Author Bio: Dave Lindorff is a journalist who has written for numerous publications, including BusinessWeek, Salon, and the Nation. He's also the author of three books, "This Can't Be Happening!" "Killing Time," and "Marketplace Medicine." Barbara Olshansky is an attorney for The Center for Constitutional Rights. She is currently managing habeas litigation on behalf of 300 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. She is the author of "Secret Trials and Executions: Military Tribunals and the Threat to Democracy."

Publisher: THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS 175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

"The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End" is another must-read about how delusional and inept the Bush Administration is in the Middle East.

A Rallying Cry for Democratic Populism by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan

Take This Job and Ship It:
How Corporate Greed and
Brain Dead Politics Are
Selling Out America

Read the Washington Post Review

Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success  by Paul Waldman

"Waldman's book is terrific—good sense mustered with evidence, well argued and sharply written to boot. I agree fervently with almost everything he writes. This is the indispensable book for the 2006 elections."
—Todd Gitlin, bestselling author of The Sixties and The Twilight of Common Dreams
"Here's the ticket for Democrats to get back in power: read this book, understand what it means to be a true American progressive, expose conservatives as the mean elitists they are, get tough, and fight back. Nobody paints the strengths of progressives and the weaknesses of conservatives like Paul Waldman."
—Bill Press, author How the Republicans Stole Christmas

"With clarity and passion, Paul Waldman demonstrates persuasively that the forces of the right have not "taken over the country," as the media often lazily put it. They've only taken over politics. That can be reversed, and Waldman shows exactly how."
—Michael Tomasky, Editor, The American Prospect

Congress must go beyond censure and consider impeachment.

Recent calls for a censure resolution show that some senators finally realize that President Bush is out of control. But a censure resolution will not: Remove a single wiretap from American phones; End the Iraq War; Halt U.S. Torture; or stop President Bush’s reckless abuse of power.

The Center for Constitutional Rights new book, Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush, makes the case for impeaching President Bush for illegally spying on U.S. citizens, lying to the American people about the Iraq war, seizing undue executive power, and sending people to be tortured overseas. We need your help to grow this movement.

First off, it's just damn exciting to read a book by a Democrat that actually proposes an effective, well thought out, and articulate vision of a national security program. And it's by former Senator Gary Hart, who is perhaps the smartest politician we have interviewed. That this guy is not in an active governmental leadership position is a great loss to the nation.

Divine Destruction: Dominion Theology and American Environmental Policy (Melville Manifestos) (Paperback)  by Stephenie Hendricks

This is a thought-provoking, insightful exploration of how the Bush Administration developed an anti-environmental policy that is leading us into the destruction of "America the Beautiful," the selling off of our publicly owned national parks and forests, and our continued slouching toward an irreversible global warming meltdown.

The Assassins' Gate

Amazon.com
As the death toll mounts in the Iraq War, Americans are agonizing over how the mess started and what to do now. George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, joins the debate with his thoughtful book The Assassins' Gate. Packer describes himself as an ambivalent pro-war liberal "who supported a war [in Iraq] by about the same margin that the voting public had supported Al Gore." He never believed the argument that Iraq should be invaded because of weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he saw the war as a way to get rid of Saddam Hussein and build democracy in Iraq, in the vein of the U.S. interventions in Haiti and Bosnia.

How did such lofty aims get so derailed? How did the U.S. get stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East? Packer traces the roots of the war back to a historic shift in U.S. policy that President Bush made immediately after 9/11. No longer would the U.S. be hamstrung by multilateralism or working through the UN. It would act unilaterally around the world--forging temporary coalitions with other nations where suitable--and defend its status as the sole superpower. But when it came to Iraq, even Bush administration officials were deeply divided. Packer takes readers inside the vicious bureaucratic warfare between the Pentagon and State Department that turned U.S. policy on Iraq into an incoherent mess. We see the consequences in the second half of The Assassins' Gate, which takes the reader to Iraq after the bombs have stopped dropping. Packer writes vividly about how the country deteriorated into chaos, with U.S. authorities in Iraq operating in crisis mode. The book fails to capture much of the debate about the war among Iraqis themselves--instead relying mostly on the views of one prominent Iraqi exile--but it is an insightful contribution to the debate about the decisions--and blunders--behind the war. --Alex Roslin

Impostor : How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy

From Publishers Weekly
Liberal commentators gripe so frequently about the current administration that it's become easy to tune them out, but when Bartlett, a former member of the Reagan White House, says George W. Bush has betrayed the conservative movement, his conservative credentials command attention. Bartlett's attack boils down to one key premise: Bush is a shallow opportunist who has cast aside the principles of the "Reagan Revolution" for short-term political gains that may wind up hurting the American economy as badly as, if not worse than, Nixon's did. As part of a simple, point-by-point critique of Bush's "finger-in-the-wind" approach to economic leadership, Bartlett singles out the Medicare prescription drug bill of 2003— "the worst piece of legislation ever enacted"—as a particularly egregious example of the increases in government spending that will, he says, make tax hikes inevitable. Bush has further weakened the Republican Party by failing to establish a successor who can run in the next election, Bartlett says. If the Reaganites want to restore the party's tradition of fiscal conservatism and small government, he worries, let alone keep the Democrats out of the White House, they will have their work cut out for them. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Bartlett, an economist and former Reagan administration official, attacks the Bush administration hard but from the political Right. Challenging Bush's conservative principles of operation and credentials, Bartlett actually gives former president Clinton more credit for following conservative economic principles. In contrast, the Bush administration has been marked by shortsightedness, if not anti--intellectualism, too willing to reward friends without regard to competency and to punish as enemies those who deviate from the party line. Bush's shortcomings include his drug bill, trade policies, and expanded regulatory requirements. Interestingly, Bartlett concludes that Bush's relentless effort to cut taxes will leave an unenviable legacy for a conservative--the need for America's largest tax increase. Bartlett also takes the administration to task for corruption that violates the principles of difference the Republican Party declared during the campaign against Clinton. This is a worthy critique, one that the administration will not be able to dismiss as liberal propaganda. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Here is what one reader had to say about it: "In this book, Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, studies the ethics of President George W. Bush. More than any other President, Bush justifies his policies in terms of the fight of good against evil. In Part 1, Singer contrasts Bush's rhetoric of opportunity with the reality of class. Bush's faith-based politics cover class-based economic policies. He claims to uphold a culture of life, while freely using the death penalty, even for mentally retarded prisoners. He opposes stem cell research, despite its contribution to prolonging life.

Thomas Paine and the Promise of America (Hardcover) by Harvey J. Kaye

Thom Hartmann's Review (EXCERPT)

It would not be an exaggeration to say that without Thomas Paine there may not have been an American Revolution. At the very least, it may well have been of a substantially different nature and character, and our government may be far more plutocratic than it was designed to be.

Yet Paine is often absent from broad-brush overviews of the American Revolution, or simply relegated to the title of "pamphleteer."

Part of the reason for this is that he wrote "The Age Of Reason," which was a finely-tuned attack on organized religion. After "Common Sense" and "The Rights of Man," two books that were massive best-sellers, "Reason" caused many Americans - then in the midst of a religious revival - to turn against Paine. Thus he died in relative obscurity in New York City, and today even the whereabouts of his body is unknown (an interesting story that Harvey J. Kaye tells well).

His critics notwithstanding, Thomas Paine was in many ways the father of modern liberalism, and thus one of the most important of the founders of what both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson referred to as that "liberal" experiment, the United States of America.

With these words, Ambassador L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer begins his gripping memoir of fourteen danger-filled months as America's proconsul in Iraq. My Year in Iraq is the only senior insider's perspective on the crucial period following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. In vivid, dramatic detail, Bremer reveals the previously hidden struggles among Iraqi politicians and America's leaders, taking us from the ancient lanes in the holy city of Najaf to the White House Situation Room and the Pentagon E-Ring.

His memoir carries the reader behind closed doors in Baghdad during hammer-and-tongs negotiations with emerging Iraqi leaders as they struggle to forge the democratic institutions vital to Iraq's future of hope. He describes his private meetings with President Bush and his admiration for the president's firm wartime leadership. And we witness heated sessions among members of America's National Security Council -- George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice -- as Bremer labors to realize the vision he and President Bush share of a free and democratic New Iraq. He admires the selfless and courageous work of thousands of American servicemen and -women and civilians in Iraq.

The flames Bremer describes on arriving in Baghdad were from fires started by looters. One of his first acts was to request an additional 4,000 Military Police to help restore order in the streets. For most of the next year, as the insurgency spread, Bremer resisted efforts by generals and senior Defense Department civilians to reduce American troop strength prematurely, replacing our forces with ill-trained, poorly led Iraqi police and soldiers. And he lays to rest the myth that the Coalition disbanded Saddam's army, a force comprised of Shiite draftees who had deserted and refused to serve under their former Sunni officers. Bremer also describes his frustration with intelligence operations that concentrated on the search for weapons of mass destruction while the insurgency gathered strength.

Bremer faced daunting problems working with Iraq's traumatized and divided population to find a path to a responsible and representative government. The Shia Arabs, the country's long-repressed majority, deeply distrusted the Sunni Arab minority who had held power for centuries and had controlled the detested Baath Party. Iraq's non-Arab Kurds teetered on the brink of secession when Bremer arrived. He had to find Sunnis willing to participate in the new political order.

Some in the U.S. government pushed for what Bremer would come to call a cut-and-run policy that would have quickly delivered governance of Iraq to a handful of unrepresentative anti-Saddam exiles. Bremer vigorously resisted this ill-conceived course. He takes the reader inside marathon negotiations as he and his team shepherded Iraq's new leaders to write an interim constitution with guarantees for individual and minority rights unprecedented in the region.

My Year in Iraq is required reading for all those interested in the real story of how America responded to its gravest recent overseas crisis.

Faith in Politics (Paperback) by James Reichley,

Editorial Reviews
Book Description
According to current polls, about 85 percent of Americans identify with some religious faith and more than 40 percent say they attend religious services at least once a week. In recent years, religious observance—and even religious belief—have become important factors influencing voter choice. Active participation in electoral politics by some religious groups has fueled apprehensions that the traditional separation of church and state may be threatened.
A. James Reichley explores the questions and conflicting positions surrounding the relations between government and politics in a new book that draws upon his landmark work, Religion in American Public Life. In Faith in Politics, Reichley explores the history of religion in American public life, and considers some practical and philosophic questions affecting future participation by religious groups in the formation of public policy.

Reichley begins by examining the various attitudes and points of view of strict separationists, liberal social activists, moderate accommodationists, and direct interventionists. He goes on to discuss the way religion and politics relate to each other through a theoretic structure of seven value systems: monism, absolutism, ecstacism, egoism, collectivism, civil humanism, and transcendent idealism.

Further chapters examine the trends and constitutional arrangements that developed during the formative years of the American Republic; the evolution of judicial interpretations of the free exercise and establishment clauses; and the history of church involvement in politics from the early years of the Republic to the 2000 election and the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. A chapter covering events and developments from 1986 to 2002 includes accounts of political activism by the African American church, ideological divisions among Roman Catholics, Jewish liberalism and commitment to Israel, the rise and decline of the religious right, and political differences among mainline Protestants.

Finally, Reichley confronts the question of whether a free society depends ultimately on religious values for cohesion and vindication of human rights.

About the Author
A. James Reichley is a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute at Georgetown University.

Earth in the Balance (Paperback)  by Al Gore

Al Gore would have made a fine president were he allowed to assume the presidency he won in 2000 (by more than 540,000 votes). He would have made an even better president in 2004 after he had his epiphany that turned him from a skilled career politician into an impassioned advocate for democracy. He would, we might add, make an even greater president in 2008, just in case you asked.

"Earth in the Balance" is an unusual book in that it was actually written by Al Gore. Most political figures have people "co-write" or ghost write their books, but not Gore.

Now that Al Gore is being lauded for his environmental work, which was profiled in a documentary that has received rave reviews ("...activist cinema at its very best") at the Sundance Film Festival, we thought it time to offer his book "Earth in the Balance," which was republished (with a new foreward) just before his presidential run in 2000.

In the documentary, Gore warns that we are facing "a true planetary emergency."

"The former U.S. vice-president came to town for the premiere of 'An Inconvenient Truth,' a documentary chronicling what has become his crusade since losing the 2000 presidential election: educating the masses that global warming is about to toast our ecology and our way of life," the article notes.

Another article in the New York Times ended with this quotation: "The film's first showings received standing ovations. 'Our primary objective is for as many people to see the movie as possible,' Gore said. 'I'll sell the movie door-to-door if that is what it takes.'"

Widely ridiculed by the right wing and the Busheviks when it was published, "Earth in the Balance" has proven itself even more prophetic with the passing of time. Gore didn't write this based on policy advisors. He wrote "Earth in the Balance" from a passionate conviction that the future of our environment is in grave danger. The Busheviks have only accelerated the peril that we face as inhabitants of this planet.

In retrospect, "Earth in the Balance" foreshadowed Gore's transformation into a seer about our modern political, economic and environmental crisis. In the book, he did an unusual thing for a then sitting vice president, he took the risk of telling the truth.

Now, because Gore, in speech after speech, is holding up the mirror to the horrors of the Bush Administration, he continues to be marginalized by the mainstream press, the right wing echo chamber, and even leaders of his own Democratic Party. Someone who dares to declare that the emperor wears no clothes endangers the status quo, and many of the Democratic Senators in Washington don't like to become involved in battles that require them to summon courage. They also like their cushy jobs and have forgotten that they serve the people, the nation, and the Constitution -- not just themselves.

What Gore said about the Sundance-premiered film equally applies to "Earth in the Balance": "The average person is ahead of politicians on this issue. People who care about it get disappointed by the lack of interest from the political system. We are beginning to see the critical formation of a mass movement in the public, which will make it impolitic for politicians to keep doing nothing.''

"Earth in the Balance" would have been a blueprint for beginning to salvage our environment were Gore to have been installed in the White House, as he was elected to do. But now, it summons us to understand how much further we have unfortunately traveled down the road to destroying it.

It's time to take a fresh look at Al Gore's "Earth in the Balance." We ignore his warnings at our peril. The past five years have only come to prove how much we owe him, and how little we have listened as a nation.

This book should be in every house and classroom in the country. But now that telling the truth is a crime while lying is risk free, it is destined to be read only by those who seek it out. That's horribly unfortunate, but a sad sign of the Bushevik "Through the Looking Glass" times that endangers us all.

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Well, this is a book that is causing an enormous stir, even though the public and reviewers haven't even seen it yet. The right wing is already trashing it from here to eternity on the Internet -- and these bimbos haven't seen a copy, not a one! So you know it's hot.

Over time, we have gotten many variations on the Curious George theme submitted as potential premiums, but for one reason or another they just haven't made the final cut. "Clueless George Goes to War," however, won us over immediately.

In less than 30 pages, this adult political cartoon book managed to capture, with humor, the essential incompetence of America's boy king (or monkey) and his mentor, "The Man" (Dick Cheney). It's not hard to try and be funny, but it is challenging to actually accomplish the goal. Particularly when it comes to politics and parody.

But Pat Begley, a cartoonist, has achieved the remarkable: a little gem of a book that distills the Bush mis-presidency down to its essence. It's been a long time since we've actually laughed about the ruinous reign of Bushevism, but we did while reading through "Clueless George Goes to War."

Bagley is an award-winning cartoonist from Utah -- the state that gave Bush his biggest margin of victory. His cartoons appear daily in the Salt Lake Tribune and have been published in Time, the Guardian of London, the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere.

We talked to the publisher, and he assured us that there are plenty of pro-democracy voters and advocates in Salt Lake City, the home of "Rocky," the mayor who encouraged his constituents to turn out and protest Bush's war policies.
So, it's perhaps fitting that the reddest of states produced this delightful little cartoon book about "Clueless George" and "The Man."

It makes for perfect holiday reading and a wonderful holiday gift for a progressive near and dear to you.

As the back cover of the book notes, to evildoers everywhere, George says, "Don't monkey with America." Because George and "The Man" are too busy monkeying with the world

This fascinating and disturbing book is the official record of testimony taken by the Democratic Members and Staff of the House Judiciary Committee, presided over by Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the Ranking Member. Originally released in January, 2005 by the Committee and now available in print for the first time.
Witnesses included both Republicans and Democrats, elected officials, voting machine company employees, poll observers, and many voters who testified about the harassment they endured, some of which led to actual vote repression.
While shreds of the electoral chaos in Ohio were reported in the press, the issue soon faded from public view. What Went Wrong In Ohio provides new insights into the abuse and manipulation of electronic voting machines and the arbitrary and illegal behavior of a number of elected and election officials which effectively disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters in order to change the outcome of an election. Reviews

“I urge every American citizen to recognize that the integrity of our electoral process is at stake. We must face the hard truth that the system in its present form is too easily subverted. We must address this continuing erosion so that, in Abraham Lincoln’s immortal words, ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ What Went Wrong in Ohio should be required reading for all who believe the right to vote is fundamental to freedom and the spirit of democracy.” —Bob Kerrey, President, New School University
“The only relevant civics lesson to emerge from the swindle that was last year’s presidential election. Any citizen who neglects to read it does so at his or her peril.”—Lewis Lapham, Harper’s Magazine
“An entirely new kind of ‘how to’ book: a ‘how to steal an election’ book. Forget Denmark—there was something infinitely more rotten in Ohio, where GOP election mechanics, not content to let the Supreme Court declare him president a second time, did all they could to help George W. Bush once more hijack the highest office in the land. John Conyers deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor—if there is even a shred of it left in that once noble institution.”—Larry Gelbart, Writer

The Dictionary of Republicanisms (Paperback) by Katrina vanden Heuvel

What a clever book!

Katrina vanden Heuvel, the innovative editor of The Nation magazine, asked readers to come up with definitions that would expose the real meaning behind Republican pronouncements. Because if one thing is clear, the GOP Stepford message point bloviators speak in a coded language. Nothing really means what the words they utter traditionally mean; it's the wink and the nod that's behind the language that counts.

So, for instance, one can easily define the daily mission of White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's effort to "clarify" as the act of repeating "the same lie over and over again." Or is there a modicum of doubt that "pro-life" actually means the "valuing of life up until birth"? Heck, the readers of the Nation and vanden Heuvel wrote an actual Republican dictionary, it seems, not just a satire.You might call it a GOP decoder. Who can dispute that for "Baby Doc" Bush conviction is defined as "making decisions before getting the facts and refusing to change your mind afterward"? BuzzFlash passed a mumbling man with some mental health problems the other day. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the gentleman kept insisting it was raining, even though there wasn't a cloud in sight. He had his story and he was sticking to it. Bush thinks that type of behavior is being manly and courageous. Actually, it just means that you need your meds.

There are the briefest of definitions (as in China, n., See Wal-Mart.) and longer ones like the threeparter for "Class Warfare": "1) Any attempt to raise the minimum age; 2) Any attempt to limit the concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer plutocrats; and 3) Any attempt to proved affordable health care for the working poor." Of course, while virtually the entire sub rosa strategy of the GOP is class warfare, the Democrats generally run away from the phase as if it carried avian flu.

We especially liked definitions such as the one for a presidential press conference: "1) Extremely rare phenomenon -- see Haley's Comet; and 2) Opportunity for gay hustler to advertise his politicalservices."

Vanden Heuvel includes a postscript to the Dictionary of Republicanisms, which she wrote shortly after the hurricane that shares her first name devastated New Orleans, as Bush ignored the incident.

She writes, "The failure to respond in a timely fashion as the disaster unfolded on national television was not the first time the Republican White House has mismanaged a crisis; it was the latest in a long line of failures. We simply can't afford to trust them any longer. As we drain anrebuild New Orleans, the time has come to drain the right wing's self-enriching agenda from American politics and rebuild our country into a place we can be proud of again."

Yes, we must marginalize the neoconservatives, n., or "Nerds with Napoleonic complexes."

Hear, hear!

Thinking back to election night last November, something just didn't seem quite right. The discrepancy between exit polling that showed Kerry winning 5 battleground states, including the crucial state of Ohio – and therefore the presidency – and the final vote tallies that miraculously flipped Ohio and other battleground states to allow Bush to "declare victory" seemed, well, extraordinary.

That nagging feeling in your gut that perhaps something wasn't quite right in the last presidential election, or even worse, that something truly nefarious might have taken place, is validated by a stunning new book from Mark Crispin Miller.

"Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)" is Miller's meticulous and thorough account how the numbers just don't add up to a Bush reelection. Miller's sharp analysis points in one direction: George W. Bush did not rightfully win the 2004 election and Bush's "victory" was borne out of vote suppression, manipulating the electoral process, fraud and theft.

Mark Crispin Miller, author of "The Bush Dyslexicon" is a leading public intellectual and professor of media studies at New York University. He is also one of BuzzFlash's most admired thinkers and writers today.

"Fooled Again" demonstrates Miller's uncanny ability to weave circumstantial evidence together almost as damning as a smoking gun. For example, Miller highlights Bush's dismal approval ratings all under 50% days before the 2004 election as well as record democratic voter registration and voter turnout. He debunks the myth that waves of evangelicals came out of the woodworks to carry Bush to victory or account for the host of statistical miracles that no pollster can seem to adequately explain. And Miller astutely observes that it was the progressive and liberal bases that were united whereas the conservative base was fractured. Miller's book is best thought of as a closing argument, and if one approaches the topic like a juror with an open mind, its difficult to conceive of any other verdict for the Republican Party other than guilty as charged for stealing the 2004 election.

Miller zeroes in on irregularities in Ohio as ground zero in the right's theft of the 2004 election. Miller skewers Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, who like Katherine Harris in Florida, was determined to tip Ohio in Bush's column despite his responsibility and duty to oversee a fair election.

Although Miller's tone at times construes the reader to think "Fooled Again" is a partisan diatribe, Miller's true purpose is a plea to reform America's broken electoral system to preserve our democracy – a policy that unifies all Americans regardless of political affiliation. Miller calls for doing away with all electronic voting, using standardized paper ballots, and federalizing the electoral system "so that its workers are trained civil servants, not local bigots or politicos."

BuzzFlash strongly recommends "Fooled Again" by Mark Crispin Miller because our democracy simply cannot afford another fraudulent or stolen election.

As George W. Bush said, "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

Our thoughts precisely.

America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order by Stefan Halper, Jonathan Clarke

Editorial Reviews
Book Description
This book explores how George W. Bush's election, and the fear and confusion of September 11th combined to allow a small group of radical intellectuals to seize the reins of US national security policy. It shows how, at this 'inflection point' in US history an inexperienced president was persuaded to abandon his campaign pledges and the successful consensus-driven, bi-partisan diplomacy that managed the lethal Soviet threat over the past half century, and adopt a neo-conservative foreign policy emphasizing military confrontation and 'nation-building.' To date, the costs - in blood, money and credibility - have been great, and the benefits few. Traditional conservatives deplore this approach. This book outlines the costs in terms of economic damage, distortion of priorities, rising anti-Americanism, encroachment on civil liberties, domestic political polarization and reduced security. Then, it sets out an alternative approach emphasizing the traditional conservative principles of containing risk, consensus diplomacy and balance of power