April is a month crowded with significant anniversaries. Very few are aware of a letter written on April 3, 1777 by British statesman Edmund Burke to the Sheriffs of Bristol, England, a city Burke represented in Parliament. Revered by conservatives… more »

Thomas Hays is an activist whose politics are not to everyone's taste. Born and raised in Missouri, Hays now lives in Seattle, where he's involved in anti-war and anti-globalization protests. In February, Hays applied for a US Passport in order to t… more »

Riyadh Lafta is an Iraqi doctor who participated in a controversial study reporting that the US-led invasion has cost hundreds of thousands of civilian lives. Invited to take part in an April 20 medical conference in Washington State, Dr. Lafta was deni… more »

Taner Akcam, a Turkish refugee, is a well-respected historian teaching at the University of Minnesota. Through diligent research of official Turkish archives, Professor Akcam has documented the horrific slaughter of over a million Armenians by the go… more »

While last week's slaughter of 32 people at Virginia Tech was carried out by a deranged student, the atrocity can reasonably be considered a case of death by government. This is not because the murderer was acting on behalf of the State, but rather b… more »

Were it not for a quirk in his genealogy, the despot born 118 years ago today would have been named Adolf Schickelgruber. This may have aborted the Austrian-born demagogue's political career, since it would have deprived his followers of the percussive… more »

Fourteen years ago today, roughly eighty people ? including seventeen small children ? burned to death at the Mt. Carmel religious retreat outside of Waco, Texas. This occurred after FBI operatives in tanks had pumped an enormous volume of CS gas i… more »

Anybody who has been a teacher or nursery worker understands the difficulty of dealing with defiant children, particularly when the children come from broken homes. Still ? isn't it just a tad excessive to handcuff a six-year-old girl, fingerprint… more »

During George W. Bush's first term, Paul Wolfowitz played a key role maneuvering our nation into the disastrous Iraq war. Like Vietnam-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Wolfowitz was rewarded for his failures by being appointed head of the World Ba… more »

With the arrival of Tax Day each year, the organs of the prestige press resound with pious talk about the civic duty to pay ?our fair share? of the costs of government. Clergy often get into the act , misapplying the Biblical injunction to render… more »