Without too much fuss or national publicity, on Tuesday the Illinois state legislature approved a bill that legalizes same-sex marriage and the governor has said he will sign it, with such marriages beginning next June. [Read more…]
Did you know that men and women are being treated equally when it comes to setting premiums for the health care plans under the Affordable Care Act? Yes, that is the awful injustice being perpetrated on us that has some members of the right wing in an uproar.
Stephen Colbert understands their pain. [Read more…]
The steady movement of the Republican party towards total dominance by the crazies is undoubtedly going to hurt them in elections. Some argue that this is a good thing because it will make them marginalized. While this will undoubtedly make it easier for Democrats to win elections, especially at the Congressional and presidential level, it could well be a bad thing for progressive causes in general because of the general law that politics abhors a vacuum and that candidates will seek to fill as much space on the spectrum of viewpoints as they are allowed to get away with. [Read more…]
The vote to bring the ENDA legislation to the senate floor for a debate and vote was 61-30, with seven Republicans joining 54 members of the Democratic caucus (Democrat Claire McCaskill was absent) to overcome the filibuster. The actual vote on the bill will take place on Monday and is sure to pass. [Read more…]
Today is election day in the US. Cartoonist Jen Sorensen describes that it is all part of a diabolical plot that was hatched a long time ago and seems to be working the way its evil originators intended. [Read more…]
When it comes to issues of war, we are aware of the famous military-industrial complex that exerts enormous influence in setting the agenda and driving the nation into one war after another. But what is less noted is the military-pundit-think tank complex where people pose on TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and blogs as disinterested analysts when in actual fact they are often paid, directly or indirectly (by the Pentagon, companies, and think tanks) by interests that benefit directly from war. [Read more…]
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is a bill that seeks to prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. In a just world, that should be a no-brainer. But although the bill has been introduced in Congress since 1994, it has never passed. [Read more…]
The US government and supporters of the authoritarian state say that snooping on everyone all over the globe is standard practice, everyone does it, and hence the cascade of NSA revelations are no big deal and that the only reason the US does more of it than others is that they have the technology to do so. [Read more…]
Now that opinion is increasingly turning against the NSA’s spying activities, the supposed supervisors and watchdogs of these programs in the White House and Congress are scurrying to deflect blame from themselves and we are seeing the familiar ‘rogue elephant’ theory emerging, suggesting that the NSA was doing things on its own initiative and that the policy makers at the top were unaware. [Read more…]
New Jersey governor Chris Christie clearly has ambitions to run for the presidency in 2016. It is also clear that he is pushing the ‘maverick’ shtick that worked for John McCain, at least as far as getting the Republican nomination was concerned, and to aim for the support of the party establishment, territory that is open since all the other putative candidates (Rand Paul, Ted Crux, Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry) seem to be angling for the Tea Party wing’s support. He clearly wants to be portrayed as the straight-talking, no-nonsense, get-stuff-done, not-totally-nuts kind of guy. [Read more…]