Hours after Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill revealed Barack Obama would not “rule out” using private military companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq, Hillary Clinton announced she would co-sponsor a measure to ban the use of Blackwater and other private military firms.

On the Sunday following Sept. 11, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney told the truth. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said regarding plans to pursue the perpetrators of that attack: “We have to work the dark side, if you will. We’re going to spend time in the shadows.”

The grim, deadly consequences of his promise have, in the intervening six years, become the shame of our nation and have outraged millions around the world. President George Bush and Cheney, many argue, have overseen a massive global campaign of kidnapping, illegal detentions, harsh interrogations, torture and kangaroo courts where the accused face the death penalty, confronted by secret evidence obtained by torture, without legal representation.

From The Black World Today “Outside the New World Stages in midtown Manhattan, above in the heavens, a lunar eclipse held hundreds of stargazers breathless. Inside the entertainment palace, Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson, Dick Gregory, and coterie of well-known writers left folks in awe as they appeared to support Democracy Now’s mission to build a new home.”

Buy a DVD of the Democracy Now! Gala Event.

Watch/Listen to Democracy Now!’s Interviews With Alex Gibney, director of the Oscar-winning documentary “Taxi to the Dark Side.” [2/1/08 || 2/12/08 ]

Nearing 87 years old, Yuri Kochiyama lives in a small room in an Oakland, Calif., senior living facility. Her walls are adorned with photos, posters, postcards and mementos detailing a living history of the revolutionary struggles of the 20th century. She is quiet, humble and small, and has trouble at times retrieving the right word. Yet, with a sparkle in her eyes, she has no trouble recalling that incredible history--not from books, not from documentaries, but from living it, on the front lines.

Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon on the Release of Ex-CIA Operative Posada Carriles, the Cuban 5, Guantanamo and the Health of Fidel Castro

‘The Man of Two Havanas’: Max Lesnik on His Transition From Cuban Revolutionary to Exile to Target of Terrorist Attacks by Anti-Castro Cuban Militants in Miami

Fidel Up Close: Filmmaker Jon Alpert on His Many Encounters With Castro Over the Past 30 Years

More

Democracy Now! correspondent and best-selling author Jeremy Scahill has won the The George Polk Book Award for his book “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.” The judges said: “Scahill’s work exposed killings, human rights violations and misconduct by the firm’s personnel and revealed the U.S. government’s growing reliance on this ‘shadow army.’ His reporting and Congressional testimony helped propel legislation that would ban U.S. government security contracts with Blackwater and other private military companies.”

After the Potomac Primary, Virginia is the new Massachusetts and Texas is the new Florida. Barack Obama claimed a “Chesapeake Sweep,” winning all three primaries—Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia—by decisive margins. Hillary Clinton, whose campaign conceded these, is betting the house on the forthcoming delegate-rich primaries of Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, with no campaign stops announced for next week’s voting states, Wisconsin and Hawaii.

President Jose Ramos-Horta in critical condition after two gunshots to the stomach and chest during a morning raid on his home be Timorese rebels. The home of former president and current Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao was also attacked, but Gusmao eluded his attackers.

With all the talk of record voter participation, we should take a moment to think of the Americans, many of them African-American and Latino, who have been disenfranchised because they once committed a felony.