Often the most ardent critics of the American Empire are those who were once functionaries within in.

Melvin A. Goodman has seen the internal levers of imperial power projection at their worst and minces no words in describing the ugly side of the bipartisan consensus on empire in this nascent 400+ page tome.

Fatster rounds up news articles from around the galaxy, including strories about the American Empire, UK Olympics, Barclays’ Diamond, war on drugs, oil price rigging, IMF growth forecasts, LIBOR, Wisconsin Senate, welfare work waivers, for-profit schools, GOP corruption, Florida corruption, dought, AT&T, Brazilian gold miners and much more.

As U.S. drones continue to take flight over Pakistani soil and that country’s restive population becomes more and more resentful of what it views as excessive foreign meddling in its affairs by various actors – the West, Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists, and its old rival India – I think the topic of empire is more relevant than ever to the two countries that I consider my own.

There’s no doubting the conservative bona fides of Bruce Fein. A high-level Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration in the 1980s and previously a resident scholar with the Heritage Foundation, he is a long-time advocate for uncompromising right-wing political principles.