Healthcare, Prisons, Racism, Ageism, Politics, LGBTQ
One does not become POTUS after three years in the Senate without making shrewd moves. These two are genius: separating John McCain’s political legacy from the ‘Wasilla Hillbilly’ and letting others carry the torture debate so he can honestly say he has no choice but to pursue prosecution of highest Bush officials for war crimes. [...]
The last time a nation came to Washington and was mesmerized and stirred to action by the oratorical brilliance of an African American man was at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his legendary “I Have a Dream” speech. In that speech, King said: “I have [...]
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has introduced a bill, H.R. 104, that would create a commission to spend a year and a half looking at the various crimes of Bush and Cheney. While this might allow congressional Democrats to run election campaigns against Bush and Cheney yet again, even though those two will have [...]
Early Wednesday morning, Jewish activists in a historic first in Los Angeles, chained themselves to the entrance of the Israeli Consulate and blocked the driveway to the parking structure, blocking all traffic in and out of the building. “We sent a clear message to the world that LA Jews are part of the global majority [...]
The 16-page list of Inaugural events is published. The detailed entry map for reserved seating and standing area patrons extends close to a half mile from the Capitol steps out to 4th Street. This means those without tickets need to gather on the Mall between the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and Washington Monument obelisk [...]
Remember that crazy woman in Pittsburgh who carved a backwards “B” into her own cheek and then claimed that rampaging black men had assaulted her because they saw a “McCain-Palin” bumper sticker on her car? Well, Ann Coulter’s routine on The View this morning proved that she’s just as crazy as the Pittsburgh woman (although, [...]
It’s ironic that the Israeli assault on Gaza started just as Defiance was opening in movie theaters around the country. Defiance is the fiction film version of a true story of a group of brothers who saved Jews and attacked Nazis (and sympathizers) in Eastern Europe during WW II. Defiance is just the latest in [...]
Somebody is going to have to whisper in President-elect Obama’s ear that the unipolar moment has passed and that the United States can no longer afford its informal worldwide empire. Even though the looming economic meltdown will likely be serious—and maybe even cataclysmic—the foreign policy chattering classes of both parties are on autopilot and have [...]
What will it take for the people of California to rise up and flood into the streets to protest what the Republican legislators and Governor Schwarzenegger are doing to our state? When the first envelopes are opened — envelopes that should contain checks with state tax refunds, but have IOUs stuffed into them instead — [...]
If President-elect Barack Obama is reassuring the intelligence community “that his complaints are with the Bush administration, not them,” as AP’s Pamela Hess reported January 10th, his campaign slogan “change we can believe in” is headed for an early grave. Obama’s remarks are a literal signal to CIA officials and other unindicted war criminals that [...]
Jailed Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi has thrust himself into history and become an international overnight celebrity. Thousands protest for his release. A Saudi businessman offers $10 million for one of his shoes. Libya nominates him for a medal. Why? Because al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush, capturing a moment for which millions have yearned. [...]
I had conversations with four recently married same-sex couples during the first week of January. There were two lesbian couples, one from the Sacramento area (Davis) and the other from West Hollywood. The two gay couples were from the Bay Area and Orange County. Along with my spouse, we represented five of the over 18,000 [...]
As California’s leaders continue to wrestle with how to tackle the ever growing budget deficit, cuts to education and in particular public higher education, continue to be mentioned as a solution to economic tumult. Such cuts would be a blow to a State that already has fallen from “trend-setter” in terms of education and economic [...]
Illinois politicians’ sordid reputation for selling seats in the U.S. Senate to the highest bidder is, sadly, at least a century old. As embarrassing as that history may be to residents of the Land of Lincoln, it is a past that suggests ways to deal with the current mess. One hundred years ago the corrupt [...]
The stimulus plan will create jobs repairing and upgrading the nation’s roads, bridges, ports, levees, water and sewage system, public-transit systems, electricity grid, and schools. And it will kick-start alternative, non-fossil based sources of energy (wind, solar, geothermal, and so on); new health-care information systems; and universal broadband Internet access. It’s a two-fer: lots of [...]
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