Archive
Will the Carnage Ever Cease?
I’ve written at least 75 columns on gun control over the years. It might have been as many as 100. Every time some demented loser would haul a gun — usually some sort of automatic — into a public place and lay waste around him (it’s always a him), I would get on my...
Will This Documentary Change Everything?
Writer Naomi Klein and her filmmaker husband Avi Lewis lucked out with the release of their new documentary, This Changes Everything. This film about why humanity must kick our fossil-fuel habit before it wrecks the planet arrived at an ideal time. For one thing,...
The Sad Fate of America’s Whistleblowers
What is it about whistleblowers that the powers that be can't stand? When I blew the whistle on the CIA’s illegal torture program, I was derided in many quarters as a traitor. My detractors in the government attacked me for violating my secrecy agreement, even as they...
Letting Pepsi Police Itself Isn’t Very Sweet
If you drink Mug Root Beer or the apple-flavored Manzanita Sol soda, you might unwittingly become one of the first people to try a brand new artificial sweetener. The new product is called Sweetmyx 617, and PepsiCo is blending it with high fructose corn syrup to...
Obama’s Kabuki Theater
The sales push behind Washington's latest "free-trade" agreement amounts to Kabuki theater. What's Kabuki? It's a 17th-century form of Japanese drama, featuring elaborate sets and costuming, rhythmic dialogue, and stylized acting and dancing. That pretty much sums up...
Two Sides of the Gunslinging Crisis
The Reverend Who Won the Airwaves
Toward the end of his life, civil rights champion and Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall was asked how he wanted to be remembered. "He did the best he could with what he had," Marshall replied. That's really the most any of us can do, and those who achieve it...
A Perfect Portrait of Corporate Crime
If a picture is worth 1,000 words, here's one worth a thousand times that. It's a shot of three Volkswagen board members, gathered for a press conference to announce the resignation of Martin Winterkorn. VW's disgraced CEO was forced out after the auto giant was...
In OtherWords: September 30, 2015
This week in OtherWords, John Kiriakou, Cecilia Velasco, Jill Richardson, and I unpack Pope Francis's whirlwind visit. The pontiff had a lot to say about climate action, justice for immigrants and the incarcerated, and making amends for the Catholic Church's past...
Jeb Bush Blows It on Race
The Republican Party has struggled for years to attract more voters of color. In a recent campaign appearance, candidate Jeb Bush offered yet another useful case study of how not to do it. At a campaign stop in South Carolina, the former Florida governor was asked how...
