Archive
New Law Damages Arizona’s Credibility
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a statewide law forcing local police officers to question and potentially detain anyone they “reasonably suspect” to be an undocumented immigrant. If you believe our local law enforcement agencies, who will be required to implement the mandates of this law, it will lead to mistrust between police and the people they have sworn to protect.
Massacres Expose another Reason to End Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
In today’s wars, exposés are mostly relegated to page 13 of The New York Times, and there’s no evidence so far that any consciences were particularly shocked.
Gotta Get Me a Gun
Everybody’s doing it. Buying a gun. Ever since the Supreme Court said anyone can own one, nervous citizens have been gobbling them up. Unconcealed weapons are even showing up in bars and supermarkets.
I Coulda Been a Hedge Fund Manager
When I was in high school, I had a guidance counselor named Mrs. Cameron. She was a sweet woman, gentle of manner, soft of voice. She ruined my life.
Now Foreign Corporations are Citizens Too
Having decreed that corporations have a free speech “right ” to spend unlimited sums from their massive corporate treasuries to elect or defeat candidates in our elections, the Supreme Court’s five-man corporatist majority has opened a colossal can of worms. One of those worrisome squigglies is this question: Does the Court’s newly fabricated political right extend to foreign corporations?
Priority Check
The War Resisters League produced a pie chart that shows how much of our tax revenue funds warfare.
But Would Restaurants Have to Serve Libertarians?
Dr. Rand Paul, son of Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul, is a leading candidate to replace Kentucky’s outgoing Republican Senator, Jim Bunning. He’s seizing on the same citizen anger that fuels the tea partiers (Sarah Palin has endorsed him), but as Kentucky’s largest daily newspaper, the Courier-Journal, reports, “despite his independent thinking, much of what he stands for is repulsive to people in the mainstream.”
No More Torture
The Guardian, a British newspaper, reports that former “senior officers” in the MI6–the UK’s version of the CIA–are now criticizing U.S. policies and officials for using torture.
Letters to the Editor: Kaul’s ‘Enduring Literature’
If columnists tend toward liberalism, it is because their close contact with world tragedies teaches there is something better than illiberalism.
Tax Policy: Maybe It’s Time to Start Over
Some serious and high-minded rich people calling themselves “Wealth for the Common Good” think they might ought to pay higher taxes. Not only themselves of course, but all upper-income Americans as well. Got bucks? Pony up! As you might expect, this feeling is not rampant among the prosperous set, so it is good for their personal safety that the “Wealthers” cannot be readily identified by hair color, tattoos, or other insignia.
