Journalist Barrett Brown, a woman who wanted to become a member of ISIS and a rapper named Tiny Doo. Not a list of people that seem to fit together in many ways ordinarily but here’s the rub: Each will be spending portions of his or her life in prison. Brown is guilty of, as he puts…

In late January, the US military-industrial complex reported results for 2014’s fourth quarter and expectations for 2015. Good times! Northrop Grumman knocked down nearly $6 billion in Q4 2014 and expects 2015 sales of around $23.5 billion. Raytheon did about as well last fall and expects a big radar order from the Air Force this year. Meanwhile the…

As Loretta Lynch’s US Senate confirmation hearings for her nomination to the office of Attorney General opened on January 28, Republicans were dying to ask her just how friendly she might be to the class of people government defines as “illegal aliens.” In an exchange with immigration scrooge Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Sessions wondered who Lynch believes has the…

The Obama administration is turning heads by proposing new protections for large portions of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. ANWR is often referred to as the “Last Great Wilderness” because it boasts 19,286,722 pristine acres of truly wild Alaskan land. The U.S. Department of Interior says this may be one of the largest conservation measures “since Congress…

In a recent speech Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal announced “… we came to America to be Americans. Not Indian-Americans, simply Americans. … If we wanted to be Indians, we would have stayed in India” (The Hindu, January 16). He also argued that it’s entirely reasonable for nations to discriminate between would-be immigrants based on whether they…

With the execution of Brazilian citizen Marco Archer in Indonesia on 01/17 for cocaine trafficking, one question remains: Will the war on drugs continue to revert the achievements of civilization with cruel and absurd penalties? It is not only Indonesia that punishes the purchase and sale of banned drugs. According to Harm Reduction International, an…

So, January 25-31 is “National School Choice Week.” Break out the bubbly! The event, put on annually by a coalition of lobbying groups, advertises itself as “an unprecedented opportunity, every January, to shine a positive spotlight on the need for effective education options for all children.” I’m sure most “school choice” advocates firmly and honestly support that goal. Unfortunately, their…

To paraphrase Homer Simpson, Reason is the only magazine with the guts to tell it like it is — that everything is just fine. This time Jim Pagels (“Misleading Inequality Report Is Nothing to Fear,” January 22) reassures us that inequality’s nothing to worry about, despite Oxfam’s “misleading” recent report that the 1% may soon have more…

On Saturday, January 17, the Yellow Stone River, perhaps the most celebrated aquatic system in North America, was heavily contaminated by nearly 1200 barrels of oil. Al Jazeera America reports the leak’s environmental damage stretches from the river to surrounding farmland in Glendive, Montana. Particularly, the report tells the story of Dena Hoff, now experiencing…

As usual, the State of the Union address was a top to bottom massacre of verbiage. Every year the English language struggles to survive an onslaught of what can only be described as total verbal hangover from a year of rhetorical binge drinking. Somehow, some way, one man manages to stand on a platform (while two other…

On January 14 the US Department of Justice announced that the Joint Terrorism Task Force had disrupted the latest “domestic terrorism plot” — this time by “a Cincinnati-area man … to attack the U.S. Capital and kill government officials.” House Speaker  John Boehner immediately cited the disrupted plot as evidence that Congress should think carefully before refusing…

The entire purpose of the language of terrorism is to cloak the sentiments of war in a victim rhetoric. You see, France isn’t “at war,” they’re merely responding to “terror” attacks. Those wretched, vile gunmen are not warriors or soldiers, they’re madmen, lone wolf terrorists. The attack on Charlie Hebdo‘s office on January 7 might otherwise be…

The US Supreme Court’s announcement on January 16 that it will decide the constitutionality of state-level bans on same-sex marriage has elicited the predictable whining about judicial activism. The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins pleads “there is nothing in the Constitution that empowers the courts to silence the people and impose a nationwide redefinition of…

The critically acclaimed film Selma‘s conspicuous absence from Academy Award nominations for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor for David Oyelowo’s portrayal of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. follows its concerted targeting by flunkies of Lyndon B. Johnson outraged by its portrayal of friction between King and the arch-war criminal president. One leading critic,…

I was first made aware of the horrific attack on Charlie Hebdo employees by my mother. She was watching the rolling news coverage, phone in hand, trying to contact my father who was travelling on the Eurostar at the time. A wave of panic rushed through me; the sense of being far removed from such…

What do you call someone who wants to steal your land and subject you to earthquakes? David Koch, who favors these things, calls himself a libertarian. In an interview with Barbara Walters last month on ABC’s “This Week,” he described himself as “basically a libertarian.” That label, as Koch sees it, means “a conservative on…

On Friday, January 9, US president Barack Obama traveled to Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee. Here, Obama announced plans to make an associate degree as obtainable as a high school diploma. Deemed “America’s College Promise,” the new plan, according to Obama, will bring community college tuition down to zero for students. The plan…

Speaking in Knoxville, Tennessee on January 9 US president Barack Obama unveiled an initiative to provide two years of community college tuition-free, nationwide, to anyone meeting attendance and grade requirements. The idea, inspired by a similar program in Tennessee, aims to make two years of college as universal as high school is now. Obama’s proposal is in…

The deplorable attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in which terrorists killed 12 and wounded 11, incited several reactions from the public, the sensitized media, and heads of state who hope to extract political gain from the matter. Amidst the generalized panic, Islamophobia has risen once again (due to the religious motivations of the attack) and…

Last November, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) launched a ten-year drive to end “the scourge of statelessness.” In December,  UNHCR Senior Regional Protection Officer on Statelessness Emmanuelle Mitte appealed to journalists (in west Africa and worldwide) to promote the effort, citing the press’s “responsibility to carry out advocacy, and sensitisation on the issue.” But the campaign, starting…