August

The Battle for Congress in 2006

As the 2006 election draws nearer, Congress is becoming the battleground for Bush administration policies. The President’s loyalists continue to support the war drive and privatization of Social Security, but more than a few are jumping ship. The shifts within Congress, and breaks in the Republican stronghold, provide an important opening to mobilize voters, blunt the attacks, and build support for bold pro-worker legislation.

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Reverend Pat: Have Gun Will Travel

The old Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev once compared religious leaders who attacked the Soviet Union as comparable to the priests who threw holy water on the weapons of the Czar’s armies. But Pat Robertson has gone Nikita once better, advising the U.S. government on National Cable Television (actually the Family Channel, formerly the Christian Broadcasting Network) to murder Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.

John Roberts on Women's Issues

In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were 'highly objectionable'; and he said that a controversial legal theory ...of directing employers to pay women the same as men ... was 'staggeringly pernicious' and 'anti-capitalist.'

News Roundup: Robertson's Mouth, Education Revolt, and War Protests

Groups demand that the Bush administration condemn right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson's call to assassinate Hugo Chávez. States revolt agains the No Child Left Behind school privatization scheme. Students demand real financial aid. Faith communities step up their role in the peace movement.

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Judge Roberts and Workers: Against Women’s Rights, Pay Equity, for Bush Labor Stands

“There have been almost daily revelations that Roberts was a charter member of the Reagan-Bush legal policy team that attempted to dismantle the civil rights remedies,” including affirmative action, previous presidents backed, said Ralph Neas, executive director of People for the American Way.

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Why the Corporate Rich Oppose Environmentalism

In 1876, Marx's collaborator, Frederich Engels, offered a prophetic caveat: 'Let us not . . . flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human conquest over nature. For each such conquest takes its revenge on us. . . . At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature--but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst. . . .'

Bush, Darwin, and Shades of the Scopes Trial

George Bush threw a big bone to rightwing Christian fundamentalists this week when he told a press conference that the 'theory' of 'intelligent design' (something out there, most likely a supreme spirit, call him Tom, Dick, Jehovah or Allah, made the material universe) should be taught alongside the theory of evolution in schools.

A Progressive, a Brontosaurus, and the Science of Intelligent Design

I wonder: in America today, has the word “progressive” become just a museum exhibit? Maybe. On a summer day in Manhattan, my wife, daughter, and I escape the intense heat of midday by walking the shaded paths of Central Park.

Health care: Frist Aid

Managed care and the onslaught of privatization of health care in the country are setting the pace up on the Hill. The insurance and banking industries are getting more than just a little help from Washington.

A Tale of Two Lawyers

One lawyer is a smooth, handsome corporate attorney whose political loyalties, partisanship, and ideological moorings earned him a seat on the fast track to the top positions in corporations and now in judicial branch of the US government.

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