The U.S. system of politics and public policy is in disarray awash with elites trying to manipulate the public and the public drifting away from any factual grounding, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains. Christopher Preble has given us some interesting thoughts about foreign policy elites and the U.S. public and how the interplay of the two figures into bad foreign policy. [...]

Now, you won’t hear mainstream American politicos and intellectuals acknowledge that the United States has never actually been a democracy. You won’t see them noting that popular self-rule was the … [...]

Years ago, over many beers in a D.C. bar, a congressional aide colorfully described the House of Representatives, where he worked. It's "435 heads up 435 asses," he said. I thought of that person yesterday, while reading the analyses of Hillary Clinton's victories Tuesday night. [...]

After an hour-long meeting with President Barack Obama on Thursday afternoon, Bernie Sanders spoke briefly to reporters outside the White House pledging that his campaign will continue the "political revolution" and encouraged his supporters not to give up on the key issues that have raised their political passions.Just minutes later, the Hillary Clinton campaign released a video of Obama offering [...]

The Bernie Sanders campaign and progressives across the nation expressed mixtures of frustration and contempt Monday night after major news outlets—following declarations by the Associated Press and NBC News—ignored the explicit instructions about how primary delegates should be tallied and declared that Hillary Clinton has won the nomination of the Democratic Party. [...]

Over the past 10 years US companies have invested $5.8 billion in commercial real estate in Russia, the biggest among other foreign investors, according to consulting company Knight Frank. Overall foreign investments to Russian commercial real estate over the past 10 years have reached $15.9 billion. US companies account for 36.5 percent of the total sum. [...]

Addressing International Media Forum "New Era of Journalism: Farewell to Mainstream", Julian Assange said that about 80 percent of the US National Security Agency budget is privatized. He also said that Google is engaged with the US White House and Hillary Clinton's elections campaign. Google has power to control information flow, he added. [...]

Thanks to Edward Snowden’s revelations, the US government can no longer directly collect everything that we communicate with each other electronically, Tom Devine, legal director at the Government Accountability Project, told RT America’s Manila Chan. [...]

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spoken out against US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, calling her a “war hawk with bad judgment” who gets an “emotional rush out of killing people.” “A vote today for Hillary Clinton is a vote for endless, stupid war,” Assange wrote via the @wikileaks Twitter account on Tuesday. [...]

As the prospect of Donald Trump in the White House moves from ludicrous to terrifying, it’s time to reconsider the electability question. Despite polls suggesting that Hillary Clinton is more likely to lose the general election than Bernie Sanders, her supporters routinely argue that Sanders’ program is too radically utopian to have a chance. [...]

Some Democratic leaders are privately scouting around for someone to replace Hillary Clinton if she stumbles again in California and/or the FBI detects a crime in her email scandal, reports Robert Parry. For months now, poll after poll have registered the judgment of the American people that they want neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump as the next President, but the two major parties seem [...]

America may lag behind the developed world in many categories, but it is No. 1 in the “merchant of death” business, experiencing a boom in the commerce of boom, especially in areas destabilized by U.S. invasions, notes JP Sottile. Who says nothing is made in the USA anymore? Certainly not the well-heeled denizens of the State Department’s diplomatic corps. And they should know. That’s b [...]

With rumors flying that establishment Democrats might hand Hillary Clinton her hat before the Democratic Convention to replace her with Joe Biden, John Kerry or some other grey-suited hand-job for empire and the Chamber of Commerce, the greatness that is the U.S. in 2016 keeps mounting. (Bernie [...]

On June 2, a few days before the California primary, Hillary Clinton gave up trying to compete with Bernie Sanders on domestic policy. Instead, she zeroed in on the soft target of Donald Trump’s most “bizarre rants” in order to present herself as experienced and reasonable. Evidently taking her Democratic Party nomination for granted, she is positioning herself as the perfect candidate for h [...]

Hillary Clinton made a strong case for why handing the nuclear codes over to a President Donald Trump would be a scary idea, but there may be equal or even greater reason to fear turning them over to her. In perhaps the most likely area where nuclear war could break out – along Russia’s borders – Clinton comes across as the more belligerent of the two. [...]

In what supporters described as "a victory for accountability for corporate crimes," a U.S. judge ruled in favor of allowing Colombians to sue former Chiquita Brand International executives for the company's funding of a paramilitary group that murdered plaintiffs' family members. [...]

Progressive groups welcomed President Barack Obama's call to expand Social Security by increasing taxes on the wealthy, praising the effort and crediting it in part to "relentless grassroots activism" and Bernie Sanders' political efforts. [...]

Democratic presidential contenders Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are locked in a dead heat in California among registered Democrats, two new polls show.Sanders even beats Clinton by one point when potential Democratic primary voters are surveyed. [...]

'We need a foreign policy based on building coalitions... [not] perpetual warfare in the Middle East' Bernie Sanders responded to Hillary Clinton's foreign policy speech on Thursday with a hit at her credentials, including her involvement in the Iraq War and so-called "regime change" in Libya. [...]

Late last week in the snazzy lobby of the National Nurses United headquarters, NNU Director Rose Ann DeMoro stood with her senior staff and Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and took stock of the risks they had taken to side with Bernie Sanders for president. The Nurses were the first big national union to endorse Sanders, who surprised everyone in the Democratic Party by coming to a photo-fin [...]

A lawyer's advice on how to assert your rights when it comes to drugs and the police. If you use pot you are a criminal. This is true [according to federal authorities] even in Colorado and Washington, where the feds continue to outlaw cannabis. This is also true in California and other states that provide medical protection. [...]

The average tuition rate for a four-year college in the US is $38,600, and even more for a graduate degree. As a result, students often finish university hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. These grueling statistics have forced some students to seek out unique ways to pay their bills. One such student, Candice Kashani, who was facing an annual $50,000 in tuition and expenses, decided to j [...]