US Congresswoman representing the 9th Congressional District of California (CA-09). [Oakland, Berkeley, Castro Valley, Emeryville, Ashland, Cherryland, Fairview, Piedmont, Albany, and parts of San Lorenzo and Hayward.]
March 19, 2009 – Lee speaks on the floor of the US House of Representatives on the 6th Anniversary of the invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq.
ON SEPT. 11, terrorists attacked the United States in an unprecedented and brutal manner, killing thousands of innocent people, including the passengers and crews of four aircraft. Like everyone throughout our country, I am repulsed and angered by these attacks and believe all appropriate steps must be taken to bring the perpetrators to justice. We must prevent any future such attacks. That is the highest obligation of our federal, state and local governments. On this, we are united as a nation. Any nation, group or individual that fails to comprehend this or believes that we will tolerate such illegal and uncivilized attacks is grossly mistaken.
Last week, filled with grief and sorrow for those killed and injured and with anger at those who had done this, I confronted the solemn responsibility of voting to authorize the nation to go to war. Some believe this resolution was only symbolic, designed to show national resolve. But I could not ignore that it provided explicit authority, under the War Powers Resolution and the Constitution, to go to war.
It was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events — anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation’s long- term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit. In granting these overly broad powers, the Congress failed its responsibility to understand the dimensions of its declaration. I could not support such a grant of war-making authority to the president; I believe it would put more innocent lives at risk.
The president has the constitutional authority to protect the nation from further attack and he has mobilized the armed forces to do just that. The Congress should have waited for the facts to be presented and then acted with fuller knowledge of the consequences of our action. Continue reading →
By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan It was a bad week for dictators, and a good one for international justice. Two brutal, U.S.-backed dictators who ruled decades ago were convicted for crimes they committed while in power. Hissene Habre took control of the northern African nation of Chad in 1982, and unleashed a reign of terror against his own people, killi […]
We continue our conversation with Dave Zirin, author of the book "Brazil's Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy," and Jules Boykoff, author of "Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics." In early August, more than 10,000 athletes across the world will convene in Rio de Janeiro's […]
Extended interview with Setsuko Thurlow, who survived the Hiroshima atomic bombing, about the bombing of 1945 and her push to eliminate nuclear weapons. On August 6, 1945, Thurlow was at school in Hiroshima when the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on a civilian population. She has been an anti-nuclear activist for decades. Watch Part 1
Holocaust survivor and peace activist Hedy Epstein has died at the age of 91. Epstein was born in Germany and left in 1939 on a Kindertransport to England. Her parents died in Auschwitz. She later returned to Germany to work as a research analyst for the prosecution during the Nuremberg trials. She was involved in civil rights and antiwar movements throughou […]
By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan Thursday, Jan. 28, was a cold morning in Durham, North Carolina. Wildin David Guillen Acosta went outside to head to school, but never made it. He was thrown to the ground and arrested by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ). He has been in detention ever since. Wildin, now 19 years old, fled his home […]
Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a U.S. president or vice president, is in Poland and Germany to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day and address rising antisemitism around the world.
"One Governor should not have the power to dictate the facts of U.S. history," Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said of GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' move to ban the Advanced Placement course.
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Rep. Hakeem Jeffries insists the looming debt ceiling crisis will be resolved without his party submitting to demands by Republicans who want to tie government spending cuts to a debt limit hike.
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As the city awaits video of the fatal encounter with Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, a law enforcement official described the footage as “absolutely appalling.”
Mr. Nichols was pulled over by the Memphis police on the evening of Jan. 7 and died three days later. Five officers were charged with murder on Thursday.
The social forces are pervasive but subtle in Lukas Dhont's Close — no overt bullying or homophobia, just internalized pressures on still-developing psyches.
FDA advisers debate the agency's controversial proposal to start handling the COVID vaccines like the flu shots — updating them annually to target the most likely strain to be dominant each winter.
House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting travel and related expenses from registered lobbyists. The House Majority Leader has said that his expenses on a 2000 trip were paid by a nonprofit organization, and that the financial arrangements for it were proper.
Five months after President Bush launched his drive to overhaul Social Security, the difficult, if not impossible, task of drafting legislation begins Tuesday when the Senate Finance Committee holds the first hearing on options to secure Social Security's future.
Howard Dean's Democratic National Committee has been studying the electorate, and the party's problem with voters of faith is both worse and better than he feared.
Years ago, the federal government spent $117 million on an experimental "clean coal" power plant in Alaska designed to generate electricity with a minimum of air pollution -- but the project never got up and running.