Please note as of January 5, 2009 all commentary including original submissions will be archived here. You can also read our current newsletter online.

Right-wing sexual pathos
Attempts to ban talk of birth control and homosexuality from classrooms reveal conservatives' deepest sexual fears
by Tracy Clark-Flory

The Book of Mitt
Pundits still haven't figured out how to talk about Romney's Mormon religion. Here's everything you need to know
by ALEX PAREENE

Surveillance state democracy
As the FBI seeks full access to all forms of Interent communication, it is not voters who need to be convinced
by GLENN GREENWALD
"The FBI general counsel’s office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly."

Joe Biden Was for Marriage Equality Before He Was Against It
by Michelangelo Signorile

Partisan death jam
The two parties aren't just making progress impossible, they're destroying our political system. An expert explains
by LUCY MCKEON
"If you thought the debates over the debt ceiling last year – one of the most striking examples of political dysfunction and gridlock in recent memory — were over, think again."

Fear the zombie drone
How do you safely launch thousands of new aircraft into already crowded skies? The safety concerns of domestic UAVs
by JEFFERSON MORLEY
"While most of the critical attention on domestic drones has focused on privacy issues, safety is an equally pressing concern: How do we launch thousands of new aircraft into already crowded airways?"

More federal judge abdication
The branch designed to be insulated from political pressures has been the most craven of all in the post-9/11 era
by GLENN GREENWALD

Everyday ethics
A philosopher talks about what we owe future generations and whether we should be able to sell our organs
by ALEC ASH, THE BROWSER

Ernest Callenbach: Last Words to an America in Decline
by Tom Engelhardt
"We live, then, in a dark time here on our tiny precious planet. Ecological devastation, political and economic collapse, irreconcilable ideological and religious conflict, poverty, famine: the end of the overshoot of cheap-oil-based consumer capitalist expansionism."

Secret of a Lifetime
How long a neutron lives holds clues to the cosmos
by Rebecca Cheung

No one went to jail, so why is Wall Street so mad?
Not prosecuting any of the parties responsible for the recession has just served to embolden them
by ALEX PAREENE

The People's Bishop
by Chris Hedges

Jobs aren't coming back
Wealth is concentrated with the 1 percent because America no longer makes things: Financiers just manipulate money
by NOAM CHOMSKY

Barack Obama's Private War
The Obama administration has acknowledged the use of the drones and revealed plans to increase the frequency and ferocity of the attacks.
by Andrew Napolitano

US attack kills 5 afghan kids
by GLENN GREENWALD

President Obama’s Moment
NYT Editorial
"With those 10 words, Mr. Obama finally stopped temporizing and “evolving” his position on same-sex marriage and took the moral high ground on what may be the great civil rights struggle of our time."

Dear Mitt: You Did Nothing to Save Detroit
by Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm

A vital and unlearned lesson from Julius Caesar
by GLENN GREENWALD

A Trifecta of Intolerance
By ANDREW ROSENTHAL

U.S. has made war on terror a war without end
by Fareed Zakaria, CNN
"While we will leave the battlefields of the greater Middle East, we are firmly committed to the war on terror at home."

The American Character
by GLENN GREENWALD
"The rise of this national security state has entailed a vast expansion in the government’s powers that now touch every aspect of American life, even when seemingly unrelated to terrorism."

Obama “evolves” on marriage
The president deserves credit for his actions in this civil rights area, regardless of his motives
by Glenn Greenwald

Oops — wrong future!
What kind of infrastructure do we really need?
by MICHAEL LIND
"Unfortunately, the case for infrastructure investment has suffered from the lack of a plausible vision of the next American infrastructure."

Energy wars heat up
From Africa to South America, conflicts over waning resources are becoming more tense -- and dangerous
by MICHAEL T. KLARE

The spectacle of terror and its vested interests
by Naomi Wolf
"Many other, much-ballyhooed cases of "homegrown terrorism" show this creaky, effortful, farcical quality of people who, left to their own devices by the FBI or NYPD, would have remained harmlessly playing video games in their childhood bedrooms, smoking their doobies, or babbling gently to themselves, on their anti-psychotic meds, about geopolitical forces."

Colin Powell's New Book: War With Iraq Never Debated
by Dan Froomkin
"In his new book, former Secretary of State Colin Powell provides what may be the most authoritative confirmation yet that there was never a considered debate in the George W. Bush White House about whether going to war in Iraq was really a good idea."

Wall Street’s immunity
Why has the Obama administration so aggressively protected the financial industry from legal accountability?
by Glenn Greenwald
"Of all the ignominious actions of the Obama administration, the steadfast, systematic shielding of Wall Street from criminal liability is probably the most corrupt in the traditional sense of that word."

Dog training the press corp
by Glenn Greenwald

Drone victim's defender speaks
by Jefferson Morley
"If you want to see how President Obama’s drone war efficiently turns America’s friends into adversaries, meet Pakistani attorney Shahzad Akbar."

Occupy a Wing of the Democratic Party
by Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm
"Instead, perhaps the original Occupy movement should occupy a wing of the Democratic Party. Become an alternative to the Tea Party, as Josh Harkinson from Mother Jones has suggested. And then, once that happens, occupy the majority in Congress."

The Idolatry of Politics and the Promise of the Common Good
by Jim Wallis
"Left and Right are political categories -- not religious ones. Attempting to mold faith to fit those labels distorts its meaning and power."

Behind our stalled economy
The GOP's austerity obsession is responsible for the nation's economic slowdown
by ROBERT REICH
"Cuts in government spending are reducing domestic demand precisely at the time when consumers are reaching the end of their ropes and can’t spend more."

Fuck the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner
by Hamilton Nolan

Ab-ed moves ahead
A sexist, anti-gay abstinence-only program quietly gets the Obama administration's stamp of approval. Why?
by TRACY CLARK-FLORY

Celebrating our warrior president
by Glenn Greenwald
"This is what the Obama administration does over and over. It’s a flagrant abuse of its secrecy powers. It uses anonymous leaks to selectively boast about what it does and thus shape media narratives and public understanding of its conduct (also called 'domestic propaganda'). But it then simultaneously insists that the whole matter is classified — Top Secret — when it comes time to be subjected to any form of legal accountability or have its assertions publicly tested."

The Bushies are back
Missed the neocons? Don't worry: Mitt Romney's getting the band together again
by JORDAN MICHAEL SMITH

‘Beyond Debate’
NYT editorial
"By using the 'enemy combatant' category, the Bush administration stirred debate that had not existed about whether rights of an American citizen in custody depend on how he is classified."

Republican fear factor
Conservatives' paranoid alternate-reality can be explained by their brain chemistry -- and their media choices
by JOSHUA HOLLAND
"So conservatives appear to be more likely to be hard-wired to be highly sensitive to perceived threats, and their chosen media offers them plenty."

NBC News’ top hagiographer
The role of Brian Williams is to glorify political and military leaders, but he really outdid himself last night
by GLENN GREENWALD

The Peace Prize War President
by David Bromwich
"President Obama, it has been said, is a master of having it both ways. Nowhere is this truer than in foreign policy."

The Democratic Senate might just survive
A Senate map that looked bleak a year ago is now littered with surprise pick-up opportunities
by STEVE KORNACKI

Do Nothings and Know Nothings
by TIMOTHY EGAN
"The House run by John Boehner is stuffed with zealots and intellectual dead-enders who think compromise is a synonym for treason. Americans agree on very little, but there seems to be shore-to-shore consensus on a view of this Congress: We hate you."

Hiding 9/11's last secrets
The military tribunal for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed means the American people will never know what drove him to terror
by JOSH MEYER

Since bin Laden's death
The War on Terror and its various civil liberties assaults have escalated, not been reversed or even slowed down
by GLENN GREENWALD

Is this man a terrorist?
Francis Grady is accused of trying to burn down an abortion clinic, but the feds haven't charged him with terrorism
by MATTHEW HARWOOD

National Journal reports: Things are bad out in Real America
The crumbling of once-great institutions isn't to blame for middle-class decline and anger.
by ALEX PAREENE

Attacks on RT and Assange reveal much about the critics
by GLENN GREENWALD

Sugar Daddies
The old, white, rich men who are buying this election.
by Frank Rich
"If you want to appreciate what Barack Obama is up against in 2012, forget about the front man who is his nominal opponent and look instead at the Republican billionaires buying the ammunition for the battles ahead."

Personalizing civil liberties abuses
by GLENN GREENWALD
"As is true for most groups of humans who remain hidden, they are therefore easily demonized."

The Globalization of Hollow Politics
By Chris Hedges
"The emptying of content in political discourse in an age as precarious and volatile as ours will have very dangerous consequences."

Not Just Labor Rights; Scott Walker Is Also Dismantling Women's Rights
by John Nichols

How the Media Has Shaped the Social Security Debate -- The Press Plays a Dubious Role
by Trudy Lieberman

Surveillance State evils
by Glenn Greenwald
"In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, George Bush ordered the NSA to spy on the communications of Americans on American soil, and they’ve been doing it ever since, with increasing aggression and fewer and fewer constraints."

Mitt Romney's war on context
The key to winning swing voters: Never, ever let them think about what the economy was like before January 20, 2009
by STEVE KORNACKI

Europe's Austerity Recession
Budget cuts have plunged the EU economy back into crisis, and America should pay attention
by ROBERT REICH

Iran Terror to the South!
by Glenn Greenwald

Machine-Made News
Word Order: The Internet as the Toy With a Tin Ear
by Lewis Lapham
"Why then does it come to pass that the more data we collect -- from Google, YouTube, and Facebook -- the less likely we are to know what it means?"

UCLA professor warned about Israel views
What kind of person goes to college and demands to be shielded from political views they dislike?
by Glenn Greenwald

Has the Pentagon learned nothing?
The Army's response to the attacks in Kabul reflects deadly misunderstandings that date back to the Vietnam War
by Nick Turse

Robert Bork, Romney Standard-Bearer
NYT Editorial
"Robert Bork has been among the most divisive figures in American law and a right-wing standard-bearer in Republican politics for nearly 40 years."

Horrors we hide
From slaughterhouses to sweatshops, modern society is constructed to let us ignore atrocities
by DAVID SIROTA

Federal judge complicity
by Glenn Greenwald
"Two of the most under-discussed afflictions in American political life are inter-related: (1) the heinous, inhumane treatment of prisoners on American soil (often, though certainly not exclusively, Muslim political prisoners), and (2) the virtually complete abdication by subservient federal courts in the post-9/11 era of their duty to hold Executive Branch officials accountable for unconstitutional and otherwise illegal acts in the War on Terror context."

Obama's Amendment One silence
The election year limits of his gay marriage “evolution” are on display in North Carolina today
by STEVE KORNACKI

Crime boasting for profit
Shielded from all forms of accountability, a CIA official is able to publish a book glorifying his illegal acts
by GLENN GREENWALD

Obama justice and medial marijuana
The President's justification for his crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries has to be heard to be believed
by GLENN GREENWALD

Feds ready whistleblower trial
by Jesselyn Radack
"As I touched on earlier this week, Kiriakou blew the whistle on waterboarding and exposed torture as policy rather than the actions a few rogue agents. But waterboarding was not Kiriakou’s last disclosure."

Drone activist denied visa
by Murtaza Hussain
"The London based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has documented more than 160 cases of children who have been killed by CIA-operated Predator drones among over 800 confirmed civilian deaths."

The real criminals in the Tarek Mehanna case
by GLENN GREENWALD
"In one of the most egregious violations of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech seen in quite some time, Tarek Mehanna, an American Muslim, was convicted this week in a federal court in Boston and then sentenced yesterday to 17 years in prison."

America’s Christian hypocrisy
The Bible preaches tolerance and liberal economics. So why do its proponents embrace right-wing politics?
by DAVID SIROTA

A Stain That Won’t Wash Away
by ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN
"TWO years after a series of gambles and ill-advised decisions on a BP drilling project led to the largest accidental oil spill in United States history and the death of 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, no one has been held accountable."

Cut Off Aid To Israel If It Attacks Iran
by Sherwood Ross

Obama’s dismal civil liberties record
Despite vows to increase transparency, the president has made the government ever more authoritarian and intrusive
by STEVEN ROSENFELD

America’s drone sickness
by GLENN GREENWALD
"There are many evils in the world, but extinguishing people’s lives with targeted, extra-judicial killings, when you don’t even know their names, based on “patterns” of behavior judged from thousands of miles away, definitely ranks high on the list."

ALEC Backs Down
by DAVID FIRESTONE

Report: U.S. trained terror group
by GLENN GREENWALD
"Despite the growing ties, and a much-intensified lobbying effort organized by its advocates, M.E.K. has remained on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations – which meant that secrecy was essential in the Nevada training."

The Wall Street backlash
Big banks are throwing even more money at Congress to scale back reform designed to protect your savings
by BILL MOYERS AND MICHAEL WINSHIP

The Real Health Care Debate
by Chris Hedges
"It is a law (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) that forces American citizens to buy a deeply defective product from private insurance companies. It is a law that is the equivalent of the bank bailout bill -- some $447 billion in subsidies for insurance interests alone -- for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. It is a law that is unconstitutional."

Obama Administration Silencing Pakistani Drone-Strike Lawyer
by Medea Benjamin
"While drones were initially used for surveillance, these remotely controlled aerial vehicles are now routinely used to launch missiles against human targets in countries where the United States is not at war, including Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. As many as 3,000 people, including hundreds of civilians and even American citizens, have been killed in such covert missions."

New Bush-Era Torture Memo Released, Raises Questions About What Has Changed And What Hasn't
by Dan Froomkin
"A six-year-old memo from within the George W. Bush administration that came to light this week acknowledges that White House-approved interrogation techniques amounted to 'war crimes.'"

The drones are coming — to America
Congress has opened up U.S. airspace to the drone industry -- and your privacy is about to be at risk
by JEFFERSON MORLEY

U.S.’s shameful Bahrain policy
Bby Murtaza Hussain
"Part of the reason for the reluctance of U.S. officials to publicly call on the regime to free Alkhawaja and end its crimes is the strategic importance of Bahrain to U.S. interests in the Middle East."

Searching for Justice in Florida
NYT editorial

Human Rights in Bahrain, a Casualty of Obama's Double-Standard
by Ahmed Shihab-Eldin

Obama targets journalists
by Jesselyn Raddack
"While the Bush administration treated whistleblowers unmercifully, the Obama administration has been far worse. It is actually prosecuting them, and doing so under the Espionage Act — one of the most serious charges that can be leveled against an American."

Israel’s free speech aversion
German writer Gunter Grass is hardly the first person to be banned for criticizing the Jewish state
by ALEX PEARLMAN

U.S. filmmaker repeatedly detained at border
by GLENN GREENWALD
"With no oversight or legal framework whatsoever, the Department of Homeland Security routinely singles out individuals who are suspected of no crimes, detains them and questions them at the airport, often for hours, when they return to the U.S. after an international trip, and then copies and even seizes their electronic devices (laptops, cameras, cellphones) and other papers (notebooks, journals, credit card receipts), forever storing their contents in government files."

Scoundrels Attack Gunter Grass Truths
by Stephen Lendman

Beware of Faulty Intelligence
by RONEN BERGMAN

The liberal betrayal of Bradley Manning
by Charles Davis
"Like those on the right who now crow about fascism but spent the Bush years gleefully declaring left-wing celebrities “enemies of the state,” many of those on the liberal-left treat issues of war and civil liberties as useful merely for partisan purposes."

The man the State Dept. wants silenced
by Jesselyn Radack

Why Obama's JOBS Act Couldn't Suck Worse
by Matt Taibbi

Wells Fargo’s prison cash cow
by Charles Davis
"As Wells Fargo has grown over the years, using its bailout funds to gobble up rival Wachovia and expand to the East Coast, so has the U.S. prison population."

America’s forgotten POW: Bowe Bergdahl
by Murtaza Hussain
"For nearly three years Bergdahl, a 26-year old from Sun Valley, Idaho has been held captive by the Afghan Taliban".

The Most Transparent Administration Ever™
by GLENN GREENWALD
" The harms from excessive governmental secrecy vastly outweigh the harms from excessive disclosures; they’re not even in the same universe That’s why WikiLeaks is such a vital and important movement."

Still a 1 percent recovery
As this rest of us struggle, America's wealthiest households are reaping big economic gains
by ROBERT REICH
"The top 1 percent got 45 percent of Clinton-era economic growth, and 65 percent of the economic growth during the Bush era."

The ‘Voter Fraud’ Fraud
by Ari Berman
"A major probe by the Justice Department between 2002 and 2007 failed to prosecute a single person for going to the polls and impersonating an eligible voter, which the anti-fraud laws are supposedly designed to stop."

The conservative grip on power
A ruthless GOP power grab, centered around the Supreme Court, has cemented conservative control in Washington
by LINDA HIRSHMAN
"And it’s not just the federal government. In 2010, fueled, in part, by the money the conservative justices unleashed, the conservatives took over state legislatures across the country."

Florida. How Soon We Forget.
by ERIKA WOOD
"Last spring, Florida made some changes to its election law. Cloaked as technical tweaks, the new laws have the potential to swing the 2012 election."

How billionaires destroy democracy
Wealthy Wall Streeters have rigged the economy and the government against the people. Here's how they did it
by LINDA MCQUAIG AND NEIL BROOKS

Lawsuit filed over discriminatory immigration law
by GLENN GREENWALD
"...the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 statute enacted by a huge Congressional majority in both parties and signed into law by President Clinton, expressly bars the granting by the Federal government of any spousal benefits, including immigration rights, to same-sex couples."

Philosophy Is Not a Science
by JULIAN FRIEDLAND
"For roughly 98 percent of the last 2,500 years of Western intellectual history, philosophy was considered the mother of all knowledge. It generated most of the fields of research still with us today."

Is capitalism worth saving?
Robert Reich talks about how to overcome the moral crisis of our economy and restore America's democracy
by TOBY ASH, THE BROWSER

Why Rush Limbaugh and the right turned on Trayvon Martin
A national tragedy became another awful political shouting match, thanks to vile pundits and talk-radio hosts
by ALEX PAREENE
"In the parallel conservative media bubble, of Fox News and talk radio and right-wing websites, Trayvon Martin’s story didn’t register."

Campaign 2012's Biggest Disconnect: Americans Want Out of Afghanistan, Candidates Would Rather Ignore It
by Arianna Huffington
"You'd think a ten-and-a-half year war would be a major issue in a presidential campaign -- especially a war going as badly as the one in Afghanistan. And especially in the wake of Sen. Jay Rockefeller publicly urging President Obama to speed up the withdrawal of U.S. troops."

The Obama DOJ and strip searches
by GLENN GREENWALD
"What virtually none of this anti-Florence commentary mentioned, though, was that the Obama DOJ formally urged the Court to reach the conclusion it reached."

“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”
The president's first remarks about the Trayvon Martin killing were just right – and unfortunately, they had to be
by JOAN WALSH

To view prior Sounding Off pieces that appeared in this section, please visit our Archives for any articles posted prior to September 30, 2004 or use our google search box above to search our site. Starting on January 5, 2009 all Sounding Off pieces will be archived here.