Fifty-two democratic senators voted in May to confirm Harvard Law Professor David J. Barron to a seat on the First Circuit Court of Appeals (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island). Barron has had a distinguished career, moving back and forth between teaching and assignments with the executive branch and the Senate. […]

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  Baton Rouge, Louisiana The April 15 evening session of the Louisiana Senate began with a presiding officer working his way through a calendar of congratulatory resolutions. Senators wandered from the floor to the galleries adjacent to the art deco chamber, talking with staffers, conferring with lobbyists, and backslapping with visitors. The workaday chaos continued […]

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  Almost 60 percent of food-service workers are classified as low wage, the highest percentage in any industry. A report by the Institute for Policy Studies released in April—“Restaurant Industry Pay: Taxpayers’ Double Burden”—examines the winners and losers in an industry as American as the Big Mac. Workers, unsurprisingly, don’t fare well. Big corporate restaurant […]

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  Thomas Mott Osborne—the 19th-century prison reformer who became the warden of Sing Sing prison—asked a question that still begs an answer: “Shall our prisons be scrap heaps or human repair shops?” The association he founded more than 80 years ago continues to answer that question by providing rehabilitation services and advocacy for individuals who […]

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  The National Restaurant Association wrapped up its annual lobby days in Washington at the end of April. Called “the other NRA,” the corporate lobby’s top priority is to prevent an increase in the minimum wage. Congress is expected to vote on a bill to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 some […]

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