There's "a change a-comin'." It's gonna be big, huge. Think China earthquake; think tsunami. Like an earthquake it's going to shake the foundations of US political life from the ground up.

The gripping drama of the skillfully written narrative in The Race Beat by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff reveals a generally untold angle of the civil rights movement: the press that covered it. Roberts is a veteran of the New York Times cadre of civil rights reporters, and Klibanoff is a Southern reporter.

¿Alguna vez has oído mencionar a la Fundación Nacional por la Democracia (Nacional Endowment for Democracy, o NED, por sus siglas en inglés)? Muy poca gente la conoce. Sin embargo, la NED recibe fondos del erario público y lleva acabo una política externa sin ningún grado de transparencia ni control público.

The mention of screenwriter John Howard Lawson conjures up images of a dauntless, spirited genius, Dean of the Hollywood Ten, a leader among artists determined to defend himself and his colleagues in the face of one of the worst, most repressive campaigns against free speech in American history.

At first he wondered who they were, but he had to admit to himself he knew. Then he wondered why they were there, but he had to confess he understood that too.

Well, Lily, he and his spawn have been. Non-stop. We have witnessed the musical death of a generation in this country, one that grew up never hearing a melody they could whistle, who think chords are trousers, and think 'bones is a TV program.

The struggle for the votes from the working class has never been more openly discussed. In the mainstream media, we've heard the phrase “working class” far more than the classless phrase “middle class” in recent weeks. This is new feature for national elections.

Haven’t heard of the National Endowment for Democracy? Not many people have. Yet the NED is taxpayer funded and carries out foreign policy with no meaningful public oversight or transparency. In fact, it does more to undermine democracy than not.

As the reader is probably aware, California’s Supreme Court overturned the state’s ban on same-sex marriage on May 15 of this year, joining Massachusetts as the only other state in the union to offer full marriage rights to same-sex couples. The decision is set to take effect on June 16.

“America is weak,” the Russian military officer boldly shouted at us, a group of closely-shaved raw recruits in our second week of basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was a cold February morning, and we had marched to a training site for classes, ironically, on patriotism.

An unprecedented discussion is sweeping the country about how to change direction for the common good. Tens of thousands of union members are knocking on the doors of millions of co-workers and their families to talk about the issues.