Guernica prides itself on a unique embrace of art and politics. I would be lying if I said finding that balance in poetry is easy.

Two months ago, I wrote about The New York Sun‘s inaccurate attempt to draw ties between Senator Barack Obama and Islamic extremism in Kenya. The chief problem with The Sun‘s reporting was that while the ties may have been there, the Islamic extremism was definitely not.

Novelists are magicians, too.

The Fed acting without congressional authority isn’t Chinese-type authoritarian capitalism, of course, but nor is it, strictly speaking, what we’ve come to expect from a democracy.

Between what President Bush called upon America’s soldiers to do and what they were capable of doing loomed a huge gap that defines the military crisis besetting the United States today.

It’s time to recover the meaning of the word “independence.”

Luc Sante offers a story of a man’s attempt to meander through the Midwest, leading to an unexpected place and time.

An administration that has done everything in its power to oppose abortion goes after the main thing that can prevent unwanted pregnancies and proposes policy that virtually assures there will be more abortions.

Jennifer Nix tells us how literature changes the world.

The Olympics are nearly upon us, and China continues to ignore the people of Darfur. Perhaps they can offer assistance if and when the genocide ends.

A how-to history of the conservative era — specifically how to destroy a government, leave Americans in the lurch, and enrich yourselves all at the same time.

H.R. 676 — the single-payer bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers that now has 90 co-sponsors in the House — would guarantee publicly funded, privately delivered health care for everyone in the United States.

Is the illusion of sugar, coupled with the perception of being able to “have your cake and eat it, too,” actually worth what else can come with that illusion?

The privatization of the military and intelligence communities has, to great consequence, become more and more common since the Reagan administration.

The only lasting remedy for the current economic downturn is to improve Americans’ standard of living by widening the circle of prosperity.

If legitimate research found that 100 percent of children raised by same-sex couples developed same-sex attractions, it just wouldn’t matter

After a couple of geographic mix-ups John McCain recently misspoke on the subject about which he claims to be an expert.

In a global economy the propositions of top-down economics are highly questionable. The tenets of bottom-up economics will result in greater prosperity in America.

As we seal ourselves away from war’s horrors, we’re correspondingly finding it easier to speak of “warfighters” and to boast of having the world’s best military.

Once again, Bush is using fear and deception to dismiss facts and steamroll the opposition.

With the Obama campaign trying to make inroads in the evangelical community it is easy to see the perils of mixing politics and religion and why we should be moving away from identity politics as the guiding principle of our campaigns.

If you find yourself in NYC this week, Guernica, Public Affairs, and Amnesty International invite you to join us this Friday, July 18, at 6 PM, at the Old Town Bar (45 E. 18th Street) for a celebration of Mahvish Khan’s My Guantanamo Diaries.

The “Great Moderation” led the nation to think we didn’t need much by way of social insurance. We are now seeing why we need those safety nets.

Even if we were offended by the New Yorker cover, we all must speak up for the right to offend. Discussions of “taste” or “respect” are insidious code words for censorship.

A Short Till-Death-Do-Us-Part History of Bush’s Wars

Are South Koreans demonstrating a new model of citizen action?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are too big to fail, which means Bear Stearns squared. The taxpayers will get stuck with the tab again.

The best way to avoid becoming disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place.

The liberation of the hostages has conveniently shifted media focus away from yet another political scandal in which the administration of Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe finds itself mired.

All the Oil News That’s Fit to Print (Attn: The New York Times).

How exactly does John McCain propose to balance the budget by the end of his first term? By telling Americans that supply-side economics works even though they know it doesn’t.

Since 1998 26 public officials, nearly all republicans, have spoken to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group denounced by then-head of the GOP, Jim Nicholson, because of its racist views.

Why do justices feel compelled to dissent, especially at great length?

The great and mighty Amazon is slowly being brought to its knees in the name of progress.

How the price of gas fuels the widening of the wage gap in America.

Given the situation of Iraq more than five years after the invasion, to speak of the urge to surge and its results as “success” or as “good news” is essentially obscene.

Now that it is clear that the Fed can’t and won’t stimulate the economy, fiscal policy is the sole remaining vehicle.

Health Commons aspires to build a new ecosystem for research.

Welcome to the Anthropocene, an Earth epoch defined by the emergence of urban-industrial society as a geological force — and get used to it.

The latest decision in a disturbing line of Congressional actions and Supreme Court decisions that cloak encroachments on the First Amendment in the pious garb of protecting children.

Stephen Burt on the tradition of gay poetry.

Big drug companies are using their clout to stifle and delay generic competition. We pay billions of dollars more.

The Oil Majors Take a Little Sip of the Ol’ Patrimony.

Why making more federal land and offshore rights available for drilling makes no sense.

The insurance and hospital industries at the center of health care in the United States are profiting from priorities that condemn many people to death, while corporate enterprises continue to make a killing from U.S. military expenditures.

The U.S. Mega-Bases in Iraq are basically modern American ziggurats. They are the cherished monuments of the Bush administration, meant to long outlast it. They are also crucial facts on the ground, when it comes to George W. Bush’s Iraq policy, and yet they have been largely missing from the American landscape.

The reasons behind a right-wing, anti-gay legal group helping out a lesbian mother.

What are the real motives behind big companies’ philanthropic campaigns?

As George W. Bush lays more flagstones along the path to war on Iran, mainline U.S. news media is, as it was leading up to the war on Iraq, incomplete.

The perfect storm attributing to oil’s price rise.

A frequent contributor to Guernica, Tom Engelhardt, offers his description of his own online “expeditionary” journey through George W. Bush’s world — a little up-to-the-minute alternative history of these mad years when Bush the Younger ruled.

In another moment of crisis and ebbing power what will a U.S. administration work out next in a Latin America that has pulled away from its domination?

Guestblogger Luc Sante on the time when graffiti truly became an artform in New York.

The New York Sun falls for bogus campaign hype… in Kenya.

The price one journalist paid for telling the truth.

Robert Reich on the Vice President question.

Now that the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination is over what will be the result of the anger that contest produced?

An excerpt from The Court and the Cross: The Religious Right’s Crusade to Reshape the Supreme

Court, wherein the ultimate goal of the Christian Right is starkly revealed: the forcible baptism of the United States as a “Christian Nation.”

In Botswana human rights come after diamonds.

How the Senator Won the War of Words in Iraq (again and again and again…)

The important part of a cap-and-trade system is how the permits are allocated.

McCain team claims Clinton strategy memo a frame-up.

After years of Iraqis paying a terrible price it is past time for the rest of the world to shoulder at least a small share of the burden of resistance.

The decline of the professional middle class is due to something far more pervasive than just individuals harboring too high expectations and poor money management skills.

Will the level of presidential campaign discourse actually be raised this time around? Do the American people even want it to be?

The Way Forward for Tibet.

Since the events of September 11, 2001 the course of action of the Bush administration, as well as its inability to foresee and deal with crises facing this country, have led to a situation far from secure.

How a once flexible and even maverick politician lost all resistance to the threats of evangelical indifference in November.

The housing bill currently in Congress would lead to, at best, a fraction of the refinancings needed, which is better than nothing. But President Bush may not even want to go that far.

In Brazil, in the name of civilization, indigenous people are mistreated and displaced from land that the law says is not theirs.

The importance of the number 350 in a post-Kyoto world.

Norman Solomon on Tuesday’s results.

The last war won’t end, but in the Pentagon they’re already arguing about the next one.

The Metropolitan Opera completes its second season of simulcast operas.

Over fillet of sole at the Carlyle Hotel, Guernica’s Crisis Darfur participants decide to make demands on Presidents Bush and Sarkozy to facilitate the protection force that Sudan’s government has avoided facing

Do the Democratic presidential candidates put enough emphasis on the make-up of the Supreme Court?

The answer to the oil crisis is not in the Alaskan tundra or a tax holiday on gas. The answer is in a strong dollar and alternative sources of energy.

Wikileaks investigative editor on the fourth estate.

Events to focus on the crisis in Darfur, with Mia Farrow and Bernard-Henri Levy (Tuesday, April 29), and writing across borders (Friday, May 2).

As the Bush Administration waged a war of propaganda on the U.S. media and U.S. citizens, General David Petraeus became the “face” of the administration, with adoring media members fawning over him during his ascension.

The similarities between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama: History could repeat itself.

How the Religious Right’s decades-long efforts to reshape the federal judiciary may finally begin to bear fruit.

Though the U.S. won the Cold War, we never stopped looking at the rest of the world suspiciously.

Mainstream media likes its buzz words and catch phrases. Luckily there are those out there pointing out the absurdity of only relying on these limited words and phrases.

As the U.S. heads into the worst economic crisis in a half century or more doesn’t it make sense that some people might be bitter?

In its Global War on Terror the Bush administration increasingly relies on air power to “take out” the enemy, with little attention given to the civilians taken out as well, or to the consequences this type of strike has on the U.S.

The war in Iraq is affecting the U.S. economy, just maybe not in the way you think.

Why the Women’s Movements of India and the U.S. are so different when it comes to single women.

While the U.S. obsessed about Iran a top Iraqi police general provided Al Sadr’s Mahdi Army with U.S. weapons and intelligence.

A new report on Burma Refugees in Malaysia.

Converting poetry skeptics, one month at a time.

Howard Zinn on U.S. imperialism past and present.

The Pentagon-sponsored project that sounds like a nightmare scenario straight out of the wilder realms of science fiction.

NPR is supposed to be willing to go where commercial networks fear to tread, but is the public actually getting this from its public radio?

Wikileaks releases a classified military memo written last month by the commander of U.S forces in western Iraq, Maj. Gen. John Kelly, exposing horrific conditions in Iraq’s Fallujah jail.

In early April, General David Petraeus will report to President Bush and the Democratic Congress on the state of post-surge Iraq. The version he gives in Washington, however, will exclude many details about the reality in Baghdad.

There’s a double standard in America when it comes to economic risk-taking: When the risk fails the little guys get tough love, while the big guys get forgiveness.

Wikileaks has released 35 censored videos relating to the protests in Tibet and has called on bloggers around the world to help drive the footage through the so called ‘Great Firewall of China.’

Among the often inadequate and sometimes embarrassing coverage of the war in Iraq, there have been shining moments of journalistic excellence. The following is a modest list of those who have accomplished such excellence.

Wikileaks exposes JP Morgan’s confidential insider trading program.