The greatest casualty of 9/11: The America we knew

Shahid Buttar is the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.


Reflections on the 9/11 attacks are important and moving. But most overlook the enduring legacy of the attacks, in the form of the vastly greater damage done to American principles over the past decade. Whether in the context of surveillance, torture, or the congressional cowardice that has enabled them, our leaders have sullied the legacy of an America that once inspired the world.

Earlier this summer, when facing a crucial accountability moment for an agency that continues to abuse the rights of millions of Americans, members of Congress asked no tough questions, avoided controversy, and submitted to a White House proposal to entrench the FBI leadership—at the same time as they fought to the knuckles over issues that Congress created in the first place by spending the country into a fiscal black hole and absurdly cutting taxes in the midst of multiple wars.

Most astounding in all this is Congress's apparent abandonment of its own institutional interests. Even in the face of documented lies by the FBI's leadership to congressional committees and repeated proof that Congress, the press, and the public are hearing only tiny slices of the whole truth, Congress has failed to use its many tools to seek transparency and investigate executive abuses.

Dictatorship, Transparency, and the NBA (or: How Chairman Stern has destroyed pro basketball)

So, one of the potentially great NBA Finals series just ended, with the Lakers topping the Celtics. The series, however, was a huge disappointment, largely because of the one issue that has plagued the NBA for the past few seasons: the officiating. The timing is interesting, to say the least. The league has lost a lot of money the past few years, and each extra playoff game, particularly a Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals game, generates a decent amount of change for the league. Throw in the fact that NBA Commissioner David Stern runs the league like a dictator, allowing no real dissent or questioning about anything, particularly refs, and allows essentially no transparency in the process, and it's not hard to see why there is a mounting view that there is a conspiracy in place, whereby the league does what it can with the refs to extend playoff series as much as possible to make sure they get as much money as they can. Even my mom, who doesn't follow basketball, called me up to tell me she thought the Lakers huge free throw advantage in Game 7 was very suspicious. But those who don't believe there is a conspiracy, read the whole post - I don't know that I believe in it myself!