Rights and Democracy
50 Years after the Civil Rights Act, Discrimination Persists
July 2 marks the 50th anniversary of the day President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The landmark legislation outlawed discrimination and segregation based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. First introduced by President John...
Walker’s Money Mess
Scott Walker can't seem to run a clean campaign. He first won the governorship of Wisconsin in 2010 from his position as Milwaukee County executive. It turns out that some of his aides at the county job were doing campaign work for him on the taxpayers' dime. A total...
Highway Funding Runs out of Gas
Lawmakers writing the transportation spending bill have a problem. Actually they have 89 billion problems, because that's how many dollars they are short between what they want to spend over the next six years and the revenue bean counters expect. Considering the...
When Public Servants Demonize the Poor
For years I'd wondered about the identity of a gaggle of anonymous commenters on Blog for Arizona, the website to which I frequently contribute. These guys weighed in a lot and were very eager to burnish the reputation of Arizona School Superintendent, John...
Brazilian Order and Progress
Every four years, Brazilians wrap themselves in their cheerful green, yellow, and blue flag emblazoned with the Portuguese words "ordem e progresso." The slogan, which translates as "order and progress," stretches across a puddle of stars. It's not just the people,...
Blame Cantor, Not Immigration
Talk about being kicked to the curb. A little-known, under-financed tea party challenger crushed seven-term Congressman and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in an unusual primary loss. As Washington insiders struggled to make sense of the Virginia Republican's...
What Democrats Can Learn from Cantor’s Loss
David Brat, the man who unexpectedly defeated Eric Cantor in a recent Republican primary, is an ideologue. That should be a source of encouragement for candidates on the populist left — but not for the reasons you might think. Brat is a professor whose college chair...
The Golden Rule’s Resurgence
Back in the 1950s, the U.S. military made the Marshall Islands the primary site for its nuclear weapons testing. As you might expect, those tests in the middle of the Pacific Ocean wreaked havoc on the environment and human health. In 1958, a Quaker-inspired voyage of...
How Did ‘Don’t Mess with the Money’ Become the NSA’s Motto?
Imagine we had a brazen and powerful gang stealing trillions of dollars from the American people. Then imagine that our law enforcement folks knew the identities of every one of that gang's ringleaders. Wouldn't it be great if the government of the United States had...
Crushing Cantor by Dissing Wall Street
