Latest Politics
Torture on the Silver Screen
A New Movie Chronicles a Senate Committee Probe Into the CIA’s Barbaric Interrogation of Suspected Terrorists. Finally Hollywood has offered a devastatingly honest film about the Central Intelligence Agency’s systemic use of torture following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Based on a lengthy investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, The Report...
About Her Emails
How Donald Trump and the media played you for fools…and still do. “This is bigger than Watergate!” 2016 Presidential candidate Donald Trump promised. “We have only seen the tip of the iceberg!” he warned. “She should be in prison!” he bellowed, targeting his opponent Hillary Clinton. “She shouldn’t be allowed to run!” he railed again...
The Endless Insanity of War
Syria is yet another country where an active U.S. military presence violates our constitution. Sending troops to war, to be killed and kill others, ought to be a big deal. That’s why the framers of the U.S. Constitution stipulated that while the President is the commander in chief, America’s armed forces could not be deployed...
Asshole of the Month: Jim Jordan
Whenever Republicans get into trouble, overstep their authority and do end runs around the law—which, ever since Nixon, they seem to think is their privilege—they rely on a few vicious attack dogs to muddy up the scandal and derail the inevitable Congressional hearings. There’s a kennel of such GOP attack dogs in Congress. One of...
The End of the World as We Know it
Do You Feel Fine? What would you do if a doctor told you that you were almost certain to die from cancer unless it was treated immediately? Some might, reasonably, seek a second opinion. If the next doctor said that the first diagnosis was correct and that you could likely have a long and healthy...
Asshole of the Month: Sean Hannity
For a long while at Fox News there was a competition for dung-slinging on the national airwaves between the two fire-breathing Irish potato heads, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Both were masters of propaganda thinly disguised as “fair and balanced” news. They peddled unfounded conspiracy theories and dubious facts, shouted down guests with opposing viewpoints,...
The Insanity of Homelessness
Politicians’ mishandling of mental illness is but one reason that so many Americans are living on our city streets. You don’t have to live in California to grasp that America’s cities are in the grip of a major crisis. A visit to Los Angeles or San Francisco, blighted by more and more depressing encampments of...
Jeffrey Epstein’s Predictable Demise
The only “conspiracy” involves public officials who don’t give a damn about our country’s inmate suicide epidemic. After convicted pedophile and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein reportedly took his own life at a federal detention facility in New York City, a million conspiracy theories were born. Receiving the most attention was the one advanced by...
Asshole of the Month: Meghan McCain
Americans often swear by beliefs about our nation that may have been true at one time, but are no longer legitimate. One of them is that America is a classless meritocracy, the ultimate “land of opportunity,” with no privileged royalty. Unlike anywhere else, we’re told, the talented and ambitious can always rise from the slums...
Huawei: Bad Apple or Savvy?
The president has singled out a cutting-edge Chinese electronics firm as a threat to national security. President Donald Trump’s trade war with China is nothing more than another despicable chapter in the history of Western imperial powers’ incessant efforts to profit from the exploitation of the Chinese people. In the 19th century, for example, Britain brought tons...
Asshole of the Month: Lou Dobbs
Trump’s downfall—and it is coming—will no doubt be due to his enormous, hypersensitive ego. Like a psychotic pit bull, he turns on everyone eventually, even his closest supporters, if they fail to kiss his bloated ass with enough blind sincerity. From Chris Christie to Rex Tillerson to Jeff Sessions and the long casualty list of...
Harvard’s Despicable Donor
Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s money was too good for a background check. The sordid life of Jeffrey Epstein is one of those national toxic dumps that no litany of government investigations will ever fully cleanse. The fact that numerous ruling-class A-listers unwittingly or otherwise accompanied the billionaire pedophile on a customized jetliner nicknamed the...
Did Trump Actually Win?
Nobody knows if election results were manipulated in 2016 because nobody ever bothered to check. Before and after the 2016 Presidential election, U.S. election officials and private voting system vendors claimed, over and over again, that most voting systems utilized in this country are never connected to the internet. The implication is that they couldn’t...
Asshole of the Month: Lindsey Graham
South Carolina has long been the nation’s most militant state; more American Revolution battles were fought here than anywhere else, and South Carolina was the first to secede from the Union in the Civil War, after the Rebels fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, triggering the greatest bloodbath in our history. Ever since, South Carolina...
Snoopy Retail Giant
Amazon is making billions selling merchandise, but one of its prime cash cows is gathering personal info for Big Brother. From Amazon’s inception as an alternative to brick-and-mortar bookstores, and despite the carnage it visited upon those venerable cultural gathering places—replacing friendly and knowledgeable clerks with a two-day package delivery system—the company has projected a...
High Court Guts First Amendment
The Supreme Court’s ruling on partisan gerrymandering is a direct assault on voters’ free speech. For more than 45 years HUSTLER has stood unapologetically for First Amendment rights, as underscored by the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1988 ruling in HUSTLER Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell. So it must not go unnoticed here that the Court’s stolen...
Asshole of the Month: Jack Dorsey
When Twitter entered the online universe in 2006, it was widely panned as a joke. How much thoughtful content, really, could anyone express in a mere 140 characters? It seemed to be designed for complete idiots incapable of composing more than two sentences without brain strain. Twitter was made for twits. Conan O’Brien had a...
Is Peace Possible?
The Middle East has been a hornet’s nest for eons. Now Donald Trump can choose to start a war there or ease tensions. Trust me, this column about the threat of the United States and Iran going to war will be relevant no matter what happens between the moment I finish writing this first sentence...
Where Democracy Goes To Die
Jim Crow rises from the ashes in Florida even after a huge majority voted to kill the dirty bird. In the March 2019 issue my counterpart Robert Scheer trumpeted unabashedly “good news”: Nearly 65% of Florida voters from the left, right and center said yes to a November 2018 ballot initiative “to amend their state...
Asshole of the Month: Kay Ivey
The possibility of traveling back in time has been a staple fantasy of science fiction from H.G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine to the film Back to the Future. It’s more than a fantasy, however, and you don’t need some quantum physics gizmo to do it. Just move to Alabama. The state that gave us George Wallace, with...
