Archive
When Travel Means Putting Your Life on the Line
Millions of Americans travel overseas every year, whether it’s across the border to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls or Tijuana or to more exotic locales. But nobody expects to die violently while abroad, and especially not a 17-year old. That’s what happened to...
Do the Rich Rule America?
Is America's political system controlled by a small financial elite? One former president thinks so. Almost 40 years after he was elected, former President Jimmy Carter commented recently that our political system is now “an oligarchy with unlimited political...
Bear This in Mind
On August 7, an experienced hiker was found dead and half eaten by a grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park. The offending bear was later euthanized. A week later, a black bear injured a man near Yosemite National Park. The man had left a bag of trash outside his...
Shielding Wall Street from the Ravages of Bigotry
Phil Gramm, the former right-wing senator from Texas, has surprised me. I assumed he had zero charitable instincts. In office, he kept trying to kill safety net programs, such as food assistance: "We're the only nation in the world where all our poor people are fat,"...
Going Nuclear Again
In OtherWords: August 12, 2015
This week in OtherWords, John Kiriakou explains what's amiss with a book on torture that former CIA leaders are writing and Marc Morial calls for better police training. Do you want to make sure you don’t miss the latest from OtherWords? Please subscribe to our free...
Still No Justice for Military Women
The Senate has done it again — blocked a vote on a bill that would make it safer for sexual assault survivors in the military to report their attackers. Introduced by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the Military Justice Improvement Act would take the decision about...
I Won the Housing Lottery
I grew up in an affluent corner of Loudoun County, Virginia, where the median household income is nearly $120,000. In September, I’ll be a junior at Harvard University. Coming from the richest county in the United States, where I graduated from a competitive magnet...
Let’s Talk About Torture
The CIA’s torture-era leadership won’t repent. Even after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its report saying in no uncertain terms that the CIA had tortured its prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that torture never...
Five Laws That Made America a Better Place
Our country has no shortage of big problems. While big challenges are nothing new for Americans, how we deal with them has changed. Fifty years ago, rising social unrest forced Congress to deal with big things — like voting rights, immigration, and access to health...
