Rights and Democracy
Journalists Should Stand Up for Whistleblowers
The Obama administration’s ongoing crusade against government whistleblowers — which culminated last year in the imprisonment of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling — has reignited a debate over the role journalists should play in defending their profession and the...
Public Hoopla over Private Parts
As the recent attention lavished on figures like Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner attests, trans visibility continues to rise in the United States. But that doesn’t mean life is suddenly easy for us transwomen. Take something as simple as obeying nature’s call. Trips to...
The Unelectibility Winning Streak
To use a phrase that doesn't come readily to my lips: “Well I’ll be danged.” New Hampshire, that bastion of sensible conservatism and rectitude, gave us not one unelectable candidate, but two — Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Trumpmentum has only edged up since then...
America’s Killer Prisons
I get a lot of letters from people who’ve been incarcerated, or are now behind bars. Legally I can’t respond directly, because I’m an ex-con myself: I was locked up after blowing the whistle on the CIA’s illegal and immoral torture program. Direct contact with current...
Walling off Common Sense
“We're going to do the wall," Donald Trump told a cheering crowd of supporters in a victory speech following the South Carolina Republican primary. He was reiterating his fanciful promise to wall off the entire U.S.-Mexico border — and force Mexico to pay for it....
Mitch McConnell Is a Supreme Hypocrite
Antonin Scalia is gone. The nastiest and noisiest of right wingers on the Supreme Court is dead. But in a blatantly partisan ploy to prevent President Barack Obama from nominating a successor to Scalia, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has cited a brand new...
Hillary Clinton’s Little Red Riding Hood Problem
What’s at Stake with the Supreme Court
Nearly every issue that matters to the American people eventually finds its way before the Supreme Court. Whether it’s access to health care, the right of women to make personal medical decisions, the ability of workers to defend themselves against discrimination, or...
See Marco Run
Since his relatively strong third-place showing in Iowa, the ups and downs of Senator Marco Rubio’s GOP presidential campaign are getting more attention. And so are the lefts and rights. After the man once dubbed “The Republican Savior“ by Time magazine fared well in...
I Am Kalief Browder
The day before I started high school, my father took me up to the park around the corner from our house to have “the talk.” It’s the talk black families had when Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Florida. It’s the talk we had when Michael Brown was shot and killed...
