

Anthony DiMaggio
Killing the Messenger

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: The Unheard Call

Benjamin Dangl
Justice Follows Direct Action

Robin Willoughby
The World Seed Conference: Good for Farmers?

Eric Walberg
EuroPeace, the Sounds of Silence

James Ridgeway
Bring That "Boy" Down

Website of the Day
Baucus' Bogus Bill

September 15, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of Lehman's Fall

Mutadhar al-Zaidi
The Story of My Shoe

Marshall Auerback
Government Spending is the Solution--Not the Problem

Afshin Rattansi
The Deal That Led to the Srebrenica Massacre: Former UN Spokeswoman Fingers Holbrooke and the Clinton Administration

Jonathan Cook
How US Tax Breaks Fund Israeli Settlers

Gareth Porter:
Niger Redux? IAEA Conceals Evidence Iran Nuke Docs Were Forged

Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs More Catcalls

Winslow T. Wheeler
Obama and Pentagon Pork

Franklin Spinney
Bin Laden's Latest Message and the Nuttiness of the War on Terror

Karen Korenoski /
Michael Yates
Up in Wood Smoke: Boulder's Dirty Little Secret

David Macaray
Government Cheese

Susie Day
President Mao-bama's Little Red Primer

Website of the Day
The Cotton Pickin' Truth: the Persistance of Slavery in Mississippi

September 14, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Health Care Deceit

M. G. Piety
The Danes Do It (Health Care) Better

Shamus Cooke
Wall Street Under Obama: Bigger and Riskier

Bouthaina Shaaban
Three Faces and a Homeland

Alvaro Huerta
In Defense of the Undocumented: Immigrants and Health Care

John Ross
Mexico Loses Its History

Harvey Wasserman
The Supreme Court and Corporate Money

Adam Federman
The Plight of the Bumblebee

Stephen Fleischman
The Federal Twist

Robert Jensen
Can Journalism Schools be Relevant in a World on the Brink?

Website of the Day
The Origin of Sex Offender Registries

September 11-13, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Big Speech: Math Trumps Rhetoric

JoAnn Wypijewski
Trumka Takes Over AFL-CIO

Carl Ginsburg
The Patient as Profit Center

Leonard Peltier
I am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now

Franklin Lamb
Ted Kennedy's Changing Take on Israel

Benjamin Dangl
Throwing Bullets at Failed Policies

Mike Whitney
How to Fight Deflation

John Berger
In Search of Antonello

Saul Landau
Watergate and Modern Scandals

Russell Mokhiber
Disgraceful Democrats

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Pryor's Judgment

Felice Pace
NPR's Linda Gradstein Has Done It Again on Gaza

Jordan Flaherty
The Battle Over Discriminatory Housing Laws in New Orleans

Ron Jacobs
It's Time to be Impolite About Afghanistan

David Macaray
The Utility of Boycotts

David Correia
Welcome to the Business-Friendly Carpenter's Union

Robert Bryce
Wind Turbines and Bird Kills

Christopher Brauchli
Defenders of the Classroom

Paul Krassner
Aha! A Few Words About the 9/11 Truth Movement

Charles R. Larson
Deracination

Kim Nicolini
"Extract:" An Exercise in Economic Realism

David Yearsley
Tall Buildings: the Sound and the Silence

Lorenzo Wolff
In Defense of the One Hit Wonder

Poets' Basement
McEnteer and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Pizarchik: the Wrong Choice

September 10, 2009

Joshua Frank
Inside Hanford's B Reactor: a Tour of the World's Most Toxic Nuclear Site

Dean Baker
Bernanke's Bad Money

Brian M. Downing
The State of U.S. National Security

Franklin C. Spinney
Portrait of an Afghan Firefight: Up Close and Personal

Andy Worthington
No Escape From Guantánamo

Chase Madar
Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights

Farzana Versey
A Tale of Two Slums

Ronnie Cummins
Whole Foods, Fair Trade and Organics

Binoy Kampmark
Health Care, Obama and the System

Timothy Lebrón
The Conservative Case for Health Care Reform

Charles R. Larson
A Solution to the Health Care Dilemma

Website of the Day
The Debtor's Revolt Begins!

September 9, 2009

Richard Neville
Trigger-Happy in Afghanistan

Melissa Checker
Double Jeopardy: Carbon Offsets and Human Rights Abuses

Nadia Hijab
Settling for ... Settlements?

Robert Weissman
The Stakes at the Supreme Court

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Arabs Call for General Strike

Russell Mokhiber
Pollan, Mackey, Whole Foods and Single Payer

James Ridgeway
The Dotty Factor: Will Demented Geezers Wreck the Economy?

Richard W. Behan
Obama's Imperative in Afghanistan

James McEnteer
The Photo and the Secretary: How to Appall Robert Gates

Martha Rosenberg
Hatchery Horrors

Website of the Day
Belmondo Verité

September 8, 2009

Henry A. Giroux
The Corporate Stranglehold on Education

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Accused of War Crimes Opposes Investigations

John Ross
Rituals of the Absurd

Jeff Leys
Health Care vs. Warfare: the Future of the Afghan War

Mike Whitney Ashcroft: Repugnant to the Constitution

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Empty Labor Day Speech

Ellen Brown
Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed?

Norman Solomon Men With Guns: In Kabul and Washington

Deepak Tripathi
The Axis of Evil and the Great Satan

Laray Polk
Personality Cults, Indoctrination and Inculcation

Charles R. Larson
Just Who Does He Think He Is?

Website of the Day
The President is Not a Guidance Counselor

September 7, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Obama's Mistakes in Health Care Reform

Bouthaina Shaaban
In Praise of Admiral Mullen

David Macaray
Obama's Labor Day Report Card

Paul Craig Roberts
Indefensible Nation

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Ads Warn Against Marrying Non-Jews

Conn Hallinan
Brazil Flexes Its Muscles

Walter Brasch
The Origins of Labor Day, the Unknown Holiday

Mark Weisbrot
IMF Gives Honduran Government $175 Million

Carl Finamore
China's Birthday Stimulation

C. G. Estabrook
Advance Text of Obama's Big Speech

Website of the Day
One Down, 20,000 to Go

September 4-6, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Deeper Into the Tunnel

Carl Ginsburg
Saving New Orleans' Charity Hospital

Jonathan Cook
The Missing Link in Israeli Organ Theft?

George Wuerthner
The Unintended Consequences of Wolf Hunting

Marc Levy
The Bling They Curse and Carry

Ray McGovern
Holbrooke's Afghan Benchmark

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
It Happened in Miami

Joe Paff
Organizing the Mission

Gareth Porter
Taliban's Tank-Killing Bombs Came From CIA, Not Iran

Devin Beaulieu
Scaremongering About Bolivia and Islam

Anthony Papa
Why Leslie Crocker Snyder Should Not Become New York City's New DA

David Ker Thomson
Love and Dekes in Utopia

Don Fitz
The Case of the Biodevastation 7: What the Police Won't Apologize For

Lee Sustar /
S. Sepehri
The Fallout From Iran's Elections

Jim Goodman
Why Honor Organized Labor?

Wajahat Ali
Domestic Crusaders: Making Muslim American Theater

Ron Jacobs
Agitator Journalism: Remembering Ramparts

Helen Redmond
The Lion Sleeps Tonight: the Crimes and Misdemeanors of Teddy Kennedy

John V. Walsh
Obama to Cindy Sheehan: Get Lost

Charles R. Larson
Mandanipour's Masterpiece: Censoring an Iranian Love Story

Mark Scaramella
Ho-Bleeping-Hum: a Few Well-Chosen Words About Valerie Plame's Book

David Yearsley
Cameron Carpenter's Amazing Organ Transplants

Ben Sonnenberg
Hooking, Breaking Friendships, Cross-Dressing and, Above All, Delphine Seyrig

Poets' Basement
Davies, Orloski and Bready

Website of the Weekend
Architectural Semiotics with Glenn Beck

September 3, 2009

Marcus Rediker
Inside Auburn Prison

Ron Jacobs
Embedded With the Taliban

Mike Whitney
How Bad Will It Get?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Untold Story of the Cuban Five: Indictment À La Carte

Saul Landau
Moby Dick and Asian Typhoons

Anat Matar
Israeli Academics Must Pay a Price to End Occupation

Tanya Golash-Boza
How Immigration Enforcement is Weakening National Security

Dave Lindorff
Which Side Are You On?

Andy Worthington
The Story of Gitmo's Two Syrians

Website of the Day
Plundering Appalachia

September 2, 2009

John Ross
Mexico's Plagues

Vijay Prashad
Hey Ram, the Things the Financial Times Group Does!

Rev. Jim Rigby
Why is Universal Health Care "Un-American"?

Joanne Mariner
What the Inspector General Found

Missy Beattie
Hejira: At Martha's Vineyard with Cindy Sheehan

Soren Ambrose
Multilateral Money

Diane Farsetta
Water: the Newest Wave of Corporate "Social Responsibility"

Nadia Hijab
Mulling Mullen's Message

Shamus Cooke
How to Lower the Deficit Without Killing Social Security

Charles R. Larson
Is Dick Cheney Running Scared?

Website of the Day
Inside the Egg Hatchery

September 1, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Wolf at Trout Creek

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Not Sanctions for Israel?

Mark T. Harris
The Whole Foods Boycott: It's About More Than CEO Hypocrisy

Dean Baker
Bank Profits Are Up: Did You Hear Anyone Say, "Thank You"?

Jeffrey Buchanan
Ending the Human Rights Crisis in KatrinaRitaVille

Robin Mittenthal
A Sea of Monocrops: Old MacDonald Never Had a Farm Like This

Ellen Brown
Mercury Mischief

Martha Rosenberg
Vytorin Marketing is Back

Website of the Day
Crazy Town Hall Protester Interviews

October 8, 2009

The Staying Power of Republican Sinners

Bankrupt Morality

By DAVID ROSEN

Sen. John Ensign’s (R-NV) legislative days are numbered.

The New York Times’ ongoing revelations about Ensign’s extra-marital affair with the wife of his assistant, his parent’s payment of hush money to cover up the affair and, most recently, the cuckold’s attempt to shakedown the Senator and the Senator’s apparently illegal efforts to find his former assistant a new position as a lobbyist point to a deepening crisis. Ensign’s actions seem to have moved a sex scandal from a pathetic comedy to a likely illegal political crime.

Ensign’s further outing is the latest in a new wave of sex scandals involving a growing number of Christian Republican politicians. National headlines were generated over the seamy exploits of Gov. Mark Sanford (SC). These outings are complemented by local exposés like those involving state assemblyman Mike Duvall (R-CA), state senator Paul Stanley (R-TN) and South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. These scandals bespeak the moral hypocrisy Americas have come to expect from holier-then-thou Republic politicians.

Unfortunately, it is getting harder to laugh at such scandals. The social and political climate has changed significantly since the cartoon-like sex scandals of the Bush era. Political discourse has hardened since Obama’s election. We are witnessing the transition from “culture wars” to “class wars.”

* * *

The recent wave of Republican sex scandals symbolizes the moral bankruptcy of the Christian right and the Republican party. With the exception of Duvall, those outed in the current wave of scandal have held onto their elected positions. A truly humane, secular value system would recognize adultery (unless involving rape or abuse of office) as a private matter and would encourage a wayward politician to keep his office, calling instead for mercy, counseling and some act of public contrition. Something far different seems at work among the Christian Republican right.

The right’s tolerance for those outed for violating perhaps its deepest moral edict, preserving the sanctity of marriage and the family, is not surprising. It was earlier manifest in the scandals involving Senator David Vitter (R-LA) and former Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) as well as with Sarah Palin in her vice-presidential run. These were the same high-minded moralists who denounced the behavior of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and Democratic presidential contender John Edwards.

Most striking, Spitzer (who likely violated the 1910 Mann Act by inter-state trafficking in prostitution) fled office and Edwards (who apparently fathered a child in an extra-marital affair) bowed-out of the ’08 Democratic presidential race. However, many Republican worthies hold onto their positions and continue to champion their rightwing causes.

The Christian-Republican right’s apparent tolerance expresses the convergence of two motives. First, it reflects political opportunism, the legacy of the “marriage” between traditionalist Christians and conservative Republics launched by Jerry Falwell in 1979 with the founding of the Moral Majority. Second, it expresses a profound contempt that conservatives have toward the social, cultural and sexual diversity that distinguishes America and American democracy.

For three decades the Republican party, aligned with the white Christian right, fought to turn back the gains of the civil-rights, women’s and counter-cultural movements of the 1960s. Abortion, gay rights and free love, let alone interracial sex, evolution, teen sex ed and stem cell research, were denounced as threats to Christian moral order.

With the 2006 Democratic Congressional victories and Obama’s electoral triumph last year, the Christian “culture wars” seemed defeated. But like a vampire rising from the dead, the white Christian right is back, more punitive and vindictive than ever.

Advertisers learned long ago that many Americans have short attention spans and even more limited knowledge of history. Daily life is overwhelming and memory a precious resource. A chorus of rightwing pundits and politicians faults Obama (and the Congressional Democrats) for the mounting economic crisis. Many Americas accept this lament as true.

The failures of Bush-the-lesser, whether the systematic destruction of the domestic economy or ensnaring the nation in two thankless foreign military mis-adventurers, are being presented as not only Obama’s problems but his creation.

The right is concealing its loss of political power and the rejection of its ideological hegemony behind the mounting and widespread sense of personal financial calamity. For them, all efforts to use the state (i.e., public resources) to stabilize capitalism are seen as efforts to undercut the market rather than to save it. These “free market” purists are economic hypocrites.

This is most evident in their orchestrated campaign to defeat Obama’s watered-down health insurance reform effort. It is a campaign camouflaged as rants against “big government,” but backed by the major health-industry players and popularized by corporate-funded astroturf groups. More troubling, it is a campaign driven by far deeper resentments, a rage rooted in an historical loss of class, race and patriarchal privilege.

The current “Great Recession” will likely turn out to be the historical bookend to the ‘30s Great Depression. Overcoming the Depression launched the “American Century”; the current crisis may mark the eclipse of American prosperity. Looking back, it may be a key steppingstone in the emergence of China as the 21st century’s global economic engine.

Over the last three decades, as finance replaced manufacturing as the source of the nation’s economic growth, the standard of living of the average American eroded. America’s finance-driven bubble economy is turning the country into an old-style Latin American banana republic, with ever-greater income disparities, gated communities and a tightening police state.

It seems that a growing number of Americas know (if only in their bones) that the country is at a profound turning point. They realistically sense that there is little chance, nor desire, for a “recovery” like that which marked the recent go-go years following the dot-com bubble of the‘ 90s. They sense that past post-bubble recoveries were but rollercoaster rides that, after all the hype settled, left them worse off. They known that recovery means that income inequality grows, their lives get poorer, their fears mount.

Sadly, the Christian-Republic right is effectively exploiting these fears, fueling the development of a racist, anti-pleasure, neo-fascist movement of rage and resentment.

* * *

Sex scandals serve a social function. They are a form of public shaming intended to discipline sexual experience, to contain acceptable sexuality. America has been a nation of sex scandals since Pocahontas married John Rolfe in 1614.

Presidents including Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland, as well as legislators too numerous to name, have been publicly ridiculed for their alleged sexual indiscretions. However, it is with Bill Clinton’s Oval Office dalliances that sex scandal became a political crime, an unstated ground for impeachment.

In January 1992, just weeks before the all-important New Hampshire primary, Star, the gossip tabloid, published an exposé claiming that Gennifer Flowers, an Arkansas state employee and cabaret singer, had had a twelve-year affair with the governor, good-old-boy Bill.

Moving quickly to counter the scandalous claim, Clinton, joined by Hillary, appeared later that week on CBS’s “60 Minutes” immediately following the Super Bowl, thus ensuring a huge national audience. The couples’ denial, offered with a sincerity not seen since Nixon’s famous Checkers speech of a half-century earlier, was sufficiently convincing that it helped him defeat the incumbent president, George H.W. Bush, in a three-way race with Ross Perot.

In August ’92, as Clinton, the first sitting president to testify before a grand jury, was about to face impeachment hearings, the Republic party held its national convention.

At the convention, Pat Buchanan, Nixon’s loyal apologist, drew upon the sociologist Robert Davison Hunter’s recently published study of religious politics in America, Culture Wars, to lament before a national TV audience: “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America,” he ranted. “It is a culture war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as the Cold War itself. [It is a] struggle for the soul of America….” Buchanan’s speech formally launched the culture wars.

Many within the right saw Clinton’s victory as illegitimate, an electoral anomaly. Republicans, religious conservatives and other right-wingers started gunning for him from day one of his presidency.

Early in 1994, conservative gossipmongers started spreading stories about Paula Jones, an Arkansas state clerical worker, who claimed that she was sexually assaulted by then-governor Clinton. Many credit the politicalization of the Flowers and Jones scandals with the Republicans winning their ’94 “revolution,” capturing both Houses of Congress.

Nearly two decades have passed since the launch of the culture wars and Clinton’s impeachment. For much of this period, sex scandals involving Republicans and Democrats followed a common pattern. The offender, an ostensibly upstanding public official, was outed by the media for his involvement in an illicit indulgence, be it straight or gay, with a staff member, a lobbyist or a prostitute.

This pattern took shape with Ted Kennedy’s fateful car ride with Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick, MA, on the night of July 18, 1969. Up to then, the sexual exploits of Harding, FDR, JFK and other 20th century political worthies were dutifully suppressed.

The pattern was refined with the sex scandals of the ‘70s that now seem almost comic. They were symbolized by scandals involving congressmen Wilbur Mills and Wayne Hays, and their respective mistresses, Fanne Fox and Elizabeth Ray.

However, the outing of Barney Frank in 1987, who was charged with facilitating his male lover’s gay prostitution ring, led to his formal coming out (his homosexuality was one of the great public secrets of Boston politics) and repeated reelection by an approving constituency. Frank’s outing anticipates the right’s tolerance of Republican miscreants today.

Through the ‘90s and ‘00s, the conventional pattern of ritualized shaming continued. Gary Hart’s tryst with Donna Rice might have cost him the 1998 presidential nomination. Other scandals involved Senators Bob Packwood (R-OR) and Daniel Inouye (D-HI) as well as congress-people Ken Calvert (R-CA), Charles Canady (R-FL), Mel Reynolds (D-IL), Helen Chenoweth (R-ID) and Dan Burton (R-IN).

By the mid-00s, this pattern was expressed in the sexual exploits of congressmen Mark Foley (R-FL) and Don Sherwood (R-PA) as well as that of reverends Paul Crouch and Ted Haggard. It was repeated in the moral shaming of Spitzer and Edwards during ’08 campaign.

Since the ‘70s, Christian moralists imposed a modern form of excommunication, political banishment or expulsion, on politicians caught in illicit sexual encounters. However, over the last few years, the Christian right has adopted a theology and political policy that replaces moral judgment with opportunistic cynicism.

* * *

Why is Ensign still in office? Why did Sarah Palin remain a vice presidential candidate after her daughter’s pre-marital pregnancy was admitted? Why is David Vitter still in the Senate after being outed for soliciting the services of the DC Madam as well as New Orleans prostitutes? Why did Larry Craig serve out his term of office in the shadow of an arrest for a homosexual tearoom encounter with a cop? Why are Newt Gingrich, who had repeated out-of-wedlock affairs, and Bill Bennett, who enjoyed the fetishistic services of a renown Las Vegas dominatrix, still conservative spokesmen? And why is Mark Sanford, who had an adulterous love affair with an Argentinean woman, still governor of South Carolina?

American sexual politics is schizophrenic. Democratic adulterers from Clinton and Hart to Spitzer and Edwards have been either political destroyed or seriously constrained; however, Frank’s outing only exposed the obvious, a public secret his constituency long knew. As evident in the experiences of Vitter, Gingrich and Bennett as well as Sanford and Ensign, and not forgetting Palin, Christian Republicans have emerged effectively unscathed by the traditional shaming rituals associated with political sex scandals. Worse still, they blithely go on championing their rightwing gospel.

The Christian minister Rick Warren, who gave an invocation at Obama’s inauguration, once advised his followers: "The church is a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints." His words connote the new theology of the Christian right.

Today’s Christian right is opportunist, if not cynical, in its adherence to moral judgment. Once upon a time, Puritans branded an “A” on the foreheads of those accused of adultery and murdered sinners who allegedly had sex with the devil. This value system has changed considerably over the last four centuries. Today, while sex with the devil has disappeared, Christian politicians outed for adultery and other illicit sexual practice are treated as upstanding public citizens.

For the Christian-Republican right, the evil of an illicit deed has been superceded by a call for repentance and forgiveness. This is nothing more than the acceptance of political expedience. Today’s sinners need only praise the lord, admit to their wayward ways and, if the politician serves a useful purpose, all is forgiven. Like stepping reborn out of the purifying waters of baptism, a politician’s redemption means that s/he can go forward as if nothing happened and one’s sin is forgiven.

In a rational, secular world, “forgiveness” would likely be the moral norm for those outed partaking in illicit sexual behavior. To the extent that one has not violated the personal consent of another, be it by rape or abuse, sexual conduct should be a private matter. Like the outing of Frank, private behavior should be transformed from shame to tolerance through public acceptance.

However, for the Christian right, forgiveness has become purely instrumental, serving only to rationalize traditionally unacceptable sexual behavior to serve a political end. One is forgiven to the extent that one is politically useful.

For the Christian right, pre-marital sex is wrong, out-of-wedlock affairs are wrong, solicitation of a prostitute is wrong, having an out-of-wedlock child is wrong and homosexuality is beyond the pale. Nothing systemically has changed in the Christian right’s notion of tolerance. Rather, political expedience makes nearly everything acceptable. Moral hypocrisy has reached a new level of personal deception and public deceit.

David Rosen is the author of “Sex Scandals America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming” (Key, 2009); he can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com.

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Yellowstone Drift:
Floating the Past
in Real Time
by John Holt
Introduction by Doug Peacock

Click here to Buy!

Spell Albuquerque:
Memoir of a
"Difficult Student"
By Tennessee Reed

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Bush War Machine
By Harry Browne

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont