At some point in the not too distant future, Democrats may be able to stop dodging the traffic in values and start directing it.

Public support for gay rights has accrued with stunning speed, making eventual acceptance of gay marriage a foregone conclusion.

Regardless of what happens to Roe v. Wade, abortion is likely to fade from public view due to advances in technology and pharmacology, like the morning-after pill, that render it an ever more private matter.

As for God, he may be omnipresent but his role in domestic politics tends to be cyclical.   more »

Albania — the only pro-Bush country left on the planet

Watch closely from 45 seconds in to just after the one-minute mark. There’s Dubs shaking hands with the crowd, surrounded by the most nervous Secret Service guys we’ve ever seen, and then a whole bunch of hands go around his left wrist … and then his watch is gone! Fuckers stole his watch!

George, when you travel to third-world countries or Italy (and Albania is sorta both), you do not wear a bunch of expensive shit that can be easily pick-pocketed. Didn’t your mom teach you this stuff when your dad was the U.S. ambassador to China?

The White House denies everything, of course, and has instead made up a dumb story about the Secret Service guys clandestinely removing his watch just in time.   more »

Aside from the known health benefits of cannabis-based therapies, millions of British people use the drug for recreational purposes, and will continue to do so whatever the official position.

These latest scare stories are little better than the Reefer Madness propaganda of old, and are treated with contempt by those who actually know something about the subject.

Cannabis is not a harmless drug, and there is need of public education so that people can make informed decisions about their lifestyles.

But spreading scare stories and dodgy statistics is grossly irresponsible, risks bringing the medical profession into disrepute, and breeds contempt for political authority.   more »

So that's that, then. After a meeting with the Italian prime minister Romano Prodi at the weekend, President Bush announced that it was time to bring the issue of Kosovan independence "to a head".

In other words, Kosovo should become independent even without the approval of the UN security council. Now the emperor has spoken, is there really any point discussing the future of the disputed Serbian province any further? Well yes, actually, there is.

What is at stake is not just the illegal seizure from Serbia of the cradle of its national history, and rewarding the campaign of violence by ex-KLA members which has seen an estimated 200,000 Serbs, Roma, Turks and other non-Albanian groups fleeing or being driven from the province since 1999.

There is also the question of whether one dangerous and globally lawless state, the US of George Bush, has the right to redraw the map of the world in any way it chooses.   more »

U.S. imperialism needs to exploit Latin America’s resources and labor even more mercilessly than it did in the period up to the late 1970s.

It does this by imposing the policies of “neoliberalism”—essentially, using the state power to aid the banks and transnational corporations to concentrate capital while never using the state to aid poor and oppressed groups or individuals.

Washington has tried to do this with minimum intervention, but this has turned out to be impossible; the U.S. is again intervening, subverting and threatening military intervention.   more »