Recent Accountability Commentaries

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The War on Truth
Winston Churchill famously said, “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” Churchill never met Alex Jones and his many acolytes. Last November, a court found the right-wing conspiracy podcaster guilty by default in the civil suit brought by parents of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. “Connecticut...
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March 11, 2022
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Sarah Palin v. The New York Times
Note: Computer issues. Returning Tuesday. Last week, former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s libel suit against The New York Times, failed to convince both judge and jury that the former governor of Alaska had been defamed. A 2017 New York Times editorial linked a map—distributed by Palin’s political action committee—which carried a design that appeared as crosshairs over twenty Democratic congressional...
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February 22, 2022
The Walking Dead
“Common sense is not that common.”—Voltaire Embed from Getty Images Yup, it’s official, the Republican Party is dead! The party of Lincoln, Reagan, Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush, and God Love ’em, John McCain, is dead from the neck up. On Friday, the Republican National Committee censured (formerly condemned) Republican Representatives Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney who “chose to join Nancy...
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February 8, 2022
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The Way Forward, Part 1: Where We Are
America has lost its way. Once we were a shining example of democracy. We fought wars and helped the disadvantaged for moral reasons. We used to stand for something. The only thing we stand for now is outrage at anyone who disagrees with us. We are slipping away from the very ideals that make America unique: equality, liberty, and the...
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February 1, 2022
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The Poison We Live With
“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind . . .” —Proverbs 11:29 Denial is a superb film about a lawsuit brought by author David Irving against American Holocaust scholar, Deborah Lipstadt for libel. Irving writes and speaks on Nazi Germany and much his work centers on his fervent belief that the Holocaust never happened. The basis of...
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January 28, 2022
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At the Throat of American Democracy, Conclusion
“To meet the challenge of our times, so that we can later look back upon this era not as one of which we need be ashamed but as a turning point on the way to a better America, we must first defeat the enemy within.”—Robert F. Kennedy How close did we come to the end of American democracy on January...
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January 25, 2022
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At the Throat of American Democracy, Part 2
On February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy stood before the County Women’s Republican Club in West Virginia and stated, “I have here in my hand a list of 205 [State Department employees] that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the...
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January 21, 2022
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The Few. The Proud. The Stupid
It’s been little more than a year since the January insurrection where Senators and House members hid from an angry mob of Trump supporters, (And yes, Republicans, a majority of rational people know this. They’re just spending too much time on the bench to take action against what’s likely to come.) Now, with the surge of the Omicron, a variant...
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January 14, 2022
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What Has Happened to Us . . . Really?
The country is so fractured that both parties in Congress cannot even come together to observe the most devastating attack on the nation’s seat of government. While members of both parties shared a hiding space during the siege, they cannot share a moment of grief for the events of January 6, 2021. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was attending a...
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January 11, 2022
Will We?
“I’m suggesting, Mr. President, that there’s a military plot to take over the government.” —Seven Days in May “People have got to understand the danger of President Trump and the danger that he posed on that day.” —Wyoming Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney Embed from Getty Images After the Cuban Missile Crisis, where America came within inches of a nuclear war...
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January 7, 2022