Retired black tennis star James Blake, on his way to the 2015 US Open at Flushing Meadows in New York, had an unpleasant surprise waiting for him outside of his hotel last week. Upon exiting the hotel, he was attacked and brutally slammed to the ground by a large white man. The assailant turned out…

The Financial Times recently reported that Nobel Peace Prize recipient Barack Obama has conducted ten times more drone strikes than his predecessor George W. Bush. As far as we can tell, that number is somewhere in the ballpark of 500 strikes and spans a wide array of countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia…

This column was inspired by one of Rupert Murdoch’s tweets on September 6: “Big military brings peace through strength.” A cliched tweet by Murdoch isn’t what most people would consider a news hook. But it’s just the latest expression — caveman syntax perhaps included — of an insidious idea that anyone born in the United…

It was 1975 when the first same-sex Americans were “permitted” to marry one another. It was Clela Rorex who processed these licenses illegally. This act of sabotage against the state’s marriage monopoly was eventually discovered, and Rorex quit — many calling for her to face legal punishment. She’s said of her activism, “I didn’t want…

Harvard law professor and political activist Lawrence Lessig is mounting an intriguing run for President. Lessig’s symbolic campaign will be entirely funded by crowdsourced donations since he has a one-issue platform: campaign finance reform. If elected president, Lessig would attempt to pass a single law through Congress which would scrap existing private campaign financing in…

Oath Keeper presence in Ferguson has been an issue boiling beneath the surface since the 2014 riots. Members began showing up when community hostility spilled over into the streets; Oath Keepers appointed themselves protectors of Ferguson property from looters. Reception was mixed, but some members of the community welcomed them and allowed them to patrol their storefronts.

Presidential contender and “progressive” hero Bernie Sanders has been rightfully criticized for his support of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. The act, also known as the “Biden Crime Bill,” dramatically increased police presence and funding, banned “assault weapons,” and created strict new sentencing guidelines. Somehow Sanders has managed to escape criticism for…

It’s hardly news that Charles and David Koch are longtime supporters of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). For example, Institute for Humane Studies “Koch fellows” are heavily represented in staff jobs at ALEC, and frequently go on to head the task forces that draft model legislation. The Kochs stated some time ago their preference…

In a recent email, a professor of sociology expressed some skepticism about what she regarded as over-enthusiastic treatment of the possibilities for new education models in a stateless society. Among other things, she questioned the apparent claim that new media, online courses and free lectures would “save the education system” or provide access to education….

An article at Medium (Tim O’Reilly, “Networks and the Nature of the Firm — What’s the Future of Work?” August 14) describes Uber and Airbnb as “textbook examples” of “the way that networks trump traditional forms of corporate organization, and how they are changing traditional ways of managing that organization.” Um, no. What Uber and…

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently cracked down on cabinet and parliamentary members within his own Liberal Party over their disunity on the same-sex marriage issue. The crackdown came after Australia’s Coalition blocked a conscience vote on same-sex marriage. Nearly half of Abbott’s frontbench were in favor of the conscience vote, placing them in direct…

Once again, a telecommunications corporation — this time Verizon — is emptying its customers’ pockets, with government help. Must be a day that ends in “y.” In the past, New Jersey heavily subsidized the construction of DSL lines, in the form of excess customer rates, on the condition that they would continue to provide DSL…

Contrary to mainstream classical political economy, which treated the “original accumulation of capital” as the result of thrift, saving and reinvestment on the part of the capitalist, Marx argued in the first volume of Capital that capitalism — as opposed to simple market exchange — was founded on the separation of the peasantry from their…

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot denies that his government seeks to impose restrictions on the sale of Vegemite, Australia’s popular yeast-based sandwich spread. Allegations of such a ban arose after Australia’s Indigenous Affairs minister Nigel Scullion made headlines calling the spread’s use in home-brewing a “precursor to misery” in certain dry counties with large aboriginal populations….

On August 7th, movie theater shooter James Holmes was sentenced to life in prison. At the sentencing hearing, Holmes’s mother pleaded that he was a sweet, innocent boy whose mental illness haunted him and eventually turned him into a murderer. From Columbine to Charleston, every time a white man opens fire, mental illness is the…

On July 26th, 35 of Bill Cosby’s rape victims came forward to discuss their rapes and the culture that ignored their cries for help. A serial rapist going uncharged for years due to celebrity is indicative of a deeper cultural problem — one that treats rape as an innocent mistake rather than a violent crime….

On July 31st, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) introduced the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large Animal Trophies Act (CECIL), crudely named after the slain lion whose death, at the hands of a Dallas dentist, sparked great outcry. The Act seeks to place further restrictions on the import and export of endangered wildlife or the…

Bernie Sanders thinks open borders are a “right-wing proposal” that “would make everyone in America poorer.” Sanders’s comments not only display a shocking ignorance of the economics of immigration, but also a disappointing, racist, xenophobic tendency among the mainstream left. While Sanders also thinks we have a “moral responsibility” to “work with the rest of…

In their July 20th Breitbart article, Milo Yiannopoulous and Allum Bokhari refer to the growing network of resistance to “social justice warriors” in the entertainment industry as “cultural libertarianism.” It’s a powerful term and intuitively appealing to supporters of a free society. Extending scepticism of “big government” to what the authors call “cultural authoritarianism” seems…

Russia may have finally caught up with the rest of the world’s governments in cracking down on ridesharing services like Uber. Russia’s Federation of Car Owners (FAR), like any good oligarchy, has complained to Russian state authorities that “rogue” elements such as Uber, Gett, and Yandex represent a “threat to society.” Exactly what kind of…