Know how southern Republican politicians who support “right to work” laws claim they’re not against unions as such — just against closed shop contracts that force workers to join a union as a condition of employment? They’re liars. The negative outcome of the recent UAW certification vote at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga proves that,…

US Representative Justin Amash (R-MI) is far from the first, and is unlikely to be the last, politician to equate libertarianism and conservatism (“Rep. Justin Amash: Conservative and libertarian ‘basically the same philosophy,’” by Jack Hunter, Rare, February 16). But the comparison is not only just plain wrong: It benefits supporters of statism on both…

A trailer for the sequel to last year’s low-budget dystopian thriller, “The Purge,” was released on Thursday,  February 13, to fanfare about as modest as for the first film. If this trailer is any indication, the plot for “The Purge 2: Anarchy” looks almost note-for-note the same as its predecessor. The setting for both films…

Lots of action on the equality front the past few days. One story gaining national attention from Tennessee is a political action that serves to marginalize the LGBTQ community. State senator Brian Kelsey, of Memphis, has introduced a bill coined “turn the gays away.” This bill would allow businesses to refuse service to the LGBTQ community. According to the bill no “persons” will…

Although she may not realize it, Amanda Knox, the American citizen recently convicted of murder by the Italian government, has provided a teachable moment to illustrate what privilege is. In 2009, Knox was charged with murdering Meredith Kercher, a British student she roomed with while studying abroad. After being acquitted following an appeal in 2011,…

Every few months, the US government closes in on its self-imposed “debt ceiling.” Every few months the American public gets treated to theatrics on whether or not that ceiling should be “raised,” complete with hysterical projections of doom if the politicians aren’t allowed to spend as much money as they want, on anything they might…

Did anyone really not expect this? Reporters Without Borders docks the United States 14 places versus last year — from 32nd to 46th worldwide — in its 2014 World Press Freedom Index. Citing the Obama administration’s abuse of the Espionage Act to harass journalists and sources, the imprisonment of US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, threats of arrest…

This has been one of those times that a series of random, seemingly unrelated events have all reinforced a common lesson for me. First, it was reported on January 21 (“Opposed to Fracking? You Might Be a Terrorist,” PopularResistance.org) that Canadian and U.S. law enforcement agencies — Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Mounties, the…

Freedom and the right to self-defense won a great victory in Texas on Thursday, February 6. Burleson County prosecutor Julie Renken vindictively sought to cage marijuana farmer Henry Goedrich Magee for murder after the fatal shooting of  Adam Sowders, who invaded Magee’s home in the middle of the night to steal his crops and his firearms. Because Sowders…

“As Apple prepares to defend itself against a multi-billion dollar patent infringement claim in Europe,” reports Apple Insider, “the company has aligned with rival Google in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow stiffer penalties for patent trolls who bring frivolous lawsuits.” Well, it’s about time. But the problem with Apple’s position is that there’s…

Speaking at the United Nations in 2006, Hugo Chávez excoriated ex- US President George W. Bush as “the devil.” Chávez waved a copy of Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, catapulting the book onto Amazon’s best-seller list. For his part, Chomsky has repeatedly stated that Chávez ushered a revolutionary break with Venezuela’s political…

In an interview with Fox News curmudgeon Bill O’Reilly, US president Barack Obama insists that the Internal Revenue Service’s “flagging” and harassment of Tea Party and other dissident political groups was the result of “boneheaded decisions” but “not even a smidgen of corruption.” While the American political right is having a good guffaw about that,…

The 2008 global financial crisis has had far-reaching implications, depressing markets for years. Charged with US monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank, with its mantra of “too big to fail,” is empowered to manage the economic downturn. The central bank’s monetary policies effectively redistribute wealth to the upper tiers of society — and the proof is…

When the basic premise of the drug war is that we do not own our own bodies, the recurring theme of police sexual assault in the media over the last several months seem less like freak occurrence and more like an expected, perhaps its inevitable outcome. Last year there was the police rape of a New Mexico…

Humans are social beings. We organize ourselves into groups, build relationships, enjoy creative labor and seek fellowship. From childhood to adulthood, who we are greatly depends on our relationships with those closest to us. We are also heavily influenced by the social, cultural and institutional circumstances of our lives. Institutions, then, have major implications for our rights,…

Recently Ezra Klein pointed out (“What liberals get wrong about single payer,” Washington Post, January 13) that single-payer healthcare wouldn’t solve the problem of America having the most expensive healthcare system in the world. American health insurance premiums aren’t so high because of the overhead cost or profit of insurance companies, but because of the…

A war has been raging in Mexico for almost ten years now. The nexus of American drug laws and Americans’ drug use has spawned outlaw cartels who, like the Prohibition-era Mob, use violence to enforce their control of the drug trade. In 2006, the situation was exacerbated when the government of then-president Felipe Calderon launched…

A half-century of the “War on Poverty” has not yet come close to making poverty in the United States a thing of the past. Even so staunch a defender as  Paul Krugman admits that “progress against poverty has nonetheless been disappointingly slow.” Supposedly, poverty is simply so intractable that even a gargantuan initiative cannot be expected to…

On Monday, January 13, two Fullerton, California police officers charged with the beating death of Kelly Thomas were acquitted, and the prosecutor announced his decision not to press charges against a third officer involved. Millions who had been following the story met the verdict with incredulity: How could anyone who watched that horrific video of…

On Thursday, January 9 a dangerous toxin, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, leaked from a busted tank and into the Elk River in West Virginia. It is believed that nearly 7,500 gallons of the toxin made its way from the 40,000-gallon tank into the river. It’s unclear how much actually entered the public water supply. The busted tank is…