By David Underhill – MOBILE, Ala. – I have stood as the Confederate flag rose in front of a burning cross. I didn’t do this out of respect. I did it because I wanted to get out alive from that Alabama farm field where I had gone one night long ago to see what a…
By Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian – David Barsamian: You have spoken about the difference between Trump’s buffoonery, which gets endlessly covered by the media, and the actual policies he is striving to enact, which receive less attention. Do you think he has any coherent economic, political, or international policy goals? What has Trump actually…
By George Lakoff – Freedom in a free society is supposed to be for all. Therefore, freedom rules out imposing on the freedom of others. You are free to walk down the street, but not to keep others from doing so. The imposition on the freedom of others can come in overt, immediate physical form…
By Ken Levy – Many commentators are suggesting that both right and left are equally to blame for all the polarization between them. They’re wrong. The reason for all the bitterness between left and right is entirely the right’s fault. Right-wingers who suggest otherwise are self-deluded – and usually projecting. Exhibit A: Newt Gingrich. On…
By James Rhodes – BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Victoria Siciliano, communications coordinator for the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, recently hosted a community informational forum at the Civil Rights Institute downtown. The primary purpose of the gathering was to raise awareness regarding the plight of the resident immigrants as well as to showcase their personal stories…
By Robert Reich – The question is no longer whether there are grounds to impeach Donald Trump. It is when enough Republicans will put their loyalty to America ahead of their loyalty to their party. Trump’s statements last week about his firing of former FBI director James Comey provide ample evidence that Trump engaged in…
By George Lakoff – The enormous role played by science — especially government-sponsored science — in our everyday lives is barely appreciated. Start with modern medicine. We, the public, paid for it through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and research universities where the medical researchers, surgeons, doctors and nurses were trained, and where tools…
By Norman Solomon – After Hillary Clinton’s devastating loss nearly six months ago, her most powerful Democratic allies feared losing control of the party. Efforts to lip-sync economic populism while remaining closely tied to Wall Street had led to a catastrophic defeat. In the aftermath, the party’s progressive base — personified by Bernie Sanders —…
By Joe Romm – Amidst backlash and subscription cancellations for hiring extreme climate science denier, colunnist Bret Stephens, the New York Times offered a stunning defense: There are “millions of people who agree with him.” With that ‘logic’, the Times could hire as a columnist former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke — or…
By Robert Reich – The starkest difference between dictatorships and democracies is that democracies are ruled by laws, and dictatorships are ruled by dictators. The “rule of law,” as it’s often referred to, stands for laws that emerge from a process responsive to the majority, that are consistently applied, and are applicable to everyone regardless…
By Robert Reich – By my count, there are now four grounds to impeach Donald Trump. The fifth appears to be on its way. First, in taking the oath of office, a president promises to “faithfully execute the laws and the constitution.” That’s Article II Section 2. But Trump is unfaithfully executing his duties as…
By Robert Reich – When Donald Trump was running for president, he talked a lot about putting people back to work. And one of the industries he focused on most was the coal industry. He even put on a hard hat and waved around a pick axe to show how much he loved coal. But…
By Robert Reich – House Speaker Paul Ryan, in his press conference following the demise of his bill to replace Obamacare, blamed Republicans who had failed to grasp that the GOP was now a “governing party.” “We were a 10-year opposition party, where being against things was easy to do,” said Ryan. “You just had…
Editor’s Note: In President Barack Obama’s final two press conferences and his farewell address from Chicago, he advised Democrats to learn how to talk to average, working people like the ones who voted for Donald Trump. Now there is an academic who has solid advice for how to do just that, George Lakoff. Watch this…
Donald Trump’s presidency is just one element of our disintegrating democracy. By Russ Feingold – Today, less than two months into a new administration, we are now facing the biggest crisis of legitimacy of our democracy in a generation or more. But the crisis has been building for years. Normally, our democracy is considered the…
By Robert Reich – Trump and his White House don’t argue on the merits. They attack the credibility of the institutions that come up with facts and arguments they don’t like. They even do it preemptively. Last week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer warned that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office couldn’t be trusted to…
By Robert Reich – Early Saturday morning, March 4, the 45th president of the United States alleged in a series of tweets that former president Barack Obama orchestrated a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to tap Trump’s phones at his Trump Tower headquarters last fall in the run-up to the election. Trump concluded that the former president is…
By Robert Reich – As tyrants take control of democracies, they typically do 7 things: 1. They exaggerate their mandate to govern – claiming, for example, that they won an election by a “landslide” even after losing the popular vote. They criticize any finding that they or co-conspirators stole the election. And they repeatedly claim…
EDITOR’S NOTE: Republican legislators in Montgomery are monkeying around again and turning more public education funding over to private schools. They claim 5,793 scholarships have been awarded under the Alabama Accountability Act, but numbers from the Department of Revenue show that only 127 people have asked for the tax credit allowed when a child is…
By E.J. Dionne Jr. – Let’s not mumble or whisper about the central issue facing our country: What is this democratic nation to do when the man serving as president of the United States plainly has no business being president of the United States? The Michael Flynn fiasco was the entirely predictable product of the…
