Four top candidates for Mayor of Atlanta discussed public safety and crime, as well as Atlanta's City finances, on Sunday, September 13, 2009, during the season’s first televised debate sponsored by the Atlanta Police Foundation and aired on WSB-TV.

Provisions in the initial draft of the Senate Finance Committee's health reform proposal dealing with immigration issues has sparked outrage from immigration reform advocates. Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, on a conference call with reporters, Sept. 16, charged Senate Democrats and the Obama administration with bending too far in response to misleading or fabricated Republican claims about health reform legislation and immigrants.

On this episode, we talk with People's World labor editor, John Wojcik, about the coverage of labor and working class issues in that publication. When the corporate media is full of hype, you can get the facts at PeoplesWorld.org.

Historically, straight Marxists’ attitudes toward LGBT comrades and movements have ranged from the virulently homophobic (condemning homosexuality as a “bourgeois deviation”) to tolerance (Lenin decriminalized homosexual acts in the USSR, although Stalin later re-imposed Czarist-era repression), to wholehearted support.

As Robbie Lieberman and Clarence Lang, editors of the valuable new collection of essays Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Struggle, note, two pitfalls particularly afflict scholarship on post World War II struggles for African American freedom and equality.

Approaching touchdown on an international flight on a U.S. air line a couple of weeks ago, the cabin crew had a special announcement: "For one of us this will be the last trip," said the attendant. "As you know the company has been furloughing a number of employees.

Hate-based, anti-immigrant propaganda has poisoned not only the health care debate but is also distorting the public discussion about immigration reform, charged a group of civil rights, immigration reform advocacy and media watchdog organizations this week.

In this episode, we play a portion of our recent interview with historian Gerald Meyer about his current article in the Columbia Journal of American Studies on radical painter Alice Neel.

The federal Appeals Court decision to toss a lawsuit claiming contractors tortured detainees in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison is what you’d expect from a tyranny.

The August 20 presidential election in Afghanistan has turned out to be a bigger farce than the first one held five years ago. In that election, at least more Afghans turned out to vote at the urging of the various warlords and assorted power brokers.

There has never been a better time to upgrade some of those older creaky appliances that are gobbling up much more energy (or water) than they need to in your home. Fortunately, most of the sifting-through to find the best values has already been done for you.

Non-profits of every stripe have been suffering from the economic downturn. In a recent survey of 800 U.S.-based non-profits, 75 percent reported feeling the effects of the downturn, with more than half already experiencing significant cuts in funding from both government and private foundation sources.

Muskegon, Mich. – The current battles over American health care system are indicative of a wider philosophical and social divide. What is at stake, and what is the desired outcome of each side? First we must look at the current health care system as it exists in the United States.

I was ecstatic at the temper and pitch of President Obama's health care address. I accept in principle the President's position that the political instability arising from too dramatic a shock to the existing complex US healthcare system argues strongly for exerting every effort to avert the spread of panic or fear.

The way the issue of undocumented immigrants has been wielded as a weapon in the health care debate is an indicator of how far this country has backslid on the immigration issue since the giant immigrants’ rights marches of 2006 and 2007.

When I found this story, it seemed almost the opposite of everything that my father had ever told me when I was growing up, and that in itself was compelling as well. It was the really the flip side, the hidden side of American history, especially of St. Louis history.

As the debate rages for President Barack Obama’s sweeping health care reform bill, Americans are gaining quite an education. The public now knows, for example, that health related industries, including insurance companies, do not operate for profit in other industrialized countries, and that accounts for the much higher cost of health care here.

It seems clear that the prospects for a bipartisan health care bill are diminishing with each passing day. And as far as I'm concerned that is a good thing. Nothing good, nothing resembling "reform" could come from bipartisanship in this Congress.

On this episode, we play our recent interview with Teresa Albano, editor of the Peoples World, peoplesworld.org. Albano discussed the PW's editorial philosophy, it's role in reporting on labor and democratic struggles, and some of the big changes it is undergoing this fall.

After the disrespectful outburst by Republican Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., during President Obama's speech to Congress on health reform this week, immigration reform advocates have stepped up their efforts to set the record straight about health reform and the immigration issue.