All older articles that appeared in this section through December 31, 2012 can be found in our archives. Starting in 2013 we will no longer be archiving articles in this section.

Why the GOP’s war on Social Security hurts basically everyone but rich white guys
Republicans in Congress are wasting no time trying to dismantle the safety net. Here's what's at stake
By SEAN MCELWEE

Let’s Address the State of Food
By Mark Bittman
"The state of the union, food-wise, is not good. The best evidence is that more than 46.5 million Americans are receiving SNAP benefits — formerly food stamps — a number that has not changed much since 2013, when it reached its highest level ever."

AIPAC Is the Only Explanation for America's Morally Bankrupt Israel Policy
By Stephen M. Walt
Ed note: older but important article that's still relevant today

'American Sniper' Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
"Sniper is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that under normal circumstances it would be beneath criticism. The only thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the president who got us into the war in question."

Why wealthy Americans’ delusions about the poor are so dangerous
Regressive state and local tax policies don’t just harm the working class -- they can ruin entire economies
By David Sirota
"Middle- and low-income Americans are facing far higher state and local tax rates than the wealthy."

7 heinous lies “American Sniper” is telling America
The Clint Eastwood film suggests Chris Kyle was haunted by his actions in Iraq. The truth is more unsettling
By ZAID JILANI, ALTERNET

Noam Chomsky Slams West's Charlie Hebdo Outrage: 'Many Journalists Were Killed by Israel in Gaza Too'
Chomsky claims that "terrorist" attacks perpetrated by the West did not spark outrage such as the Hebdo attack.
By Noam Chomsky / Noam Chomsky's Official Site

CIA Chief Exonerates Himself With Sham Investigation
By Dan Froomkin, The Intercept

A party in shambles: Republicans grasp for solution to their own immigration mess
After picking a losing fight over immigration, Republicans weigh their options going forward -- and all are bad
By SIMON MALOY

Genocides, Not Wars
by ANDRE VLTCHEK
"There used to be great pathos in all this, and also, great unpronounced rule: you want to murder, rape and steal, then be prepared to spill your own blood and brains!"

13 of the 15 hottest years have happened since 2000 — What are the odds of that happening without global warming?
Spoiler: Very, very, very, very, very slim
By JOANNA ROTHKOPF

Playing Politics on Iran
By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD
"But in a breach of sense and diplomacy, House Speaker John Boehner and Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, have taken it upon themselves to invite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to Congress to challenge President Obama’s approach to achieving a nuclear agreement with Iran."

Off the Hook?
The Supreme Court Won’t End the Gay Marriage Debate for Republicans
By Linda Greenhouse
"You have to admire the chutzpah of party operatives whose national platform calls for limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples, and for whom denouncing 'judicial activism' is usually as natural as saluting the flag, lining up right behind the justices who they hope will relieve them of the pesky problem of choosing sides in a fast-fading culture war."

The Growing Shadow of Political Money
By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD
"The record total of $6.3 billion spent on the presidential and congressional elections of 2012 is only the starting point."

At the State of the Union, a President Outgunned in Congress Is Still Combative
By THENYT EDITORIAL BOARD

Can Capitalists Save Capitalism?
By Thomas B. Edsall
"Developed nations 'need new social and political institutions to make 21st century capitalism work for the many and not the few,'"

The State of the Union and the Minimum Wage
By TERESA TRITCH

When Calculus of Loss Doesn’t Add Up
By MARGARET SULLIVAN
"IF you start from the premise that every human life is of equal importance, then the judgments of news organizations will often be confounding."

Applauding Israel’s Transgressions
by AHMAD BARQAWI
"Evidently, unless it involves scraggy young men with weird, unpronounceable Middle Eastern names, wearing Keffiyehs, wielding shabby Kalashnikovs and storming the streets of a western city then it’s not terrorism, and in the case of the latest Israel airstrike in the Syrian Golan heights; it was just a military operation, clean and surgical, according to the BBC at least; not forgetting of course to tail the news with the little tidbit that this is not the first time Israel has conducted air strikes inside Syria, to 'prevent the transfer of stockpiles of weapons from Syria to Hezbollah'”.

Robert Reich: Republicans have nothing to offer the middle class
The former secretary of labor explains why Jeb Bush's and Mitt Romney's campaigns are doomed from the get-go
By ROBERT REICH, ROBERTREICH.ORG

The strategy behind Israel's attack on Iran and Hizballah
Israel's claims of an imminent threat of Hizballah attack are not credible. More likely it wants to subdue the Lebanese militia so that it has a free hand to manipulate the Syrian battlefield to its advantage
By Jonathan Cook

Leak Trial Shows CIA Zeal to Hide Incompetence
By Norman Solomon
"Six days of testimony at the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling have proven the agency's obsession with proclaiming its competence."

Obama's Ambitious State of the Union Address Rejects Lame-Duck Status
By John Nichols

Bye-bye, Reagan conservatism: Why Obama’s speech was more significant than it seems
The president's State of the Union pushed back on '80s conservatism and '90s neoliberalism -- offering this instead
By ELIAS ISQUITH

Washington's Walking Dead
By Tom Engelhardt
"When it comes to the national security state, our capital has become a thought-free zone."

Trojan Hearse: Greek Elections and the Euro Leper Colony
By Greg Palast
"Europe is stunned, and bankers aghast, that polls show the new party of the Left, Syriza, will win Greece's parliamentary elections to be held this coming Sunday, January 25...Syriza wants to rid Greece of the cruelty of austerity imposed by the European Central Bank but insists on staying in the euro zone."

Why I Won’t Serve Israel
By MORIEL ROTHMAN-ZECHER
"Rarely do more than a few hundred Jewish Israelis publicly refuse to serve each year in protest against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. The shrill condemnation of refusers is thus an indication of the establishment’s panic."

It’s not just Fox News: How liberal apologists torpedoed change, helped make the Democrats safe for Wall Street
Center-left pundits have carried water for the president for six years. Their predictable excuses all ring hollow
By Thomas Frank

Don’t Look to States for New Ideas
By AARON CHATTERJI
"The problem is, just when we need their innovative energies, the states are looking less and less likely to be fountainheads of new federal policy over the next generation."

Angry right’s secret playbook: How it uses a good story to peddle an agenda America hates
I'm a former right-winger and I know the playbook. Here's why liberals have to learn to talk big — and play dirty
By EDWIN LYNGAR
"In an ideological battle, the tendency toward inclusion and reflection can become a handicap. As a side effect of all this soul-searching, the left becomes ineffectual at fighting even the worst excesses on the right."

Why is the financial industry so afraid of this man?
Joseph Stiglitz has won a Nobel Prize for economics. So why has he apparently been blacklisted by regulators?
By SEAN MCELWEE AND LENORE PALLADINO
"The fight to keep Stiglitz off the panel is indicative of a much deeper problem — how the financial industry manipulates the regulatory system."

“There are indeed consequences”: The case against Gen. David Petraeus
The Espionage Act is a bad law -- but here's why the former CIA director needs to be prosecuted for violating it
By JESSELYN RADACK
"But the fact that the target of the recommended leak charges is Petraeus bears particular significance for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the three most recent directors of the CIA — Leon E. Panetta, Petraeus and John O. Brennan — have all leaked classified information casually, regularly and with impunity."

“Has America gone crazy?”
It's a question that dogs me wherever I travel abroad -- and one for which I increasingly have no easy answer
By ANN JONES, TOMDISPATCH.COM

Mitt’s “human being” experiment: Romney’s highly calculated strategy to show authenticity
On the third go-round, Mitt Romney wants America to see his true, natural self. This should be good ...
By Jim Newell

Civil Rights Leader Calls Israeli Apartheid of Palestinians More Violent than South African Treatment of Blacks
By Ann Wright
"In the face of overwhelming violence, Dr. Boesak commented that it is human nature that a violent response by some is inevitable, but that it is incredible that the response of the majority of Palestinians is non-violent."

Hollywood’s political deafness: What Cosby, “Selma” & Hebdo reveal about white liberal consciousness
The causes celebrities feel comfortable backing -- and those they do not -- speaks volumes. And it's not pretty
By Brittney Cooper
"Attacks on largely white victims received a huge and committed show of solidarity, while the Black Lives Matter Movement that has consumed our news cycle for the last four months was apparently not even worthy of mention."

France arrests comedian for Facebook comments, showing the sham of the West's "Free Speech" Celebration
By Glenn Greenwald
"Since that glorious 'free speech' march, France has reportedly opened 54 criminal cases for "condoning terrorism." AP reported this morning that 'France ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and glorifying terrorism.'

Why Drugs Cost So Much
By PETER B. BACH
"Companies are taking advantage of a mix of laws that force insurers to include essentially all expensive drugs in their policies, and a philosophy that demands that every new health care product be available to everyone, no matter how little it helps or how much it costs. Anything else and we’re talking death panels."

Wrong Responses to Charlie Hebdo
By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD
"Regrettably, some politicians are proposing the kind of Internet censorship and surveillance that would do little to protect their citizens but do a lot to infringe on civil liberties."

Now they’re sliming Elizabeth Warren: Fox News tactics and the surprising water carriers for the 1 percent
It's not only the right telling lies about Warren and Social Security. The icky new attackers might surprise you
By Paul Rosenberg

Your Free Speech, and Mine
By Timothy Egan
"Sex is at the root of most free speech fights. Whatever it is that incites lust, it also incites the censorious. Religion is not far behind. You could argue that the two are twined, and it would be hard to rebut."

Obama ditches the centrists: How a break from neoliberalism boosted his popularity
The president's more popular than he's been in nearly two years. Here's why that should have neoliberals scared
By Elias Isquith

The Other Pipeline You Should Worry About
It’s Not Just Keystone XL, It’s Also Line 61
By DAN KAUFMAN
"WHILE the ire of environmental activists remains fixed on the Keystone XL pipeline, a potentially greater threat looms in the proposed expansion of Line 61, a pipeline running the length of Wisconsin carrying tar sands crude."

Why religion unleashes humanity’s most violent impulses
Terrorism can't be blamed on religion alone, but murder and brutality are elemental to almost every major faith
By Valerie Tarico, AlterNet
"With the possible exception of Buddhism, the world’s most powerful religions give wildly contradictory messages about violence."

Meet the Democrat trying to torpedo diplomacy with Iran
As the Obama administration tries to secure a nuclear deal, its biggest adversary isn't a Republican
By LUKE BRINKER
[Ed note: only need to see how much money/support/pressure Mendendez gets from AIPAC to understand why he would take this position against the White house.]

“Ignorance is reigning supreme”: Rula Jebreal on Charlie Hebdo, Bill Maher & our inane foreign policy
Foreign policy analyst tells Salon why only cooperating with Muslim communities will thwart extremism and hate
By ELIAS ISQUITH

America Is Open for Business in Iraq
(Psst... Wanna Buy an M1 Tank?)
By Peter Van Buren
"At the moment, Iraq War 3.0 simply drones on, part bombing campaign, part mission to train the collapsed army the U.S. military created for Iraq War 2.0, all amid a miasma of incoherent mainstream media coverage."  

5 times the right flipped out over blasphemous depictions of Christianity
Conservatives love to crow about free speech, but their tune changes when their religion is the butt of the jokes
By AMANDA MARCOTTE, ALTERNET

Neocons: The "Anti-Realists"
By Robert Parry
"However, in modern times, foreign policy "realism" slid into an association with a cold calculation of power, no longer a defense of the Republic and broader national interests but of narrow, well-connected economic interests."

How well can information be stored from the beginning to the end of time?
By Lisa Zyga
"The physicists' main result is that, the faster the universe expands, the less well the information can be preserved."

Social Security Disability Insurance: A Primer for Rand Paul (and Everyone Else)
By Rebecca Vallas, TalkPoverty.org

This is how elites protect each other: Today’s worst in Beltway hypocrisy
The notion of "equal justice under the law" just got trampled upon in Washington. Inside a stunning double standard
By MARCY WHEELER
"It seems Feinstein doesn’t like when punishment she — and Petraeus himself – enthusiastically endorse gets applied to her close associates."

Here’s how we defeat the vulgarians: Bill Maher, wrong-headed neocons, and the real answer to “radical Islam”
We need an honest response to Charlie Hebdo. Start by remembering how 9/11 felt before Bush hijacked it for war
By PATRICK L. SMITH
"The exceptional aspect of the week since Charlie Hebdo and a Parisian market were invaded by radical Islamists is how intelligently so many of us have responded."

It’s time for a revolution: Bankrupt policies, historic losses call for new generation of leaders
It's always "Groundhog Day" for Democratic leaders who can't adjust, can't organize and can't win. Let's dump them
By BILL CURRY
"I’ve argued that progressive political movements died at the hands of their leaders; that their death is what caused the political collapse we errantly term “partisan gridlock”; that progressives need a timeout from electoral politics; and that both Democrats and progressives are best served by a return to a more arms-length relationship."

All older articles that appeared in this section through December 31, 2012 can be found in our archives. Starting in 2013 we will no longer be archiving articles in this section.