Rights and Democracy
Finally, Some Common Sense on Cannabis
Until recent years, marijuana prohibitionists have been able to intimidate most reform-minded politicians by simply threatening to brand them as "soft on drugs." But finally, thanks to determined activists and broad support from the general public, politicians are...
A Muslim Cartoonist Draws Lessons from the Charlie Hebdo Massacre
As a political cartoonist who happens to be both American and Muslim, I often find myself at the intersection of media curiosity: Muslim, with all the stereotypical notions attached to that, but also a freedom-loving artist and a humorist. I'm not just the butt of...
Ink, Blood, and Tears
Black Wealth Matters
As protesters march through our cities to remind us that black lives matter, grievances about our racially fractured society extend far beyond flashpoints over police violence. What is the state of the dream that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about, particularly as...
Suffocating Black Wealth
As 2015 Begins, Remember 2014’s Wins
While last year's voters put a pack of reactionaries in charge of the new Congress, let's not forget that bigger majorities of the same electorate leapt at the chance to say “yes” to an array of unabashedly progressive ballot initiatives. For example, even though the...
The Visa Curse
Many American women are still told they have to choose between love and career. But for many immigrants, that outdated dilemma is legally enforced. "I am here legally but I don’t have the right to work or even open an independent bank account," Rashi Bhatnagar, an...
A Flat-footed Backflip for Wall Street
Congress, which had been so tied up in a partisan knot by right-wing extremists that it became unable to move, suddenly sprang loose at the end of the year. Before heading home for the holidays, it put on a phenomenal show of acrobatic lawmaking. In one big,...
Ethics Training for Congress? Dream On
Do you — or does anyone — really need a book of rules and a three-hour briefing to do your job ethically? If you're a Congress critter, apparently so. For that's what newly elected lawmakers have just received. Nearly all those newcomers rode to victory on a tsunami...
Four Ways 2014 Was a Pivotal Year for the Internet
The death of the Internet is at hand. Sound familiar? That’s what Internet pioneer Robert Metcalfe predicted in 1995 when he wrote that spiraling demands on the fledgling network would cause the Internet to "catastrophically collapse" by 1996. Metcalfe, of course, was...
