When you have so many immigrants being admitted, they tend to cluster together, they tend to maybe be a bit more slow in learning the English language, to becoming acculturated, to becoming patriotic Americans,” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) told NPR reporter John Burnett in early February. Smith has been a genteel nativist for decades, but […]

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Nuclear weapons are back in vogue, including the idea that gearing up to fight a nuclear war might be a wonderfully stabilizing prospect. Ah, the fond memories: the 1983 TV movie The Day After, the nuclear freeze campaign, the B-1 bomber debate, the M-X missile fight. You don’t remember these seminal events and debates? In […]

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Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk   For those of us who think or write about surveillance, the events of May and June 2013 represented a crucial turning point in our sense of what was possible. Edward Snowden’s release of classified documents changed the way many Americans thought about their relationship to national security agencies. It shattered the […]

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Photo Credit: Anne Worner   In May, 450 American Airlines passengers slept on cots in because the Transportation Safety Administration security lines were so backed up that passengers could not make their flights. “Predictable and preventable,” American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox said on NPR’s “Morning Edition” days after the O’Hare sleepover. Speaking […]

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Photo Credit: National Nuclear Security Administration   “The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light… Today, the […]

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