Rights and Democracy
Whitewashing 8 Awful Years
Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that we saw George W. Bush on TV reading The Pet Goat to some second graders. Now he's all grown up and has an entire , super-duper, king-sized library filled with big books and other neat stuff — all dedicated to him. Bush's...
Shameless Bipartisanship
A quick Google search of "politicians are" returns the following four suggestions: like diapers, sociopaths, the lowest form of life, and liars. A recent Public Policy Polling study found politicians to be less popular than the conqueror Genghis Khan or cockroaches....
The Pot Prohibition Runs Its Course
Half a year ago, Colorado and Washington voters approved ballot measures to make marijuana legal in their states. But ending the pot prohibition can't happen overnight, even after electoral wins like that. Just ask Gil Kerlikowske, the nation's "drug czar." "Neither a...
Nixing the I-Word
The Associated Press recently announced a major change in the way it describes people with an unlawful presence in the United States. The AP Stylebook, which spells out the standards most media outlets use, no longer sanctions the terms "illegal" and "illegal...
Supremely Confused about Marriage Equality
Confusion reigned supreme in the nation's highest court last month as it heard arguments on two same-sex marriage cases. Confronted with the possibility of endorsing the right of men to marry men and women, women, the Justices resembled nothing so much as a group of...
Illegal Immigration
We’re Watching a Great Depression Re-Run
The philosopher George Santayana wrote: "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." Which is what we're doing. I thought I'd found an isolated instance of that phenomenon the other day when I ran across quotes on the necessity for balancing the...
Ditching ‘Rape Culture’ for Good
Usually when I'm angry about something, my first instinct is to write. And while I'm furious about what happened to that 16-year-old girl in Ohio, I'm hesitant to lend more ink to the topic, because every additional word adds to the explosive media gossip-fest this...
Obama’s Unethical End Run
Back in 2010, President Obama declared: "I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests." That was so 2010. By 2013, the mist of corporate money has fogged over Team Obama's commitment to such ethical niceties. For example,...
One Nation, Without a Clue
There was a time when we had a Greatest Generation. That would be my parents' generation. If you're a mere stripling of 40 or 50 or so, it probably was your grandparents' generation. You know the rap: They survived the Great Depression, won World War II, stood up to...
