Posts By This Author
Unwelcome Milestone for Earth's Climate
From The Associated Press:
The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant. Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere.
Learn more here
When Is Military Intervention The Right Option?
In an opinion piece for Bloomberg View, Michael Kinsley writes:
As demand starts to build on President Barack Obama to “do something” about the deteriorating situation in Syria, let’s review where the U.S. and its citizens stand on the general question of using military force abroad. On this issue, Americans are divided in strange ways. It’s no longer a matter of hawks and doves. There are liberal hawks and conservative doves as well as conservative hawks and liberal doves.
Read his full piece here
Report: U.S. Failing to Tackle Child Poverty
From Think Progress:
According to a new report from the Office of Research at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the U.S. has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the developed world. Of the 35 wealthy countries studied by UNICEF, only Romania has a child poverty rate higher than the 23 percent rate in the U.S.
Read more here
Top U.S. official: progress being made in hunt for Joseph Kony
Julian Pecquet reports for The Hill:
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said he was “encouraged” by the progress being made and “heartened” by U.S. development investments in LRA-affected communities in northern Uganda. Coons is the sponsor of a bipartisan resolution condemning the crimes against humanity committed by the LRA and supporting ongoing U.S. and regional efforts to capture or kill Kony.
Legal Action Brings Tennessee Mosque Construction to Standstill
CNN reports:
The long-running battle between a Tennessee Muslim community and its critics over a new mosque took a dramatic turn when a judge ruled that construction had to halt.
The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro has existed for more than a decade, but the fight erupted in May 2010, when planning commissioners approved the center's plans to build a 52,960-square-foot building for a new mosque on Veals Road.
Elections in Egypt Raise Questions for Christians
For Christianity Today, Jayson Casper writes:
Illinois Bill Allows for Free Hospital Care for State's Poorest
CBS reported yesterday:
Illinois hospitals would be required to provide free surgeries and other inpatient care to many uninsured poor people under a bill the Legislature passed Tuesday, a mandate already on the books in eight other states.
Former Marine Exposes Vet Suicide Epidemic
For Newsweek Magazine, Andrew Swofford writes:
About 18 veterans kill themselves each day. Thousands from the current wars have already done so. In fact, the number of U.S. soldiers who have died by their own hand is now estimated to be greater than the number (6,460) who have died in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Eleven years of war in two operating theaters have taken a severe toll on America’s military. An estimated 2.3 million Americans have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, and 800,000 of those service members have been deployed multiple times.
Read his full story here
Learning From Rep. John Lewis
The Huffington Post's Senior Religion Editor, Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, interviews civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis. Lewis says:
The church should be out front leading the way, and be a headlight rather than a taillight. If you are going to live up to the teachings of the Great Teacher, and follow in the tradition of the great leaders of faith, you have to be out there, shining the light, preaching the Good News and living the Good News. You have to make it real.
Read the full interview here
Finding a Space for Occupy
A key figure in the Occupy movement, Arun Gupta writes for Al Jazeera:
The real stumbling block for the Occupy movement is also the reason for its success: space, or now, the lack thereof. Understanding the significance of political space and Occupy's inability to recapture it reveals why the movement is having difficulty re-gaining traction.
Read this full article here
Where is the Occupy movement going?
For The Washington Post, Jonathan Capehart fears that the Occupy movement won't survive if it doesn't adapt:
If Occupy doesn’t use this time to get actively involved in political process, it will never move from protest to power to achieve the goals it says it has.
Read his full analysis here
Uncovering the real National Security budget
Writing for Tom's Dispatch and The Huffington Post, Christopher Hellman and Mattea Kramer estimate what the U.S. really spends on national security:
National security accounts for one quarter of every dollar the federal government is projected to spend in 2013. And if you pull trust funds for programs like Social Security out of the equation, that figure rises to more than one third of every dollar in the projected 2013 federal budget.
Learn more here
Iowa Congressman's immigrant slur
As reported by Salon:
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, compared immigrants to dogs at a town hall meeting yesterday, telling constituents that the U.S. should pick only the best immigrants the way one chooses the “pick of the litter.”
Read the full report of the incident here
Senator Bernie Sanders Calls For End to "Polluter Welfare"
In an opinion piece for The Huffington Post, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) writes:
At a time when we have more than $15 trillion national debt, American taxpayers are set to give away over $110 billion dollars to the oil, gas, and coal industries over the next decade. Clearly, we cannot afford it. When the five largest oil companies made over $1 trillion in profits in the last decade, with some paying no federal income taxes for part of that time, they certainly do not need it.
Read his full article here
Host of Catholic Groups Sue Over Contraception Mandate
As reported by Alan Duke for the CNN Belief Blog:
The University of Notre Dame and "a diverse group of plaintiffs" filed lawsuits Monday challenging the federal mandate that religious employers offer health insurance that includes coverage of contraceptives and birth control services, Notre Dame spokeswoman Shannon Chapla said. The Notre Dame suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Northern Indiana, is one of a dozen filed Monday by 43 separate Catholic institutions in different federal courts around the United States, Chapla said.
Read the full story here
Long-Term Unemployed Losing Benefits
For The Nation, Greg Kaufmann writes:
The long-term unemployed now make up over 40 percent of all unemployed workers, and 3.3 percent of the labor force. In the past six decades, the previous highs for these figures were 26 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively, in June 1983. Instead of helping these folks weather the storm and find ways to re-enter the workforce, our nation is moving in the opposite direction. In fact, this past Sunday, 230,000 people who have been looking for work for over a year lost their unemployment benefits. More than 400,000 people have now lost unemployment insurance (UI) since the beginning of the year as twenty-five high-unemployment states have ended their Extended Benefits (EB) program.
Read more here
In the Presidential Election, Two Different Views Of God
Writing for The Washington Post, Lisa Miller writes:
People always ask, “What would Jesus do?,” but in America today, it’s impossible to know. And that’s because there are (at least) two prevailing views of God at work in our public and political conversation. It would not be an exaggeration to say that when you pull the lever this November, you will not just be voting for president. You will be saying what you believe about God.
Read her full article here
Making Money Off the Poor
Barbara Ehrenreich invetigates the growing practice of businesses and government making money off of the poorest in society:
It’s not just the private sector that’s preying on the poor. Local governments are discovering that they can partially make up for declining tax revenues through fines, fees, and other costs imposed on indigent defendants, often for crimes no more dastardly than driving with a suspended license. And if that seems like an inefficient way to make money, given the high cost of locking people up, a growing number of jurisdictions have taken to charging defendants for their court costs and even the price of occupying a jail cell.
Read her full article here
Much to Be Done at This Year's G8 Summit
For Time Magazine, Jay Newton-Small reports on the upcoming G8 summit:
Not since the oil shocks that first brought the world’s superpowers together in 1974–back then they called themselves the “Library Group” because they met in the White House library–has the G8 had so much substantive business on a summit agenda. In recent years, world leaders have mostly just tried to to out-do one another with pledges of development assistance, leading to stories like this one from my colleague Massimo Calabresi, that questioned the usefulness of the annual summit.
Read more about the summit here
Drones Attacked From Both Sides of the Political Spectrum
Jefferson Morley writes for Salon:
Opposition to the use of drones in domestic airspace is spreading from the Code Pink left to the Fox News right. While conservatives laud the use of drones against suspected militants overseas, the sudden and vehement criticism of domestic drones this week by three right-wing commentators suggests that Congress’s rush to open up U.S. airspace to unmanned aviation vehicles now faces an unusual left-right chorus of critics.
Read the full story here