News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
The Senate's No. 2 Democrat says he knew that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war but remained silent because he was sworn to secrecy as a member of the intelligence committee. "The information we had in the intelligence committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't believe it," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Wednesday when talking on the Senate floor about the run-up to the Iraq war in 2002. "I was angry about it. [But] frankly, I couldn't do much about it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy. We can't walk outside the door and say the statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that is being given to this Congress." Mr. Durbin yesterday said there was no "ethical" way to notify the public of specific misleading information being touted by the Bush administration because it would have required revealing top-secret information being provided to the intelligence committee. Mr. Durbin, whose floor comments were part of the debate before yesterday's passage of an emergency war-funding bill, said he and half the Democrats on the intelligence committee voted against the war over concerns of the White House's "very flimsy case, but it was given to the American people as a proven fact." Congress authorized the 2003 use of armed force against Iraq by votes of 296-133 in the House and 77-23 in the Senate. Five of nine Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted for the measure as did all eight Republicans.
Note: Why wasn't this key information reported in other major media? And if it is clear that the public is being blatantly lied to by politicians with hidden agendas, doesn't that justify the breaking of secrecy oaths?
Four years ago on May 1, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln wearing a flight suit ... in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner. He was hailed by media stars as a "breathtaking" example of presidential leadership in toppling Saddam Hussein. Despite profound questions over the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction and the increasing violence in Baghdad, many in the press confirmed the White House's claim that the war was won. How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported? In the run-up to war, skepticism was a rarity among journalists inside the Beltway. The [PBS "Buying the War"] program analyzes the stream of unchecked information from administration sources and Iraqi defectors to the mainstream print and broadcast press. While almost all the claims would eventually prove to be false, the drumbeat of misinformation about WMDs went virtually unchallenged by the media. "Buying the War" examines the press coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy and asks, four years after the invasion, what's changed? "More and more the media become ... common carriers of administration statements," says the Washington Post's Walter Pincus. "We've sort of given up being independent on our own."
Note: You can view the highly revealing documentary "Buying the War" or read the transcript at the link above.
Prof Phil Zimbardo, creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment: "In 1971 I became superintendent of the Stanford Prison, a mock prison. I was a young psychology professor at Stanford University. I wanted to understand what happens when you put good people in a bad place. [We] selected college-student volunteers - normal, healthy young men with no history of crime or violence - and randomly assigned them the roles of prisoner or guard. To increase the real-life feel, we arranged for actual mass arrests and booking by the Palo Alto police; visits by a prison chaplain, a public defender, and parents. Though not part of the plan, there were also prisoner rebellions. And, notoriously, there was chilling abuse and torture by the guards. The experiment was supposed to last two weeks, but we had to pull the plug after only six days because nearly half the prisoners had emotional breakdowns. Fast-forward to April 2004. Horrific images flash across our television screens - nightmarish abuses of Iraqi prisoners by young American soldiers. The images were ... strikingly similar to what I had seen at Stanford - prisoners naked, bags over their heads, forced into sexually humiliating poses. Historical inquiry and behavioural science have demonstrated ... that given certain conditions, ordinary people can succumb to social pressure to commit acts that would otherwise be unthinkable. In the prisons at Stanford and Abu Ghraib, men and women did terrible things to other people in part because responsibility for their actions was diffused. We find ourselves in a similar situation whenever we witness someone else's trouble but fail to help because we assume others will."
Note: When each one of us takes responsibility for doing our part to build a brighter future, we will see tremendous positive changes both in our lives and our world.
Sidney Gottlieb, who presided over the Central Intelligence Agency's cold-war efforts to control the human mind and provided the agency poisons to kill Fidel Castro, died on Sunday. He ... spent his later years caring for dying patients ... and fighting lawsuits from survivors of his secret tests. He will always be remembered as the Government chemist who dosed Americans with psychedelics in the name of national security. Mr. Gottlieb joined the C.I.A. in 1951. Two years later, the agency established MKUltra and Mr. Gottlieb was running it. He served two decades as the senior scientist presiding over some of the C.I.A.'s darkest secrets. The first of these were the LSD experiments. Mr. Gottlieb was fascinated by the drug [and] took it hundreds of times. In the 1950's and early 1960's, the agency gave mind-altering drugs to hundreds of unsuspecting Americans in an effort to explore the possibilities of controlling human consciousness. In one case, a mental patient in Kentucky was dosed with LSD continuously for 174 days. Other experiments involved agency employees, military officers and college students. In all, the agency conducted 149 separate mind-control experiments, and as many as 25 involved unwitting subjects. At least one participant died, others went mad, and still others suffered psychological damage after participating in the project, known as MK Ultra. The C.I.A. ... deliberately destroyed most of the MKUltra records in 1973. Mr. Gottlieb was also involved in the C.I.A.'s assassination plots. [He] developed a poison handkerchief to kill an Iraqi colonel, an array of toxic gifts to be delivered to Fidel Castro, and a poison dart to kill a leftist leader in the Congo.
Note: Read more about the CIA's MK-ULTRA program. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mind control from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Mind Control Information Center.
The Supreme Court today gave the Central Intelligence Agency broad discretion to withhold the identities of its sources of intelligence information from public disclosure. The exemption applies regardless of whether the information is shown to have a bearing on national security and regardless of whether the source of the information is a newspaper or magazine in general circulation. The decision, written by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, overturned a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. That court, in ordering the release of the names of researchers who participated in a long-running C.I.A. study of the control of human behavior, had adopted a considerably narrower definition of the ''intelligence sources'' entitled to exemption. The C.I.A. project, code-named MKULTRA, was in existence from 1953 to 1966 and was designed to develop techniques for controlling human behavior. At least 185 private researchers and 80 institutions participated in the research. Officials of two organizations ... filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act in 1977 for the names of the researchers. Last fall Congress partly excluded from the Freedom of Information Act the C.I.A.'s ''operational files,'' which involve intelligence methods and sources.
Note: The official story is that all of the experiments to control human behavior failed. Yet if this is true, why did they spend so much money and so many years on it? And why is it necessary to keep secret who the researchers were? For reliable, verifiable information suggesting not only that the experiments were quite successful, but that they may be ongoing to this day, click here.
Concerned about the growing dependence of the nation’s spy agencies on private contractors, top intelligence officials have spent months determining just how many contractors work at the C.I.A., D.I.A., F.B.I., N.S.A. and the rest of the spook alphabet soup. Now they have an answer. But they cannot reveal it, they say, because America’s enemies might be listening. Steven Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the decision not to reveal the numbers was a sign of dysfunctional policies. “It reveals how confused the government is about what is really sensitive and what is not,” Mr. Aftergood said. “What would Osama bin Laden do with the fraction of intelligence workers who are contractors? Absolutely nothing.” The government’s use of contractors has accelerated greatly during the Bush administration. Nowhere has the increase been more striking than in the spy agencies. The agencies have long fought efforts to make public their budgets and work force numbers. But not all officials have been punctilious about keeping the secrets. At a conference in 2005 ... a deputy director of national intelligence, let slip that the annual spy budget was $44 billion. Last year, John D. Negroponte, then the intelligence director, said in a speech “almost 100,000 patriotic, talented and hard-working Americans” work for the agencies. Why was Mr. Negroponte permitted to reveal that number? “It was an estimate,” said Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for the current intelligence chief.
Former CIA director George J. Tenet bitterly complains in a forthcoming television interview that White House officials set him up as a scapegoat when they revealed that he had assured President Bush the intelligence on Iraq's suspected weapons arsenal was a "slam dunk." Tenet, who was one of the longest-serving CIA directors in U.S. history, resigned abruptly in June 2004 after administration infighting over the flawed intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom six months later. Tenet then remained publicly silent about his role in the presentation of prewar intelligence that turned out to be wrong. CBS News's "60 Minutes" released excerpts of its Tenet interview. In the interview, Tenet acknowledged that he used the phrase "slam dunk" during a conversation with Bush and other key advisers in December 2002. But Tenet said the phrase was an offhand remark used to describe the ease with which a public case for war could be made. Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward first wrote about the conversation between Tenet and Bush in his 2004 book "Plan of Attack." Bush told Woodward then that Tenet's "slam dunk" assurance had been "very important" as he weighed decisions about the invasion. In the television interview, Tenet takes special exception with Bush's comments. Tenet initially denied having used the phrase "slam dunk." But, in a 2005 speech at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, he said he regretted using the phrase to describe the case against Iraq. "Those were the two dumbest words I ever said," Tenet said.
Note: The head of the CIA admits he lied about something as vital as the use of a phrase involving gross manipulation of the public in support of war. Who else is lying here?
The ties between doctors and drug manufacturers are close indeed. Most physicians (94 percent) reported some type of relationship with the pharmaceutical industry ... according to [a] study, published in the April 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Most of these relationships involved receiving food in the workplace (83 percent) or receiving drug samples (78 percent). More than one-third of the respondents (35 percent) were reimbursed for costs associated with professional meetings or continuing medical education, while more than one-quarter (28 percent) were paid for consulting, delivering lectures or enrolling patients in clinical trials. Over the past two decades, physician-industry relationships have attracted increasing scrutiny. One review found that, on average, physicians meet with industry representatives four times a month, and medical residents accept six gifts annually from industry representatives. "We know that these relationships have benefits and risks, and we know that they benefit the companies that are involved, and we know from our data that they benefit doctors," said study author Eric G. Campbell, an assistant professor of health care policy at the Institute for Health Policy at Harvard Medical School. "The real question is to what extent do these relationships benefit patients, and the answer is, we don't know." Campbell said that he found it hard to believe that free football tickets for a doctor would trickle down to benefit patients.
Note: For an excellent article by one of the foremost doctors in the nation on how the pharmaceutical industry has corrupted politics and damaged our health, click here.
On Tuesday, former Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch testified in Washington, D.C., about the real story of her capture and rescue while serving in Iraq in 2003. She spoke before the House Government Reform Committee along with the family of fallen Army Ranger Pat Tillman. Lynch was badly injured when her convoy was ambushed in Iraq in 2003. She was later rescued by American troops from an Iraqi hospital, but the tale of her ambush was changed into a story of heroism on her part. At the hearing, the chairman of the House panel, Henry Waxman, accused the government of inventing "sensational details and stories" about Tillman's death and Lynch rescue. After she arrived home, Lynch set the record straight in a book called "I Am a Soldier, Too." "At first I didn't even realize … the stories that were being told," she said. "It was quite a while afterwards, and then I found out. I knew that I had to get the truth out there because, one, I wouldn't be able to live with myself ... knowing that these stories were portraying me to do something that I didn't." Although Lynch was injured severely, she didn't suffer any gunshots wounds.
Note: Thank you to Jessica for being a hero with the courage to expose the lies and fabrications of those who will do almost anything to support the war machine. For more, click here.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men ... and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. These words from the Declaration of Independence are instructive. Because not only whenever any form of government, but whenever any government official becomes destructive of the founding purposes, that official or those officials must be held accountable. Because I believe the vice president's conduct of office has been destructive to the founding purposes of our nation ... I have introduced House Resolution 333, Articles of Impeachment Relating to Vice President Richard B. Cheney. It became obvious to me that this vice president, who was a driving force for taking the United States into a war against Iraq under false pretenses, is once again rattling the sabers of war against Iran with the same intent to drive America into another war, again based on false pretenses. Preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the vice president was fully informed that no legitimate evidence existed of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the vice president actively and systematically sought to deceive the citizens and the Congress ... about an alleged threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The vice president pressured the intelligence community to change their findings to enable the deception of the citizens and the Congress of the United States.
Note: To sign a petition in support of impeachment, click here.
We couldn't pass up mention of the winner of last week's Eco-marathon Americas, a fuel-economy challenge sponsored by Shell Oil Co. A team from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo won the $10,000 grand prize by achieving the equivalent of 1,902.7 miles per gallon on regular gasoline in a student-built vehicle. Granted, the students didn't win in someone's mom's Dodge minivan. Their "car" is a one-occupant streamliner built of carbon fiber composite. At a measly 98 pounds, it weighed less than the driver. And that was 98 pounds including the car's 50-cubic-centimeter Honda engine. "The main reason we do this is because it's a way to encourage students to focus on technical innovation for potential future careers," said David Sexton, president of Shell Oil Products. But there is a practical side to the competition, said Cal Poly team manager Tom Heckel, a junior mechanical engineering major. "Any publicity we can get makes people aware that the 20 mpg or so they're averaging in their cars can be improved on — a lot." The event, held April 14 at the California Speedway in Fontana, was the first time that Shell had brought its 25-year-old Eco-marathon competition to the U.S. The event drew 20 university, college and high school teams from around the U.S. and Canada. Rules called for each vehicle to complete seven 1.45-mile laps around the speedway's inner track, averaging at least 15 mph. Fuel consumption was measured after each attempt and adjusted for ambient temperature and other factors in a complex formula that ends up giving an extrapolation of miles per gallon.
Note: Why would the president of Shell Oil Products state the main reason for this competition is about careers and not finding ways to improve gas mileage? The world record is over 10,000 mpg. How is it that the average car gets only 22 mpg when the Ford Model T got 25 mpg almost 100 years ago? For more, click here.
The legend of Atlantis, the country that disappeared under the sea, may be more than just a myth. Research on the Greek island of Crete suggests Europe's earliest civilisation was destroyed by a giant tsunami. Until about 3,500 years ago, a spectacular ancient civilisation was flourishing in the Eastern Mediterranean. The ancient Minoans were building palaces, paved streets and sewers, while most Europeans were still living in primitive huts. But around 1500BC the people who spawned the myths of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth abruptly disappeared. Now the mystery of their cataclysmic end may finally have been solved. A group of scientists have uncovered new evidence that the island of Crete was hit by a massive tsunami at the same time that Minoan culture disappeared. "The geo-archaeological deposits contain a number of distinct tsunami signatures," says Dutch-born geologist Professor Hendrik Bruins. "Minoan building material, pottery and cups along with food residue ... were mixed up with rounded beach pebbles and sea shells. "The latter can only have been scooped up from the sea-bed by one mechanism - a powerful tsunami," says Professor Bruins. The scientists have obtained radiocarbon dates for the deposits that show the tsunami could have hit the coast at exactly the same time as an eruption of the Santorini volcano. It caused massive climatic disruption and the blast was heard over 3000 miles away. The [resulting] wave would have been as powerful as the one that devastated the coastlines of Thailand and Sri Lanka. The myth of Atlantis, the city state that was lost beneath the sea, was first mentioned by Plato over 2000 years ago.
Note: So the "myth" of Atlantis may not have been just a myth after all. How many other myths might eventually be found to be based in fact?
The depositions of the parents of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold will be kept under seal in the National Archives for 20 years, a federal judge ruled Monday. No one, including violence prevention experts, will be able to see them until they are unsealed, U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock ruled. They will be kept permanently in the National Archives, where they are considered to be of historical value. The depositions of the parents took place in 2003 in connection with a lawsuit filed by the families of five slain Columbine High School students. Brian Rohrbough, the father of slain student Daniel Rohrbough, said he was angered by the ruling. Rohrbough, who watched as attorneys interviewed the parents during the deposition sessions, said there is nothing in them that would cause any harm. Instead, their release could prevent further school shootings, he said. Rohrbough is under court order not to divulge details. "There is no rational reason to lock them up," Rohrbough said. "It's just the idea that it would be OK in 20 years, and can't be OK today."
Note: Why all the secrecy? Could it be to hide evidence showing it could have been stopped?
A report on the Columbine High School massacre ... could answer questions about what police knew before the shootings that left 13 victims and two gunmen dead. The families of the victims of the April 20, 1999 massacre were the first to see, in private, [a] mountain of evidence. Some of the evidence is expected to show that Harris and Klebold were on police radar nearly two years before the attack. Brian Rohrbough, whose son, Danny, died at Columbine, said he was hopeful that he would get the answers he and other family members have been seeking. Rohrbough [has] been one of the most vocal critics of the sheriff department's failure to follow up on tips about Harris in the 18 months before Columbine. "I have a hard time sleeping at night because I cannot share with you what I know," he said hours before the report was to be released. Rohrbough and some other relatives of victims have seen a deposition given by Wayne Harris, father of Eric Harris. A federal magistrate has ordered the deposition, which is already sealed, destroyed. Rohrbough also is pressing for release of an investigation by the school district, which the district insists it must withhold because teachers questioned during the probe haven't given their permission. Rohrbough is convinced school staff saw a video the teen killers made that gave a hint of their plans. "We were lied to about a number of things and it seems like that things were hidden from us and we never understood why," said Scott. "And I honestly think the answers are not in the things we looked at yesterday. I think they're in sealed reports and possibly things that have been destroyed," he said.
Note: Why is the government destroying key evidence in this crucial case? Could it be that the government is somehow implicated? To explore this disturbing possibility, click here.
Federal scientists are looking for evidence that a bolt of electricity in the upper atmosphere might have doomed the space shuttle Columbia as it streaked over California. Investigators are combing records from a network of ultra-sensitive instruments that might have detected a faint thunderclap in the upper atmosphere at the same time a photograph taken by a San Francisco astronomer appears to show a purplish bolt of lightning striking the shuttle. Los Alamos National Laboratories physicist Mark Stanley said that "we've seen very strong ionization in sprites" indicating that there were enough air molecules ionized to cause heating and an accompanying pulse -- a celestial thunderclap, as it were. NASA administrators confirmed Thursday that the photograph ... is being evaluated by Columbia crash investigators. The astronomer, who has asked that his name not be used, has declined to release the digital image to the media. [A] family of "transient" electrical effects occup[ies] this part of the sky, including sprites, which leap from the ionosphere to the tops of thunderheads. Ironically, an experiment of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, aboard the doomed Columbia, was among the last fully funded work conducted on sprites. Scientists have observed interaction between a blue jet and a meteor. And in December 1999, Los Alamos National Laboratories researcher David Suszcynsky and colleagues, including Lyons, published an account of a meteor that apparently triggered a sprite.
Note: For a second article with the subtitle "Mysterious purple streak is shown hitting Columbia 7 minutes before it disintegrated," click here. Though this most bizarre news suggested another possible reason for the crash of the shuttle Columbia, it was virtually ignored throughout the official investigation. Why?
Melvin Goodman was a senior analyst in Soviet affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he worked for two decades (1966-1986). He currently is professor of international studies at the National War College. [In the CIA], not only do you have political assassinations -- attempts at least -- throughout the Fifties and the Sixties ... but you even have assassination attempts against international leaders: the Mongoose operation in Cuba [and] assassination attempts in Chile, where you were dealing with a country that wasn't even in the vital national interests or concerns of the United States. All of these assassination attempts were done with the authorization of the White House. I think the major problem at the CIA -- and it exists to this day -- is that you have two cultures. You have an intelligence or analytical culture that must remain open. The opposite of that is the clandestine side: it's secret, it's a policy branch of the government. The White House basically uses the operational component of the CIA to do its bidding. It's very useful to have a clandestine corps to carry out military or paramilitary actions very cheaply, without the hand of the United States or a particular president being obvious. In many ways, you're getting worst-case assessments, because quite often the contacts of the CIA are people on the CIA payroll, telling the CIA what these people believe the CIA wants to know -- in return for payment. So the whole tradecraft is somewhat suspicious and somewhat corrupt from the very outset.
Note: Melvin Goodman is one of many senior government officials who question the government's 9/11 story. For his comments on this, click here. For other senior officials with similar sentiments, click here.
In December 1974, the New York Times reported that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S. citizens during the 1960s. That report prompted investigations by both Congress (in the form of the Church Committee) and a presidential commission (known as the Rockefeller Commission) into the domestic activities of the CIA, the FBI, and intelligence-related agencies of the military. Congressional hearings and the Rockefeller Commission report revealed to the public for the first time that the CIA and the DOD had conducted experiments on both cognizant and unwitting human subjects as part of an extensive program to influence and control human behavior through the use of psychoactive drugs (such as LSD and mescaline) and other chemical, biological, and psychological means. They also revealed that at least one subject had died after administration of LSD. Frank Olson, an Army scientist, was given LSD without his knowledge or consent in 1953 as part of a CIA experiment and apparently committed suicide a week later. Subsequent reports would show that another person ... died as a result of a secret Army experiment involving mescaline. The CIA program, known principally by the codename MKULTRA, began in 1950 and was motivated largely in response to alleged Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean uses of mind-control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war in Korea. Most of the MKULTRA records were deliberately destroyed in 1973 by order of then-Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms.
Note: This highly revealing article on a U.S. government website shows that the CIA was actively involved in mind control projects. Explore also an excellent summary based on thousands of pages of declassified CIA documents showing the secret creation of unknowing assassins or "Manchurian Candidates."
Highly-paid professionals like doctors and lawyers didn't make the cut when researchers set out to find the most satisfied workers. Clergy ranked tops in both job satisfaction and general happiness, according to the National Opinion Research Center [NORC] at the University of Chicago. Physical therapists and firefighters were second- and third-ranked in job satisfaction, with more than three-quarters reporting being "very satisfied." Other occupations in which more than 60 percent said they were very satisfied included teachers, painters and sculptors, psychologists and authors. "The most satisfying jobs are mostly professions, especially those involving caring for, teaching and protecting others and creative pursuits," said Tom W. Smith, director of NORC's General Social Survey. Intrinsic rewards are key, the study suggests. "They're doing work they're very proud of, helping people," Smith said. Clergy ranked by far the most satisfied and the most generally happy of 198 occupations. Eighty-seven percent of clergy said they were "very satisfied" with their work, compared with an average 47 percent for all workers. Others in helping professions describe their work as a calling. "I believe I was probably put on this earth to make someone's life a little easier," said Gina Kolk, [a] physical therapist. "I get rewarded every day by what I do." Occupations with the least satisfied and happy workers tended to be low-skill manual and service jobs. Roofers, waiters and laborers ranked at the bottom ... with as few as one in five reporting they were very satisfied. Bartenders, known for listening to other people's troubles, apparently need sympathetic ears: Only 26 percent said they were very satisfied.
Millions of us are engaging in one of life's least-enjoyable activities. We're doing our taxes. We can thank the 16th Amendment for all this unpleasantness. Much maligned, much misunderstood, this amendment, ratified in February 1913, permits Congress to "lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived." Proposed by a Republican president, William Howard Taft, but commonly blamed on -- or credited to -- his Democratic successor, Woodrow Wilson, it was promptly denounced by unhappy members of both parties. Only in 1862 did Congress, facing Civil War expenses, impose a federal income tax. There were two marvelous things about this Civil War income tax. One was that you declared your own income. The second was that it was abolished after 10 years. The main reason this Civil War income tax disappeared was not that the government felt it no longer needed the money (alas, this is never true). The tax was lifted because wealthy Northeast manufacturers, the war's major taxpayers, possessed the congressional clout to replace income taxes with protective tariffs that shielded their manufactured goods. In 1894, [a] new income tax became law, only to be declared unconstitutional one year later. When the 16th Amendment was first put into practice, it would indeed be the "rich man's tax," both sides predicted. With generous deductions and a $3,000 exemption (about $55,000 today), most people didn't feel a thing. Best of all, the instructions were only one page long. Soon, of course, all this changed, in ways that nobody, pro-tax or con, could have foreseen.
Note: Many are unaware that the U.S. functioned without income tax for much of its history. The public never would have supported the 16th Amendment in 1913 if they thought it would tax the common worker. Were we duped? The 16th Amendment coincidentally was passed in the same year that the Federal Reserve (which took over the printing of U.S. money) was established. Few know that the Federal Reserve is neither truly federal or a full reserve. For more on this very well hidden fact and other cover-ups around banking, click here.
For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates, according to former department lawyers and public records and documents. Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. The administration ... has repeatedly invoked allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare. Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft ... launched a ''Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative'' in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights. Several of [the eight fired U.S. attorneys] were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians. Virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001 ... has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington ... where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins. In the last six years, the number of voters registered at state government agencies that provide services to the poor and disabled has been cut in half, to one million.
Note: Doublespeak, like the "Ballot Access" initiative, is often used to disguise the fact that the effect of the initiative is the opposite of what the title suggests. Think about the results of the "War on Terror" and "War on Drugs." The amount of terror and drug use has expanded dramatically since these were initiated. Could this be a purposeful maneuver? For more, click here.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.