The Bush administration is using former President Reagan’s death to boost Bush’s failing campaign. They gave Reagan full honors: with a federal day of mourning and an official state funeral. The TV was saturated with commentaries about how great a President Reagan was.

The 40th president of the United States has passed away. His supporters claim he was the greatest president of the past century. They want to carve his head on Mt. Rushmore and put him on the ten-dollar bill – displacing the hapless non-presidential Alexander Hamilton. But the truth is Reagan was a horrible president.

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AIDS is a window through which we can see the real agenda of those who run our world. Over 500 researchers have had their government funded AIDS research projects cut by direct orders from President Bush. The National Institutes of Health were ordered by Bush to cut $145 million from last year's research on important diseases like AIDS. If we want an AIDS vaccine and better medicines, the best presidential campaign slogan will be - "Someone Else in 2004."

With the United States Supreme Court overturning Texas antisodomy statutes and the consecration of openly gay Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson as a bishop in the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire, the year 2003 turned out to be a signal one for the struggle for gay and lesbian equality. But the decision, which may have the most profound impact on society was the assertion by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to the cosntitutional right of same-gender couples to civil marriage.

The struggle for gay rights is moving into a pivotal moment. Over the past year there have been many victories and much to celebrate. However, each of these victories has come with a price. The ultra right has launched a vicious counterattack on the gay rights movement.

Mommy. Daddy. Susie and John: the age-old nuclear family with a white picket fence and a dog named Spike the radical right simply adores. To them, this is the basis of America, the so-called backbone of the nation – and what they are so determined to get back to.

“Boys are becoming the second sex” proclaimed Business Week last May in a cover story titled “The New Gender Gap.” Business Week’s article appeared as part of a spate of articles and television news segments on the subject of increased educational opportunities for women.

It never occurred to me that if the same situation had arisen about 10 years earlier, my mom would have been facing a much more terrifying prospect. Being born after 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision, I’ve always had a certain set of reproductive rights.
See: March for Women's Lives

There has been an alarming trend developing over the past 20 years in regards to the skyrocketing prison populations. Prisons have been transformed from tools of the criminal justice system to segregate the most dangerous and offensive criminals from society at large, to large-scale detention centers aimed at controlling massive numbers of working class youth. We are called by some “the home of the free,” but a more accurate description is “the home of the incarcerated.”

Opponents of affirmative action advance the myth that it is a new concept invented by the left during the civil rights movement as a means of creating “reverse discrimination” or “quotas.” Affirmative action is criticized as an unfair punishment for people in the present for crimes of the past. These fabrications are part of the campaign to discredit affirmative action policies.

Many movements have come to understand the counterrevolution the radical right has launched against oppressed and working people. The movement for reproductive choice is no different.

Victory. There is no other way to describe the US Postal Service’s decision to honor the life of Paul Robeson with a commemorative stamp. After eight years of struggle and with the support of a quarter of a million signatures from Robeson supporters, the USPS relented and decided to honor the life of this working-class giant.

This African American history month, as the nation approaches one of its most important elections, is a good time to remember the great significance, both past and present, of the Black vote. Without the African American component of the anti-Bush vote it will not be possible to defeat the administration and the ultra-right Republican domination of Congress or change the Supreme Court.