Kucinich is right here, and Greenwald wrong, and here's why:

Brownbaggers Not Teabaggers
VIGILS AGAINST WAR FUNDING SPREAD ACROSS NATION

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) organized "brownbag" lunch vigils against war funding at noon on Wednesday, January 20th, at the district offices of 22 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

On February 17th, PDA will be joined by CODEPINK, AfterDowningStreet, Democrats.com, the California Nurses Assn./National Nurses United, and United for Peace and Justice in holding brownbag vigils outside (or inside) at least 36 congress members' offices.

Nothing Lawrence Lessig says here is false exactly. But if Congress is the problem and the problem is the money, how can there never -- in anybody's predictable articles on this topic -- be any mention of the fact that the president takes more money than any congress member, and power to do most things has been handed over by Congress to the president? How can these two points be avoided?

Listen here.

By David Swanson

What it would have cost us to publicly fund independent media that would have prevented the invasion of Iraq wouldn't amount, in a year, to what we spend on a month of occupying that country.

Diverting the cost of a month of war to a year of giving substance to our "freedom of the press" would mean that the last time someone asked you about the Teabaggers' genius in being smart enough to talk dumb enough to persuade everyone to be racists would, in fact, be the LAST time anyone would ask you how a creation of the corporate media manages to get coverage from the corporate media.

By David Swanson

Congresswoman Donna Edwards' bill proposing a Constitutional Amendment to deny corporations the free speech rights of persons in the form of unlimited election bribery spending has now been cosponsored by: John Conyers, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Jim McGovern, Keith Ellison, Chellie Pingree, Barbara Lee, Andre Carson, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Betty Sutton, Raul Grijalva and Ed Markey.

With the exception of Carson, these congress members are also all cosponsors of the Fair Elections Act, which seeks to address the fairness of our elections by providing public financing for campaigns.

By David Swanson

The director of U.S. national intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee the government has the right to kill Americans abroad.

Here are 10 problems with this:

1. Acts that are crimes under national and international law don't cease to be crimes because you cross a border.

2. Acts that are crimes under national and international law don't cease to be crimes because you engage in them frequently. Assassinating non-Americans is just as illegal as assassinating Americans. The leap here is not to victims of a different citizenship but to the legalization of murder.

3. Killing people has nothing whatsoever to do with gathering so-called intelligence.

Listen here: http://jefffariaskxxt.podbean.com

Listen here http://www.theurbanjournal.org

Congresswoman Donna Edwards has just introduced a Constitutional amendment, together with Congressman John Conyers.

More below!

An Appeal on "Closing Gitmo"

Given that human rights organizations and activist groups want rights restored, not abuses moved from one location to another,

Given that said organizations are independent of and not legally bound in subservience to the Democratic Party,

Given that the funding to close Gitmo and move that particular illegal death camp to Illinois will be included in the "emergency war supplemental",

Given that this will likely lead all the Republicans in the House to vote No on $33 billion for wars, wars that involve murder and torture and lawless imprisonment, all on a larger scale than what happens at Gitmo,

Given that we then need only 40 Democrats to vote No to block the war funding,

Given that with the resources of human rights groups for once turned against the supreme international crime of aggressive war we could win over 40 Democrats,

Given that we had 32 last June and 34 in December and the public is turning further against the wars,

Given that many have publicly committed to voting No already at http://defundwar.org ,

Given that the public is increasingly understanding the need to choose between wars and jobs,

Given that a clean break with imperialism would open many new doors in our struggles for civil rights and the rule of law,

It is at least worth asking:

WILL ORGANIZATIONS THAT OPPOSE TORTURE OPPOSE OR SUPPORT THE $33 BILLION WAR BILL?

In Solidarity,

David Swanson

PS: You can't be neutral on a moving train.

By David Swanson

Last June we were handed an opportunity to block the funding of our illegal, murderous, counterproductive, catastrophic, and hated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president insisted on an off-the-books "emergency supplemental" bill, and the Senate added an IMF bailout to the bill, leading all the Republicans in the House to commit what for years they'd called treason: they all voted No on war money.

So, we only needed 39 Democrats to vote No, and we could have stopped the thing, at least temporarily. We had a week-long knock-down drag-out fight, with the White House telling freshmen Democrats they would be "dead to us" if they didn't vote Yes. And we still persuaded 32 Democrats to vote No.

By David Swanson

Add Congressman Bill Delahunt to the list of misrepresentatives who claim to oppose wars when a Republican is president but agree to support them when a Democrat moves into the White House.

When Bush was president, Delahunt sometimes voted for war funding bills and sometimes voted against them. The inclusion in the bills of lipstick measures, such as relief for hurricane victims, etc., was not a decisive factor. Delahunt appears to have voted No when the Democratic leadership was most accepting of that action. But, with all the Republicans voting Yes, there was never a chance of a No vote actually helping to block funding.

David Swanson is completing a tour of over 50 cities with his new book "Daybreak: Undoing Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union"
http://davidswanson.org/book

St. Louis, February 22
Chicago, February 23
Boston, February 27

DETAILS BELOW

St. Louis, MO, February 22
7 p.m. at Left Bank Books
399 North Euclid at McPherson in the Central West End, St. Louis, MO 63108
Sponsored by: Veterans for Peace
Contact Charles Smith: vfpch61 at riseup.net

Chicago, IL, February 23
7 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. at Northwestern University, the Evanston Campus
The Tech Institute on 2145 Sheridan Road, First Floor, Lecture Room No. 2.
Contact Karen Pallist: pallist3 at gmail dot com

Boston, Massachusetts, February 27
7 p.m. at the Harvard Coop Bookstore
1400 Massachusetts Avenue, 18 Palmer Street, Cambridge, MA 02238
Store telephone: (617) 499-2000
Contact Melida Arredondo: melida_arredondo at yahoo dot com
Elizabeth Ellis: ellisliza at hotmail dot com

Patrick Coburn, whom I'm about to follow on Ian Master's radio show on KPFK, writes that Tony Blair is more incompetent than dishonest. Examples: he didn't know toppling Saddam Hussein would benefit Iran's government. He didn't know the occupation of Iraq would fail. He didn't know Zarqawi went to Kurdistan and does not constitute a link between Iraq and 9-11. He didn't know the Americans were just as incompetent as himself.

But we know that Blair agreed with Bush to attack Iraq and to lie about it. We know he kept that decision quiet and lied about it. We know he lied about the WMDs and the alleged 45-minute threat. And we know that he helped launch a war of aggression on the basis of those lies, which was illegal quite regardless of whether they were lies, truths, or incompetent statements.

Blair didn't necessarily CARE whether Iran benefitted or whether the occupation would fail or how many people would die (and if you don't care how many people die, who's to say the occupation failed?) And who can possibly imagine that Blair is still trying to tie Iraq to 9-11 HONESTLY but incompetently? You've got to be kidding me.

Congressman Payne: I Won't Oppose War Money Because Obama's President

Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) has voted against war funding bills for years. Last summer he was one of 32 heroes to vote No under intense pressure from the White House to vote Yes. When I asked him a couple of years ago to sign onto impeaching Bush he immediately said "Sure!" and he did it.

Today I asked him if he would commit to voting No on the next $33 billion for war. I asked him privately, just after he'd given a long speech to a Progressive Democrats of America conference in New Jersey, a speech about how much he opposes the wars.

By David Swanson

No one disputes that Jay Bybee's name is at the bottom of memos that were, and to some extent still are, treated as laws which legalized aggressive war at the pleasure of a president and a variety of acts of torture. For many months the House Judiciary Committee has had two excuses for not impeaching Judge Bybee, even while proceeding with the impeachments of a judge for groping and another judge for petty corruption. The private excuse has been that impeaching Bybee would be opposed by Fox News. The public excuse has been that the Justice Department has not yet released its Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) report on the crimes of Bybee and his former colleagues.

David Swanson - full-length - Ventura, CA on Jan. 16, 2010 from Maverick Media on Vimeo.