American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom America was not founded as a Christian nation. Church and state were separated. The founding fathers were mostly deists, not Christians. They did not believe in a personal all powerful God that knew everything and intervened in human affairs They separated church and state because they understood from European history that bad and bloody results resulted when the government acted in the name of God. All this is changing in America now under the thumb of a right wing activist politicized majority on our Supreme Court. The ..read more

Justice Thomas Fails To Disclose Luxury Gifts From Billionaire Harlan Crow It has recently come to light that rightwing billionaire and GOP megadonor Harlan Crow paid for decades of luxury travel, gifts, and family property for Clarence Thomas, a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Crow sits on the board of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that frequently files amicus briefs in pending Supreme Court cases. In 2019, Crow flew Thomas to Indonesia in his private jet and funded a nine-day island-hopping cruise aboard Crow’s superyacht, a trip valued at mo ..read more

  Guilty of Journalism The pending criminal case against journalist Julian Assange is the most significant far reaching First Amendment matter in our lifetime. It will have, in fact it already has had, an impact on publishing and journalism. This is so because it constricts our freedom to know as well as journalists and publishers freedom to publish. Our government functions as the executive committee of the ruling rich. It intends to keep it this way, in the words of the great civil rights attorney William Kunstler, “by any means necessary and for as long as possible.” If as is likely th ..read more

Biden Hypocritically Slams Arrest of US Journalist in Russia But Pursues Assange May 3rd marks the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, established by the UN to remind governments about the necessity to respect their commitment to freedom of the press. The Biden administration touts press freedom but continues the Trump administration’s efforts to extradite Julian Assange from the UK to the United States for trial on Espionage Act charges that could lead to 175 years in prison. Assange is being prosecuted for obtaining and publishing classified military and diplomatic documents eviden ..read more

Workers’ Rights And Leadership Moving Forward Ex-president Donald Trump was indicted three weeks ago in New York City by progressive prosecutor Alvin Bragg on 34 separate counts for paying hush money to two women before the 2020 election. The charges are serious and provable. These are the first; there will likely be three even more serious indictments in other jurisdictions. Although Trump looks like the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election, the accumulation of charges against him will both narrow but harden, invigorate, and mobilize his political support. Trump is the most ..read more

UN Report Sounds Alarm On Climate Change A new flagship United Nations report on climate change shows that harmful carbon emissions have never been higher in human history. And that this is proof that the world is on a fast track to disaster, with scientists arguing that it’s now or never to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Indeed, the report’s scientists claim that at the dismal rate matters to address climate change are now going, the world has but ten years—ten years–until catastrophic climate change is irreversible. Or as the UN’s General Secretary Gutierrez puts it, the planet is no ..read more

You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You’re Innocent There is a common belief that if you’re arrested, you are probably guilty because “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” People assume that only the guilty confess to crimes because why would an innocent person confess to a crime they didn’t commit? And when a person pleads guilty or is convicted by a jury, that’s the end of the matter, in the minds of most people. In fact, many innocent people are arrested, especially people of color, due to racial profiling and other forms of discrimination by law enforcement. Implicit bias often infects the ..read more

Economic Update: Banking Collapse Contagion? On March 10, 2023, the Silicon Valley Bank, the most important bank in Silicon Valley, failed. This bank held the money of some of the wealthiest people in the world, venture capitalists who invested in tech businesses. The government bailed it out hoping to prevent the crisis from becoming a nationwide contagion like the one in 2008 when even larger banks failed. As a consequence in 2008, 8.7 million people lost their jobs. Unemployment jumped to 10%. There was a 1/3 drop in the value of homes and 10 million people lost their homes. The government ..read more

The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There Is So Little Anti-War Protest in the United States As the notion of perpetual war and a militarized society are normalized, notably absent are antiwar protests by faith-based organizations, civil rights groups, academics, and others. A new book, “The Trillion Dollar Silencer,” details this absence while laying bare the devastation wrought in the United States and abroad by the military industrial complex. Author Joan Roelofs delves into the pervasive role of military contractors and bases that have come to be economic hubs of their regions. She discuss ..read more

How The United States Took Out The Nordstream Pipeline The war in Ukraine is illegal. It’s a violation of international law. Peace forces in the United States are demanding a ceasefire and negotiations and the recognition of Russia’s legitimate security concerns. At the same time, we recognize that the Russians were provoked by the United States and NATO in to invading Ukraine, having placed so many military bases and bombs on Russia’s border. The latest development of enormous economic and political consequences is the American blowing up of the two pipelines that provided cheap Russian nat ..read more