For A Fee, Getting Through Tsa Security Could Be A Breeze

Apple Inc. employs a group of affiliate companies located outside the United States to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. income taxes, a Senate investigation has found.

WASHINGTON — The White House answer to “who knew what and when?” shifted again today as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and “other members of the senior staff” knew about the investigation into the IRS’s targeting    

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. Ten years ago, my part of the world was full of valiant opposition to the new wars being launched far away and at home—and of despair. And like despairing people everywhere, whether in a personal depression or a political tailspin, these activists believed the future would look more or less like the present. If there was nothing else they were confident about, at least they were confident about that. Ten years ago, as a contrarian and a person who prefers not to see others suffer, I tried to undermine despair with the case for hope. A decade later, the present is still contaminated by the crimes of that era, but so much has changed. Not necessarily for the better—a decade ago, most spoke of climate change as a distant problem, and then it caught up with us in 10,000 ways. But not entirely for the worse either—the vigorous climate movement we needed arose in that decade and is growing now. If there is one thing we can draw from where we are now and where we were then, it's that the unimaginable is ordinary, and the way forward is almost never a straight path you can glance down, but a labyrinth of surprises, gifts, and afflictions you prepare for by accepting your blind spots as well as your intuitions. The despairing of May 2003 were convinced of one true thing, that we had not stopped the invasion of Iraq, but they extrapolated from that a series of false assumptions about our failures and our powerlessness across time and space. They assumed—like the neoconservatives themselves—that those neocons would be atop the world for a long time to come. Instead, the neocon and neoliberal ideologies have been widely reviled and renounced around the world; the Republicans' demographic hemorrhage has weakened them in this country; the failures of their wars are evident to everyone; and though they still grasp fearsome power, everything has indeed changed. Everything changes: there lies most of our hope and some of our fear. Continue Reading »

The FBI said Monday that no one has been arrested after last week’s discovery of a pair of letters containing the deadly poison ricin in Spokane, but the agency remained tight-lipped about the investigation and a weekend raid at a downtown apartment building. … The letters were postmarked last Tuesday in Spokane and addressed to the downtown post office and the adjacent federal building. They were intercepted by the Postal Service, and no one was injured. … Witnesses have said a man was escorted from the building by law enforcement officers Saturday morning. Sandalo Dietrich declined to say if anyone

A new set of rules imposed on educational institutions by the US Departments of Justice and Education threaten to make every student vulnerable to charges of sexual harassment. The new rules condemn “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.” Examples of offenses include Joe asks Sue for a date. Sue regards this request as unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. Mike overhears two classmates privately denigrating homosexual behavior. Mike regards this as unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. Persons engaged in this unwelcome conduct are liable to be penalized. US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan acknowledged that “such a broad