As the Senate Armed Services Committee meets Wednesday to take up its version of the Defense Authorization bill, senators will likely devote at least as much verbiage to discussion of sexual assault in the military ranks as they do to the finer points of the Pentagon budget that is the bill’s main focus. But missing from the committee’s final version of the bill will be the one measure that advocates for survivors of sexual assault and rape say is critical to ending the crisis that grips the military: removing the reporting and prosecution of sexual assault cases from the chain of command.

This is a sickening and truly despicable move by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich). He has removed from the Defense Authorization Act the bipartisan provision that would have provided the best chance of improving the rampant problem of sexual abuse in the military. From New York Times:

Memorial Day weekend is, first and foremost, about remembering those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. It honors the many sacrifices of those who served and who are currently serving. It lifts up families and friends who have lost loved ones to combat and in the line of duty. It recognizes the best our nation had and has to offer.

Last week, as I have on every Memorial Day spent in D.C., I joined thousands of people who visited Arlington National Cemetery to honor our fallen brothers and sisters by putting some flowers on graves and placing flags. I know how President Obama feels about lesbian, gay, and bisexual service members. He’s been very clear about that. But I wonder what he thinks about the policies that bar transgender people from serving openly.

After my surgery and later issuance of a new birth certificate last November, I wanted to apply to the Department of the Navy (DON) to change my recorded gender. The Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) keeps track of servicemembers and retirees genders, so I wanted, for gender affirmation and DOD acknowledgement, my gender reflected in my Department of Defense (DOD) records.

There is no gender marker on military identification cards, so it’s not an issue of being outed by any gender marker on it. But, it still was important to me — every other government database records my gender as female, and the DOD showing me as male just bothered me.

With neoconservatives and neoliberals amplifying calls for US military intervention in Syria, it is worthwhile to take a moment and consider all the places in the world, where the US currently has forces engaged in daily operations.

Secrecy, the reality that a substantial portion of US military or espionage operations with troops are likely happening covertly, may mean it is impossible to truly get a complete picture of where America is projecting power and targeting and killing people. But, Linda J. Bilmes and Michael D. Intriligator, ask in a recent paper, “How many wars is the US fighting today?”

At the end of last week, San Francisco Pride’s President Lisa Williams and its Board of Directors went against the vote of the “electoral college” that had decided to honor Pfc. Bradley Manning, the gay soldier who the military is prosecuting for disclosing information to WikiLeaks.

Williams announced late Friday that a “mistake” had been made and his nomination “should never have been allowed to happen.”

The oligarchy has won. Heaven help the rest of us.

The dedication for George W. Bush’s presidential library included the presence of one current and four former United States presidents: George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George W. Bush himself. A number of world leaders, such as Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi and Ehud Olmert, were in attendance as well.

When he ran against Republican Senator John McCain, Obama campaigned in 2008 against what he called “eight years of failed policies” from George W. Bush. But, today, Obama spoke reverently about becoming a part of “the world’s most exclusive club,” a group of “living former Presidents” and one that included Bush.

British prisoner Shaker Aamer has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for over eleven years. He has not been charged with any crime or given a trial. He has been cleared for release yet he remains in detention. And he is one of the more than one hundred prisoners being held at Guantanamo who have been engaged in a hunger strike.

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.