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Today, by ordering a military trial at Guantanamo for 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants, Attorney General Eric Holder finally put the Obama administration's stamp on the proposition that some criminals are "too dangerous to have fair trials."

Some 157,000 at-risk children up to age 5 could lose education, health, nutrition, and other services under Head Start, while funds for Pell Grants that help students go to college would fall by nearly 25 percent, under a bill passed by the House that would cut current-year non-security discretionary funding by an average of 14.3 percent.  The bill (H.R.1), which would fund the government for the rest of fiscal year 2011, now must be considered by the Senate. [1] H.R. 1 also would kill a program that helps low-income families weatherize their homes and permanently reduce their home energy bills, cut federal funds for employment and training services for jobless workers and for clean water and safe drinking water by more than half, and raise the risk that the WIC nutrition program may not be able to serve all eligible low-income women, infants, and children under age 5.  In addition, it would cut funds for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by 10 percent, for the Food and Drug Administration by 10 percent, and for the Food Safety and Inspection Service by 9 percent. The House bill does not apply its overall 14.3 percent cut on an across-the-board basis.  Some cuts, such as the 6.0 percent reduction in funding for House of Representatives staff salaries and expenses, would be smaller.  But many important programs, including some of the ones listed above, would be cut much more to make up the difference.  (The table on the next page shows the average size of the cut for programs within the jurisdiction of each subcommittee.) At the same time, H.R. 1 would increase overall funding for security programs (those funded by the Defense, Homeland Security, and Military Construction-Veterans Affairs appropriation bills) by a little less than 1 percent. Also, the 14.3 percent figure is a bit deceiving.  To achieve that level of overall cuts for non-security programs for the entirety of 2011, funding for those programs will have to fall on average by nearly one

several groups of free information advocates have emerged to help educate the latest generation of activists. To that end, one such group, Access, just released its guide to maintaining online and mobile phone security, with versions in Arabic and English.

The Land of the Free punishes or imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation. This collection of testimonials from criminal offenders, family members, and experts on America's criminal justice system puts a human face on the millions of Americans subjugated by the US Government's 40 year, one trillion dollar social catastrophe: The War on Drugs; a failed policy underscored by fear, politics, racial prejudice and intolerance in a public atmosphere of out of sight, out of mind. The United States has only 5% of the world's population, yet a full 25% of the world's prisoners. At 2.5 million, the US has more prisoners than even China does with five times the population of the United States. 8 million Americans (1 in every 31) languish under some form of state monitoring known as correctional supervision. On top of that, the security and livelihood of over 13 million more has been forever altered by a felony conviction. The American use of punishment is so pervasive, and so disproportionate, that even the conservative magazine The Economist declared in 2010, never in the civilized world have so many been locked up for so little. The project will unfold over a two year period, beginning with the release of this feature-length documentary and then continuing on with the release of short films and complete interviews from each of the 100 participants in the project, meant to represent the 1 in 100 Americans that are currently sitting behind bars.

Once again, many liberals have bought into American power as a force for good. But it's just another ugly, expensive war we now own

On last night's show, Rachel Maddow discussed how there is widespread distaste among Americans for the Ryan budget plan, as evidenced by angry crowds of constituents at town halls around the country (which have gone largely uncovered by the mainstream media). So Maddow asks a glaringly obvious question, but that no one really seems to be asking: why isn't the progressive budget plan on the table? A progressive budget plan exists -- it has been submitted and introduced -- and it is more fiscally responsible than the GOP plan. So what gives? Watch Maddow discuss the issue with Matt Miller, a senior adviser during the Clinton administration, here:

The obvious answer is that rich people have political clout-but can it really be so simple?

Numerous media outlets -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and NPR, among others - last night published classified files on more than 700 past and present Guantanamo detainees. The leak was originally provided to WikiLeaks, which then gave them to the Post, NPR and others; the NYT and The Guardian claim to have received them from "another source" (WikiLeaks suggested the "other source" was Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former WikiLeaks associate who WikiLeaks claims took, without authorization, many WikiLeaks files when he left). The documents reveal vast new information about these detainees and, in particular, the shoddy and unreliable nature of the "evidence" used (both before and now) to justify their due-process-free detentions. There are several points worth noting about all this:

a modern stock market is different than it was ten-twenty years ago, when a strategy buy-and-hold was good enough. Now it is much harder to have a decent investment return without a proper research and analysis.

DemocracyNow.org -The manhunt for Osama Bin Laden is over. Nearly 10 years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, U.S forces are said to have assassinated the Saudi-born founder of Al Qaeda inside Pakistan. At the time of his death, Bin Laden was living in a heavily fortified mansion just a mile from the Pakistani Army's principal military academy. The U.S. operation was reportedly carried out by 25 Navy Seals under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command. It is unclear what role Pakistan played in the killing. For analysis, Democracy Now! interviews Jeremy Scahill, the national security correspondent for The Nation magazine. This clip is part of an hour-long roundtable discussion about Bin Laden's death and the ongoing war on terrorism. Click here to watch the entire interview: http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2011/5/2

Well, that didn't take long. It may have taken nearly a decade to find and kill Osama bin Laden, but it took less than twenty-four hours for torture apologists to claim credit for his downfall.

The death of Osama bin Laden has sparked a debate over whether torture of suspects held at places such as the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay helped track down and kill the al-Qaeda leader. Some claim the mission vindicated controversial Bush policies on harsh interrogation techniques. We speak with Matthew Alexander, a former senior military interrogator in Iraq. "The laying of the groundwork, if you will, of these [Bush-era] techniques, I believe wholeheartedly, slowed us down on the road towards Osama bin Laden and numerous other members of al-Qaeda," Alexander says. "I'm convinced we would have found him a lot earlier had we not resorted to torture and abuse." [includes rush transcript]

"In just a few short months, we've witnessed people power in action. From the Middle East to the Midwest, movements have risen up to overturn tired dogma and challenge entrenched power. Many of us were inspired by these events. And many of us were surprised. Perhaps we were growing skeptical that people power could still work. Maybe we had forgotten a vital fact about our world: that bold citizens, united around a common mission, can still come together to create major change against enormous odds." - 350.org (April 7, 2011) "Even when people are willing to take action in concert to redistribute the pie, whether by Gandhian mobilization or use of force, this may resonate falsely, for the pie is disintegrating. Its recipe and ingredients are obsolete. And freedom attained in harsh austerity, characterized by intense competition for food, will be doubtful or of little comfort." - Jan Lundberg ("Social Justice Activists Must Take Into Account Ecological, Cultural, and Economic Transformation")

In all the talk about the federal deficit, why is the single largest culprit left out of the conversation? Why is the one part of government that best epitomizes everything conservatives say they hate about government-- waste, incompetence, and corruption-all but exempt from conservative criticism? Of course, I'm talking about the Pentagon. Any serious battle plan to reduce the deficit must take on the Pentagon. In 2011 military spending accounted for more than 58 percent of all federal discretionary spending and even more if the interest on the federal debt that is related to military spending were added. In the last ten years we have spent more than $7.6 trillion on military and homeland security according to the National Priorities Project.

Poor urban neighborhoods have already learned what is only dimly being understood by the rest of us-in the eyes of the state we are increasingly no longer citizens with constitutional rights but enemy combatants.  - 2011/07/10

Today, Wisconsin working family voters are taking another step to take back their government from Gov. Scott Walker's (R) radical, anti-family, anti-community, pro-Koch Brothers agenda. And they have to defeat a Republican dirty trick to do it.

law enforcement official says the FBI has opened an investigation into allegations media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. sought to hack into the phones of Sept. 11 victims. The official spoke Thursday to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. New York City-based News Corp. has been in crisis mode because of a scandal that sank its UK newspaper the News of the World. A rival newspaper reported last week the News of the World had hacked into the phone of UK teenage murder victim Milly Dowler in 2002 and may have impeded a police investigation into her disappearance. More possible victims soon emerged, including former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Murdoch says his media company will recover from any damage wrought by the phone-hacking and police bribery allegations. The FBI's New York office hasn't commented.

Yes, the rest of the world is watching this embarrassing debt ceiling nonsense, and it is growing dismayed. Der Spiegel has a roundup of commentary in German newspapers about the fight, and the universal message is this: The US is holding the entire world hostage, and it's the Republicans that are playing with fire. Hard to accuse the Germans (who are no fans of fiscal profligacy) of being motivated by politics, or of having some inherent reason to attack Republicans. This is just the reality of what they're doing.

They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world. American gays and lesbians in the 1950s and 1960s faced a legal system more anti-homosexual than those of some Warsaw Pact countries.[note 1][2] Early homophile groups in the U.S. sought to prove that gay people could be assimilated into society, and they favored non-confrontational education for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. The last years of the 1960s, however, were very contentious, as many social movements were active, including the African American Civil Rights Movement, the Counterculture of the 1960s, and antiwar demonstrations. These influences, along with the liberal environment of Greenwich Village, served as catalysts for the Stonewall riots. Very few establishments welcomed openly gay people in the 1950s and 1960s. Those that did were often bars, although bar owners and managers were rarely gay. The Stonewall Inn, at the time, was owned by the Mafia.[3][4] It catered to an assortment of patrons, but it was known to be popular with the poorest and most marginalized people in the gay community: drag queens, representatives of a newly self-aware transgender community, effeminate young men, hustlers, and homeless youth. Police raids on gay bars were routine in the 1960s, but officers quickly lost control of the situation at the Stonewall Inn, and attracted a crowd that was incited to riot. Tensions between New York City police and gay residents of Greenwich Village erupted into more protests the next evening, and again several nights later. Within weeks, Village residents quickly organized into activist groups to concentrate efforts on establishing places for gays and lesbians to be open about their sexual orientation without fear o