A pattern has emerged—in Oakland, New York, Cleveland, Baltimore, the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, and beyond. Police claiming to feel threatened kill unarmed black men. Protests follow, sometimes including violence. The Department of Justice finds a pattern and practice of racially-biased policing. The city agrees to train officers not to use excessive force, […]

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  These are not happy times in Baton Rouge, where government officials are desperately trying to plug a $1.6 billion budget shortfall. But even by that standard, Wednesday, April 22, was particularly fraught. In the imposing state capitol that Huey Long built, the Senate Finance Committee was wrestling with a complicated cost-cutting scheme to repeal […]

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  When Scott Walker met 91-year-old Nancy Reagan in 2012, he told her he had a personal connection with her late husband: Walker’s recall election had fallen on the anniversary of President Reagan’s death. Back home in Wisconsin, Walker would try to impress intimate gatherings of Republicans by telling them Nancy Reagan had arranged for […]

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  Congress hasn’t passed a major environmental bill since 1996, when Bill Clinton signed amendments to the Clean Water Act. Now it seems that the “Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act,” is moving through the Senate and might actually make it to Barack Obama’s desk. The bill is a fix for […]

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  Recently, the president claimed that critics who say that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “is bad for working families … don’t know what they are talking about.” Skeptics would respond, “Show me the money. Show me the jobs and wages you’re going to generate for working Americans. Explain how the TPP is going to be […]

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