Rights and Democracy
A Populist Balancing Act
From Rage to Reform
Another city just erupted in rage in response to a police killing. After a week of peaceful protests following the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, "Charm City" was in flames. The authorities declared a state of emergency and deployed the National Guard. In less...
Letter to Loretto
John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer. Back in 2007, he became the first U.S. government official to confirm — and condemn — the practice of torture by CIA interrogators. After a drawn-out legal battle, federal authorities convicted Kiriakou of leaking classified...
The Baltimore Uprising’s Backstory
What started out as righteous protest over the death of a young black man in the hands of Baltimore cops (he had been accused of “making eye contact with a police officer”) quickly degenerated into a full-scale riot. By nightfall the city was on fire, its hopes for a...
Reagan’s Lasting Gift to Immigrant Families
This Mother’s Day, I can hug my mother tightly and celebrate with her. I’d like to thank our 40th president for that. Seriously: As a progressive young Latina from a working-class background, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico without papers,...
A 21st Century Challenge
Eugene Lim was on his way to hitting rock bottom. After graduating from Chicago’s Shimer College in 2011, he'd spent two years trying to find a permanent job. And he was increasingly blaming himself for his plight. "I thought I was poor through some fault of my own,"...
Wall Street Banks on Buying the Democrats’ Love
Wall Street arrogance seems to be accelerating even faster than our infinite cosmos is expanding. It's not enough that the greed and illegal acts of giant financial conglomerates crashed our economy, nor that they demanded and got a full taxpayer bailout. It's not...
Sister Rice Goes After the Bomb
Last March, Sister Megan Rice stood before a federal court in Cincinnati. Along with her companions Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed, the 85-year-old Catholic nun was appealing a serious conviction. Their charge? Sabotaging the "national defense." Sabotage, which...
That Whiff of Hypocrisy
Baseball has spring training, football's got its training camps. But for a political junkie like me, nothing compares with the opening of the presidential primary season. Some 19 candidates, give or take, recently swarmed a Republican forum in New Hampshire in search...
Why We Need $50,000 Traffic Tickets
All of us would like to live in a world where people always do the right thing — without anybody looking over their shoulder. But that world doesn’t exist and never will. So every society on our planet has penalties. You break the rules, you pay a price. But penalties...
