On November 3, one of my cherished mentors, Ramona Ripston, passed away at the age of 91. She had been the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California for 39 years, between 1972 and 2011. Her husband and soul mate Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who served on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court […]

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Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 90 on January 15th this year. All fifty states now celebrate the national holiday commemorating Dr. King’s birthday, though several go out of their way to direct the focus away from his legacy. Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas brazenly continue to pay tribute to slavery by honoring Robert E. […]

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Do we have any potent checks on Trump, after voters overwhelmingly supported Democratic control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the biggest wave election in years? Yes, definitely, but none of the formal or legal checks on a president are immediate. Still, one formidable constraint—and a curb on the power of Trump’s Republican enablers—has […]

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November’s midterm elections served up a revised portrait of our political landscape, with harbingers of hardening political fault lines and clues to the future direction of the country. The national map was remade by the introduction of new pockets of blue in places where before there had been only, or mostly, red. To Democratic National […]

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Britain seems stuck in a comedic Charles Dickens novel. At this point in time the chances that the U.K. will remain in the European Union appear slim, and the economic consequences of Brexit appear bleak. Our story begins in 1963, when the U.K. seeks to join a European free-trade zone that is to become (in […]

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