Top Stories
Monday, May 28th, 2012
By Valerie Tarico, AlterNet
Here are some top ways Christians push people out the church door or shove secret skeptics out of the closet.
By Soraya Chemaly, AlterNet
Republican politicians are rolling back women's reproductive rights based on the norms of animal husbandry.
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com
It's likely that few Americans have spent time thinking about what the “memorial” in Memorial Day is about.
By Sarah Jaffe, AlterNet
A coalition of unions, national and community groups managed to hit the trifecta--beating ALEC-backed deregulation bills in three states.
By Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon
Strip clubs are an easy target for religious moralizing and political pandering — but should they be special targets for taxes?
By Eleanor Bader, AlterNet
A new documentary on the controversial author showcases an unforgettable character, neither wholly likable nor wholly detestable.
By Russ Belville, AlterNet
The latest public opinion poll shows that a growing majority of American voters support the legalization and regulation of marijuana.
By Roger Bybee, In These Times
With the recall election for Walker coming up on June 5, every little development, every possible indicator of how the public mood is shifting, can cause ecstasy or agony.
By Manissa McCleave Maharawal, Zoltán Glück, Waging Nonviolence
The core issues at stake here are the same ones that students and workers around the world are facing right now: austerity and the increasing privatization of education.
Saturday, May 26th, 2012
By Lynn Parramore, AlterNet
The first post-Occupy Ivy League classes are graduating. Will they be any less likely than their predecessors to flock into finance?
By Sarah Jaffe, AlterNet
Mary Glover is taking on Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo--but a court decision could leave her and thousands of other homeowners without a hope of justice.
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
The irrepressible comic is trying to bring attention to electoral issues that are too often ignored.
By Michelle Chen, AlterNet
It should be no surprise that on America’s farms, many women are treated as less than human, since not even the government sees them as worthy of respect under the law.
By Tina Dupuy, TinaDupuy.com
We have the ability -- the freedom -- to roam more now than ever before. And yet our upward mobility is standing still.
By Leo Gerard, AlterNet
Concerted action by shareholders, workers and public interest groups compelled corporate change in several other cases this spring as well.
By Tom Jacobs, Pacific Standard
Do you want to be a better person? First, get stressed out. And whatever you do, don’t go near organic food.
By Sam Jewler, AlterNet
In this exclusive, neighbors of activists accused of "terrorism" give their stories of aggressive, seemingly incompetent and extralegal harassment by the Chicago Police.
By Adam Sanchez, Socialist Worker
For all the talk of budget shortfalls, the crisis facing Oregon's schools is political, not financial -- and teachers are the target of choice.
By Lauren Kelley, AlterNet
The FTC says POM Wonderful has engaged in deceptive advertising. Now the company is doubling down on its false claims.
By Trevor Potter, Campaign Legal Center
The Supreme Court's campaign finance legacy has undermined the "whole purpose of the Constitution," to have a "functioning, representative" government.
By Adam Lee, AlterNet
Here are some non-believers who left a profound mark.
By Jill Richardson, AlterNet
The G8 scheme does nothing to address the problems that are at the core of hunger and malnutrition but will serve only to further poverty and inequality.
By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, AlterNet
Right-wingers often try to shoehorn themselves into pop culture. They almost always fail -- and America collectively cringes.
By Daniel Denvir, Salon
On the 10-year anniversary of No Child Left Behind, the school-reform movement is in crisis.
By Liz Langley, AlterNet
Scientists have done it again...this week there's robot fish, inflatable bike helmets, invisibility cloaks, the first prank call and so much more.
By Bill Moyers, Michael Winship, BillMoyers.com
If we really want to honor the Americans who gave their lives fighting for their country, we must redouble our efforts to make sure we’re worthy of their sacrifice.
By Paul Armentano, AlterNet
Federal politicians from both leading parties continue to presume, falsely, that marijuana law reform is insignificant to the American people.
By Melissa Harris-Perry, The Nation
Conservative strategists have been toying with how to use race against President Obama in this year’s election. So far, they've done a poor job of it.
By Lindsey Hilsum, The Penguin Press
Journalist Lindsey Hilsum examines the notorious Abu Salim prison massacre and how the memory of its brutality pushed Libyans to throw off Gaddafi's rule.
Friday, May 25th, 2012
By Arun Gupta, AlterNet
Is the government unleashing the same methods of entrapment against OWS that it has used against left movements and Muslim-Americans?
By Sara Robinson, AlterNet
Some new ideas and big questions are defining our economic future.
By Michael Fumento, Salon
A former conservative who worked for Reagan and wrote for National Review says the new hysterical right cares nothing for truth or dignity.
By Brita Belli, E Magazine
As emissions continue to rise, the world's oceans are becoming corrosive, threatening shellfish, corals and the entire ocean food web.
By Lynn Parramore, AlterNet
How long will we keep getting Zuckered?
By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
While more Americans embrace marriage equality for LGBT couples, more also refuse to label themselves as "pro-choice". What gives?
By Soraya Chemaly, AlterNet
Women are powerful beyond words, because they threaten to unravel the control of corrupt men who abuse their authority.
By Jared Malsin, AlterNet
The first post-revolutionary presidential election infused Cairo with excitement and anxiety.
By Rinku Sen, ColorLines
What draws 18 to 30 year olds to social justice work, and how do people with progressive politics deal with race as part of a larger political worldview?
Thursday, May 24th, 2012
By Sara Robinson, AlterNet
In one short decade, home ownership has gone from being the Holy Grail of middle-class financial achievement to a very risky financial ball-and-chain.
By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Imprecise messages and imperfect messengers converge as Washington looks to solve the Citizens United mess.
By Susan Johnson, Psychotherapy Networker
Emotions are necessary for survival. But they can also spin out of control.
By Michael Lind, Salon
Social conservatives are fighting a losing battle — not against a global secular humanist conspiracy, but against the pill, the car, and the Internet.
By Salamishah Tillet, The Nation
The TV shows Scandal and Veep portray women in politics as a sexy, powerful and fun. Both are refreshing departures.
By RJ Eskow, Campaign for America's Future
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase all have a history of the kinds of unethical and/or illegal behavior that might explain what happened with Facebook.
By Seth Freed Wessler, Colorlines.com
What little information has emerged from inside Adams County Correctional Center suggests that mistreatment and abuse at the hands of guards may have reached a breaking point.
By Steve Dubb, AlterNet
Partly self-help, partly local mobilization, and partly sketches for future system-wide expansion, community wealth-building ventures are sweeping the nation.
By Seth Freed Wessler, Colorlines.com
What little information has emerged from inside Adams County Correctional Center suggests that mistreatment and abuse at the hands of guards may have reached a breaking point.
By RJ Eskow, Campaign for America's Future
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase all have a history of the kinds of unethical and/or illegal behavior that might explain what happened with Facebook.
By Jada Thacker, Consortium News
That the United States is “a global force” has been an undeniable, historical fact since before our founding as a nation.
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
The Nobel laureate talks about Washington, Europe and the bizarre alternate universe inhabited by deficit fear-mongering media and political elites.
By s.e. smith, AlterNet
As school budgets are cut, disabled students are being handed over to police for behavioral infractions -- and handcuffs are just the beginning of what they're forced to endure.
By Susan Cheever, The Fix
Obesity and how to treat it are big in the media. So why doesn't HBO's new series, The Weight of the Nation, even mention addiction?
By Michelle Chen, The New Press
In this excerpt from the new book "Labor Rising: The Past and Future of Working People in America," Michelle Chen looks at young workers from Egypt to Wisconsin.
By Erik Malinowski, Salon
Franchise owners have relations to organized crime, government surveillance, deep-pocketed political entities and financial irregularities that bilked people out of billions.
By Ellen Brown, AlterNet
Rather than feeding off the community, banking can nourish the community and local economy.
By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Even if the Obama campaign's anti-Bain offensive is nothing more than a bid to ensure a win for its candidate, in the long run, the campaign is doing America a service.
By Chris Hellman, Mattea Kramer, TomDispatch.com
If you've heard a number for how much the U.S. spends on the military, it's probably in the neighborhood of $530 billion. But that's merely the beginning of it.
By Nicholas Powers, AlterNet
The modern comedian's latest spoof and the classic "Great Dictator" share the same goal of ridiculing the powerful.
By Mark Howard, AlterNet
A new study finds that Congress speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did seven years ago. Meet the 10 conservatives dragging down their collective intelligence.
By Lee Fang, Republic Report
The Koch brothers are eager to present themselves as small-government libertarians, but their grants to front groups suggest a different set of priorities.
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
New corporate models focus on ownership, governance, sustainability and social benefit.
By Martin Longman, AlterNet
The last time things got this bad was about 150 years ago -- and we needed a Civil War to resolve it.
By Mark Ames, The Daily Banter
Citgroup's outgoing chairman Dick Parsons' career is the perfect example of how 1 percenters reward utter failure at the expense of the rest of us.
By Katherine Stewart, Comment Is Free
Christian-nationalist zealots are rewriting US history, airbrushing slavery and enshrining creationism in Texas schools.
By Alex Pareene, Salon
It has become an exclusive, expensive elite networking experience. Strip away the hype and you're left with a reasonably good video podcast with delusions of grandeur.
By Lee Fang, Republic Report
Defense firms are astro-turfing fake grassroots "outrage" to maintain their fat contracts.
By Ilyse Hogue, The Nation
In an effort to appear objective in a political climate anything but, talking heads now feel the need to utter a Democratic offense in the same breath as a Republican offense.
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
You can track the arc of modern American journalism from its apex at the Pentagon Papers and Watergate curving downward to Iran-Contra before the nadir of Bush’s war in Iraq.
By Steven Wishnia, AlterNet
Oregon AG candidate Ellen Rosenblum promises to make marijuana enforcement a low priority, but will it affect medical marijuana policy on a national level?
Monday, May 21st, 2012
By Gar Alperovitz, AlterNet
Activists, theorists, organizations and ordinary citizens are rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up.
By David Rosen, AlterNet
Google appears to have morphed from a corporation that proclaims, “Don’t be evil” to one insisting that users “Join the Borg.”
By Russ Baker, WhoWhatWhy.com
Not all politicians are created equal. And not all are treated equally. Therein lies an issue deserving a closer look: whether vulnerable Democrats are targeted for destruction.
By Ellen Cantarow, TomDispatch.com
Midwestern rural communities are being devastated by energy companies searching for a form of sand to use in their destructive fracking operations elsewhere in rural America.
By Theresa Ralston, AlterNet
826 has blossomed from a noble experiment into one of the top innovators and influencers in the education field.
By Matt Reichel, AlterNet
Veteran Scott Olsen returns his medal, nurses fight for their rights, and police crack skulls in the latest demonstration of 99% outrage.
By Gary Younge, Comment Is Free
Much like the NATO summit, the system is set up not to spread wealth but to preserve and protect it, not to relieve chaos but to contain and punish it.
By Katha Pollitt, The Nation
Not only is 'attachment parenting' bad for women; it's not necessarily good for children, either.
By Bill Moyers, BillMoyers.com
Bill Moyers talks to Simon Johnson, once chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and now MIT professor, about the (possible) fall of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan.
By Lauren Eggert-Crowe, Salon
At L.A.'s hottest new party, singles hook up by sniffing slept-in T-shirts. Is it science or speed dating?
By Biola Jeje, Isabelle Nastasia, AlterNet
Activists from CUNY hold forth on what the US student movement needs now.
