Archive
Winning the Fight for $15 in 2016
Millions of low-paid Americans rang in 2016 with a raise, as a handful of state minimum wage increases went into effect on the first day of January. Many of those raises are a barely noticeable 15 or 20 cents an hour — little comfort to people struggling to make ends...
A Formula for More Murder
Picture a world in which most of the people you encounter — on the street or at work, in stores or classrooms, at the movies or in church — are openly carrying guns. That’s the world Second Amendment absolutists are promoting when they repeat their mantra, "The only...
Throwing My Fez in the Ring
Most presidential candidates, with the glaring exception of Donald Trump, say Islam is no enemy of the United States. I agree wholeheartedly. And how could there be a better way to prove that point than for a Muslim cartoonist to lead this great nation? That’s why I’m...
The Year of Trump
Is 2015 over yet? Is it safe to come out now? What a bummer. Mass shootings, cops using unarmed civilians for target practice, the Middle East in rubble, terrorist attacks, Donald Trump. Trump wasn’t the worst of it, perhaps. But he certainly was the most irritating....
We Shouldn’t Take Their Oil
Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign ad pledges to “take their oil.” That’s what President (gasp) Trump would do after having “quickly cut the head off the Islamic State,” says the deep-voiced narrator. Along with political decapitation, there are many...
Outrage in Oregon
The armed men occupying an isolated federal building in a remote Oregon bird sanctuary say they won't leave until the federal government stops its "tyranny." Yet it's not clear what that tyranny is, exactly. One of the group’s leaders is Ammon Bundy, who, along with...
Our Toxic Failure
Now that it's already been phased out, the world can agree that a chemical used in Teflon — the famous coating on nonstick pots and pans — was toxic. A recent New York Times Magazine article told the story of the heroic victims who paid with their health and the...
Border Boondoggle
Good fences, wrote Robert Frost, make good neighbors. But an 18-foot high, 2,000-mile wall? That's another story. It just antagonizes your neighbor — and shows your own fear and weakness. Yet this is what self-described conservatives running for president propose to...
When College Athletes Do the Corporate Hustle
For thrilling sports action on television, it's hard to top the sheer excitement of bowling, isn't it? No, not that game with 10 pins. I’m talking about the passion and pageantry of college football's bowl season. America's elite, powerhouse teams are rewarded for...
This Global Ruling Is Just Not Cool
They say that if you get up in the morning and swallow a live toad, nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day. Well, we Americans have just been fed a live toad by the World Trade Organization. Last May, the WTO — an oligarchic, autocratic governing...
