Portside

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The Republican Party last week quietly declared war on itself, in the process essentially confessing to a generation of failed governance and dumbed-down politics.

The individual mandate was not necessary - the insurance companies like it because it does bring young, healthy people who aren't likely to get sick into the system.

As an administration decision on Keystone XL looms the protests and civil disobedience in Washington are heating up once again.

In the midst of an escalating international row with Australia, the Israeli government has been forced to admit that it secretly imprisoned a "dual-nationality" citizen – known as "Prisoner X" – who subsequently killed himself while being detained in Ayalon prison.

Consider these issues of legality and US legacy: The belligerent and misplaced aggression and ensuing chaos after the 2003 Iraq invasion led to hundreds of thousands of casualties (over a million by some calculations) and the largest refugee crisis in the region since the Nakba, with over 4 million Iraqis being displaced from their homes. After a decade of warfare Afghans have been perishing under the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world.

On Monday, a grassroots, anti–corporate tax-dodging coalition called Flip the Debt crashed a "Fix the Debt" party at St. Anselm's College in New Hampshire hosted by Honeywell CEO David Cote to tell the gathered deficit hawk disciples that paying their "damn taxes" would be a better solution than crippling the nation with fiscal austerity measures.