Archive
Stripping Bare the Arguments against Marriage Equality
What’s the marriage equality debate really about? Proponents see it as a question of equality. There’s no reason, they say, not to let loving, same-sex couples wed. Opponents frame the issue as a fight over whether the courts have the right to change their definition...
Closing the Door on Torture
After I blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program in 2007, the fallout for me was brutal. To make a long story short, I served nearly two years in federal prison and then endured a few more months of house arrest. What happened to the torture program? Nothing....
Virginia Is for Dirty-Energy Lovers
If you live in Virginia and would like to shrink your carbon footprint, here’s what passes for good news: We’re now officially free to ban fracking. For two years, Old Dominion communities weren’t at liberty to prevent that kind of oil and gas drilling. After the...
Lending Dreams
Nina Bailey has wanted to buy a home in her adopted city of Detroit for years. Instead, like tens of thousands of other Detroiters, she rents an apartment, where she lives with her two children. Bailey can afford a monthly mortgage payment. She’s got a decent-paying...
Wisconsin’s Grocery Dictators
Republicans may like to rail against big government. But here in Wisconsin — where conservative lawmakers just introduced a bill to dramatically restrict what people can buy with their own food stamps — Republicans want to cook up a new kind of nanny state. This isn't...
Send in the Clowns
Hardly a day goes by that another candidate doesn’t announce his or her intention to run for the presidency. One day it’s Carly Fiorina, the next it’s Mike Huckabee, Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton, even. It’s like the circus — when the little car rolls into the...
A Mailman on a Mission
Neither rain, sleet, nor snow — nor even the likelihood that he'd be killed — could stop this letter carrier from making his appointed rounds. Doug Hughes is one gutsy mailman. In April, this rural letter carrier from Florida embarrassed Washington's haughty security...
A Populist Balancing Act
Dirty-Energy Supporters Cower before Hurricane Francis Strikes
Some of corporate America's biggest climate-change deniers — from Exxon-Mobil to the Koch Brothers — are dreading a potent storm that's gaining strength and headed right at them. It's the category-5 "Hurricane Francis," which threatens to overwhelm their flimsy...
In OtherWords: May 6, 2015
This week in OtherWords, Nathalie Baptiste and LeeAnn Hall put Baltimore's recent upheaval into a context illustrated by cartoonist Khalil Bendib. And I salute the climate movement's patron saint — Pope Francis. In addition to our regular lineup of newsroom-ready...
