Yet another reason to abolish the death penalty

There are many reasons to hate the death penalty. But one of the main ones is because poor defendants are often sent to death row by prosecutors who simply don’t care if they are guilty of the crime or not but simply want to get a conviction. The latest example of this is that of Anthony Ray Hinton who was sentenced to death and spent 28 years in jail in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit. He has just been released at age 58 after vigorous efforts on his behalf. But he could well have ended up dead, one more innocent person killed because our society’s obsession with vengeance is matched by a shocking lack of concern about fairness and justice.
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The Iran deal

It looks like the P5+1 nations (US, Russia, China, France, UK, and Germany) have arrived at a framework for a deal with Iran on partially reducing the sanctions regime against that nation in return for concessions on its nuclear program, and both sides are claiming satisfaction with the deal. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks explains what the preliminary deal struck between Iran and the western powers involves, and says that Iran had made some extraordinary concessions.
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How times have changed

Bob Jones University is an extremely fundamentalist Christian institution that not only denounces homosexuality but also even prohibited inter-racial dating and marriage. When that policy was challenged by the IRS that denied its tax-exempt status because of its discriminatory policies, the university took its case against the IRS all the way to the US Supreme Court, where they lost.
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Family secrets

All families have secrets. Sometimes these secrets are known widely within the family but not shared with outsiders. In other cases, these secrets are kept from close members of the family even, or particularly, those directly affected by them. But eventually the truth usually emerges and the process can be painful for those involved.
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The layers of the mask keep peeling away

Capitalism has been incredibly successful in producing advances in technology and quality of life for many people, especially in the developed world. But the system is also inherently exploitative, and nowhere is this more in evidence than in the US where it has spawned an incredible level of economic inequality and greater insecurity for the vast majority of the population even as a tiny segment of the population get obscenely richer.
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