In the emerging American dystopia, reaching for the gun has become the order of the day. From Ferguson and the militarizing of police equipment, through the execution-style killings in Charleston, through the uniformed immigration dragnet bringing fear to 11 million undocumented residents, to serial executions in Arkansas, to Trump’s April speech to the NRA convention, […]

Read more

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 […]

Read more

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 […]

Read more

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 […]

Read more

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 […]

Read more