From its inception, America has stood for the principle that everyone is under the law. There are no kings or power elite that stand outside the law. Yet this has been overlooked in the midst of the escalating debate over the Bush administration’s alleged authorization of torture.
Ealier this month, a contingent of some of pop music’s best entertainers assembled in Madison Square Garden to perform a tribute concert in celebration of Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday.
Several years ago, government officials acknowledged that the nefarious intelligence gathering entity known as the National Security Agency (NSA) had exceeded its legal authority by eavesdropping on Americans’ private e-mail messages and phone calls.
In a 2005 article in the Village Voice entitled “Capitalizing on the Flu,” James Ridgeway predicted that a “flu pandemic would spark enough fear to make it a greed pandemic.
It was an eerie scene at Aztec Stadium in Mexico City, as teams America and Tecos played in a nearly empty stadium. Normally, the 100,000-seat facility, one of the largest in the world, would have been packed with soccer enthusiasts.
After 12 years of protracted debate, it looks as if the nation will finally get a federal hate crimes law that includes gay people as a protected class.
Two years ago, I alerted people to the fact that the groundwork was being laid for a new kind of government where virtually everyone is a suspect and it will no longer matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation or even if you’re a citizen.
With newspaper readership and circulation continuing to drop, more and more local newspapers are being forced out of business. However, as a recent poll by the Pew Research Center indicates: “Many of those who say the closing of the local paper wouldn’t make much, if any, difference in their communi
Under the guise of protecting and controlling young people, school officials have adopted draconian zero tolerance policies, which punish all offenses severely, no matter how minor.
Looking at America’s public schools, it is difficult to imagine that they were once considered the hope of freedom and democracy. That dream is no longer true.
Over the past few months, I’ve heard from many Americans who feel they’ve lost the power to be heard by their government. From the repeated assaults on our civil liberties to the financial ruin brought about by irresponsible corporations and government officials, Americans feel helpless and beaten d
During his two terms in office, George W. Bush stepped outside the boundaries of the Constitution and assembled an amazing toolbox of powers that greatly increased the authority of the Executive branch and the reach of the federal government.
