There are some things that fail to register in transcripts of oral arguments at the Supreme Court. Such as contempt. When I sat in on the Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin arguments last October, I was impressed with Justice Antonin Scalia’s contempt for the attorneys defending the university’s modest affirmative-action program. Reading […]

Read more

Having been a “hard-core” EPA whistleblower since the Love Canal toxic-waste contamination case in 1977, I am amazed at how successful the major polluting oligarchies have been in hoodwinking the public and controlling the government’s ability to prevent major environmental catastrophes. Take, for example, the basic issue of protecting first responders. Everybody in government and […]

Read more

(Click image to enlarge) The good news regarding capital punishment is that 21 countries carried out executions in 2012, the same number as the previous year but down from 28 countries 10 years earlier. The top five (the U.S. is No. 5) executed 682 people, excluding the uncounted thousands executed in China. “Those five countries […]

Read more

As the dust briefly settles on the Texas capitol, there is a lot of finger pointing among Republicans. They seem amazed that passage of perhaps the most draconian anti-abortion bill in the nation was blocked by a brilliant state senator, who, of all things, is a woman, and the apparent sentiment among large numbers of […]

Read more

Make a call to Time-Warner Cable’s customer service and you may find yourself talking to an American—in Mexico City. According to Jill Anderson, the author of Los Otros Dreamers, a forthcoming book about young Mexican-American adults who have been deported or who returned on their own volition, there is an industry growing in Mexico City […]

Read more