National – Jim Hightower

Poor ol’ Porter Goss. He’s our nation’s chief spook, but he’s got no sense of timing. Goss, head of the CIA, published a piece on Feb. 10 expressing outrage that Bush-administration secrets were being leaked to the media by anonymous sources. In particular, he was tapping the fact that Bush’s secret and illegal program of […]

I hope you haven’t just eaten, because we need to talk about horsemeat. It’s not widely known, but there are three horse-slaughter factories in the United States — two in Texas, one in Illinois. Each year, some 90,000 horses are trucked to these facilities, where they are killed (some die an agonizing death), chopped and […]

As we’ve seen in his botched handling of everything from the Iraqi occupation to the Katrina disaster, George W. Bush is not much of a president. But let’s give credit where it’s due — Bush has been a heck of a performer in two areas: spying and lying.      Both have come to the […]

There’s an old bumper sticker with the message “It’ll be a great day when our schools get all the money that they need and the Pentagon has to hold bake sales.” Well, guess who now has to hold bake sales to get the supplies they need? Not the Pentagon, of course — its official budget […]

Do you fear that the American people have become as fat, lazy, and submissive as a bunch of cud-chewing cows? Well, if you think that we’ve totally lost our rebellious spark, let me tell you a heartening cow story. Few creatures in the animal kingdom are perceived as so doltish and docile as your average […]

The stench coming out of the White House is more nauseating than usual. For months, Bush, Cheney & Gang had fought tenaciously to kill U.S. Sen. John McCain’s bill to outlaw the U.S. government’s use of torture against prisoners of war. The Bush administration tried to cajole McCain into at least exempting the CIA from […]

Some days, I don’t know whether to laugh, cry . . . or run for the hills. What’s gotten me wound up is a little news item about Dennis Hastert. He’s that rotund Republican who serves as speaker of the House of Representatives. It seems that he’s now proposing a new training session for our […]

Robert “Steve” Miller is a “corporate turnaround specialist,” but his specialty really amounts to nothing more than whacking blue-collar workers. Miller was brought in as CEO of Delphi Corp. in July 2005 in the wake of an accounting scandal that helped bring the corporation to the brink of bankruptcy. After only three months at the […]

How much is a billion dollars? Most of us are unable to comprehend such a stash. But to get your mind around a billion, think of it like this: Suppose you had a billion dollars and you spent $3,000 of it every day. Wow, you’d be living high on the hog! So, spending at that […]

All of the pundits and consultants are unanimous these days about what Democratic Party candidates must do to gain political favor: emulate Republicans by wearing religion (specifically Christianity) on their sleeves, making alliances with evangelical churches, and openly engaging in “faith politics!” The pundits and consultants are, of course, wrong. Yes, professing one’s heartfelt spiritual […]

I’m whopper-jawed. I’m stunned. I’m sick. I’m disgusted. I’m fuming. If you thought that you could no longer be shocked by anything the Bush administration does, you’ve obviously not heard of the latest inhuman, totally depraved, appalling bit of evil coming out of Bush’s EPA. These so-called environmental and health protectors have proposed a new […]