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Race in Politics: Voting Rights Act at 50
“People of color remain underrepresented in elected office. Based on the most recent data, African Americans are 12.5 percent of the citizen voting age population, but they make up a smaller share of the U.S. House (10 percent), state legislatures (8.5 percent), city councils (5.7 percent), and the U.S. Senate (2 percent). Latinos make up 11 percent of the citizen voting age population, but they are a smaller share of the U.S. House (7 percent), state legislatures (5 percent), the U.S. Senate (4 percent), and city councils (3.3 percent). Asian Americans are 3.8 percent of the citizen voting age population…
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Health Law’s Complexity Invites Legal Attack, Even as it Fails to Cure Ailment
“This week’s arguments before the Supreme Court in the case of King v. Burwell demonstrate once again how the Affordable Care Act’s administrative complexity and flaws — largely reflecting its accommodation to the private health insurance industry and other corporate, profit-oriented interests in U.S. health care — make it vulnerable to legal attacks by its opponents. The ACA clearly lacks the simplicity and legal robustness that a single-payer plan would have. Single-payer would be simple: everyone in the U.S. would be covered for all medically necessary care in a single program financed by equitable taxes.”
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Petraeus Gets Hand-Slap for Leaking
“As a supine Congress sitting inside a scaffolded dome applauded Benjamin Netanyahu calling to reject a peace deal with Iran, DOJ [the Department of Justice] quietly announced it had reached a plea deal with former CIA Director David Petraeus for leaking Top Secret/Secure Compartmented Information materials to his mistress, Paula Broadwell.”
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Netanyahu Speech: Nuclear Threat
“Either Netanyahu doesn’t read the news, [or] he is hoping that nobody else notices Israel’s de facto alliance with ISIS, or he is more concerned with poking Obama in the eye publicly than in the future of his country, a fact that would not surprise me. Focusing on the dangerous forces lurking in his ‘neighborhood,’ Netanyahu singles out Iran, Lebanon (by which he presumably means Hizbullah), Syria, and Hamas. Unlike most Americans, Netanyahu views the potential of a nuclear capable Iran as a greater threat to regional stability than the spread of ISIS and extremist groups, such as al-Qaida.”
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Netanyahu’s Nuclear “Chutzpah” — As U.S. Government Releases Documents on Israel’s Nukes
“In 2012 the FBI declassified and released files … of its investigation into how 800 nuclear weapons triggers were illegally smuggled from the U.S. to Israel. According to the FBI, the Israeli Ministry of Defense ordered nuclear triggers (krytrons), encrypted radios, ballistic missile propellants and other export-prohibited items through a network of front companies. Smuggling ring operations leader Richard Kelly Smyth alleged that Netanyahu worked at one of the fronts — Heli Trading owned by confessed spy and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan — and met with him frequently to execute smuggling operations.”
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Veto of Keystone Pipeline: * Fracking * Real Climate Plan?
“We commend President Obama for vetoing this dangerous project in the interest of millions of Americans who depend on safe drinking water. But as the debate over the future of our energy policies evolves, we also need the president to take strong action on fracking, which is threatening Americans from coast to coast with water contamination, earthquakes and alarming health effects. A fracking ban on our precious public lands would be a smart start toward a truly clean, healthy, renewable energy future.”
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Real American Exceptionalism: Torture and Drone Assassination?
“Washington, more than any other power, created the modern international community of laws and treaties, yet it now reserves the right to defy those same laws with impunity. A sovereign ruler should, said Schmitt, discard laws in times of national emergency. So the United States, as the planet’s last superpower or, in Schmitt’s terms, its global sovereign, has in these years repeatedly ignored international law, following instead its own unwritten rules of the road for the exercise of world power.”
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Malcolm X’s Legacy: Double Anniversary This Year
“The protests that have arisen across the nation in the aftermath of the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Renisha McBride, Eric Garner and the countless others that have died at the hands of law enforcement and those acting under the color of law calls for connecting the struggles of oppressed people around the world to hold accountable those with unchecked power. Malcolm’s legacy calls for connecting the struggle of Ferguson, New York, Oakland, Detroit, Atlanta and many others towns, cities and states with those who struggle in Palestine. Malcolm’s legacy is to take action, even if it means giving…
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Roots of Military “Culture of Lying”
“However, listening to our military leaders, and the politicians who adore and deify them rather than oversee them, America’s wars and its military have been a great patriotic success. This report is not a surprise for those of us who have worn the uniform, nor should it be surprising to those who have watched and paid attention with a modicum of critical and independent thought to our wars these past thirteen plus years. The wars are failures, but careers must prosper, budgets must increase and popular narratives and myths of American military success must endure, so the culture of lying…
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NSA Whistleblowers on Breaking Story: Spying on Billions of Cell Phones
“With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. Possessing the keys also sidesteps the need to get a warrant or a wiretap, while leaving no trace on the wireless provider’s network that the communications were intercepted. Bulk key theft additionally enables the intelligence agencies to unlock any previously encrypted communications they had already intercepted, but did not yet have the ability to decrypt.”
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn