“The President’s plans prop up technologies — such as natural gas extracted through hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, offshore drilling in the Arctic, coal with carbon capture and sequestration, and nuclear power — that do not provide enough benefits relative to their inherent risks.”

Having been forced to meet with Netanyahu more frequently than with any other foreign leader since entering the Oval Office, he has been transformed into The Bibisitter. When Obama pledged to ‘get Israel’s back’ and Netanyahu has responded by lecturing him on Jewish history, insisting that the lessons of the Holocaust compel the U.S. to…

“Many may be surprised, for example, that actual anarchists aren’t necessarily rejoicing over the U.S. government’s latest form of self-annihilation. What they see taking place is a transfer of power from one kind of oppression, by a government that at least pretends to be democratic, to another that has no such pretensions. They point out…

“Government shutdowns and the uncertainty of crisis government-by-continuing-resolution cause deep, insidious damage to the transparency of the appropriations process — and hence, of our democracy. Congress must recommit to an appropriations process that is regular and transparent so that citizens can influence in a meaningful way how their tax dollars are spent — and ensure…

Yesterday John Kerry called Jarba’s group “the legitimate representative” of the Syrian people.

“We still need more information about what happened then. But more critically, we need more information about what’s happening now. These revelations raise the obvious question: If the NSA was targeting people like Sen. Frank Church, who were in a position to oversee the NSA — is that happening now? That is, are people like…

GAR ALPEROVITZ, KEANE BHATT, via John Duda, jduda at democracycollaborative.org, @GarAlperovitz, @KeaneBhatt Alperovitz and Bhatt just wrote the piece “What Then Can I Do? Ten Ways to Democratize the Economy.” Alperovitz is professor of political economy at the University of Maryland. He is the author of What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About The…

MARK WEISBROT, beeton at cepr.net At the start of the UN General Assembly meeting, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff attacked the U.S. government’s global spying network. She told the UN: “We must establish multilateral mechanisms for the world wide web” to ensure “freedom of speech; multi-lateral governance with transparency; the principle of universality and non-discrimination; cultural…

JAMES JENNINGS, jimjennings at earthlink.net President of Conscience International, a humanitarian aid organization that worked during the worst of the Somalia famine in 2010-11 in the refugee camp at Bokolmayo on the Ethiopia-Somalia border as well as in the giant Daadab Camp for Somalia refugees in Kenya. The group also has a representative on the…

America Magazine and other Jesuit journals around the world simultaneously published an interview with Pope Francis Thursday. Among his remarks: “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that.…