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31 December 2009

The mounting costs of Afghanistan -- and for what?

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Yesterday was not a good day for Westerners in Afghanistan. First, a suicide bomber killed eight CIA officers at a base near the border wit...
30 December 2009

Doctors Without Borders: Top 10 humanitarian crises of 2009

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It's that time again, when everyone compiles their year-end Top 10 lists. And, given the kind of work I do, one that most captures my at...
29 December 2009

ExxonMobil wins 2009 Corporate Hall of Shame award

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Each year, the organization Corporate Accountability International (CAI) asks the public to submit nominees to the Corporate Hall of Shame....
28 December 2009

New Yorker article on Willingham case is named most powerful essay of 2009

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Earlier this year, we learned that the State of Texas probably executed an innocent man. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for an...
27 December 2009

Army rescinds pregnancy ban

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I recently wrote about a new policy in the U.S. Army under which U.S. troops in northern Iraq could face court-martial and jail time if the...
26 December 2009

With health care, don't let the perfect be the enemy

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Early in the morning on December 24, the U.S. Senate passed its version of a health care reform bill. The next step is conference committee...
24 December 2009

Season's greetings

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Today I want to use this space to wish everyone a very happy holiday season filled with joy, love, and laughter. 2009 has been an interestin...
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23 December 2009

Mexico City legislature approves equal rights for gay couples

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On Monday, the Mexico City legislature passed a bill designed to provide equal rights for same-sex couples. The LA Times summarizes the the...
22 December 2009

For U.S. soldiers in Iraq, pregnancy is now a punishable offense

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Former military folks I've talked with have told me that it feels as though the military owns you. Their interest in your activities app...
21 December 2009

The Salvation Army: It gets worse

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It's that time of year again. At shopping centers everywhere, representatives from the Salvation Army, dressed in their paramilitary at...
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19 December 2009

Thinking of the homeless in winter

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As I write this, a major snowstorm is blanketing the east coast. There's already an inch or more on the ground here in the outskirts of ...
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18 December 2009

It's not because Tiger is black

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I don't care about Tiger Wood's personal life, and so I had no plans to write about it. But now I must. Sitting on a train yesterda...
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17 December 2009

Good news: Some children of haters turn out OK

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So often I see pictures of demonstrations by white supremacists in which their children are right there spewing the same kind of hate as the...
16 December 2009

DC City Council approves same-sex marriage

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Another step forward for gay rights: Yesterday, the Washington, DC, City Council voted to legalize same-sex marriage in the district. Mayor...
15 December 2009

Supremes refuse to hear Gitmo torture case (because prisoners are not "persons")

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Again the torturers get away with it. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case against Donald Rumsfeld and senior military o...
14 December 2009

Rights groups call for Justice Department probe into Mumia Abu-Jamal case

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December 9th marked the anniversary of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Journalist and former Black Panther M...
13 December 2009

Houston elects openly gay mayor

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Good news for LGBT equality: The people of Houston, Texas, the fourth-largest city in the U.S., situated in a decidedly red state, have just...
12 December 2009

White House party crashers to plead the Fifth

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A Congressional committee that oversees the Secret Service has voted to subpoena the White House party crashers, Tareq and Michaele Salahi....
11 December 2009

Nobel irony

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Yesterday, President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. This came just nine days after Obama announced that he would be s...
10 December 2009

December 10th is Human Rights Day

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Today, December 10th, is the anniversary of the adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations ...
09 December 2009

Sarah Palin's Hawaiian adventure

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I've got to hand it to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. She's a gift that keeps on giving. Even though she no longer holds a publ...
08 December 2009

10 companies to avoid this holiday season

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Air America has dug through The Blue Pages: A Directory of Companies Rated By Their Politics And Practices and made a list of the top ten c...
07 December 2009

Did Texas just execute a mentally retarded man?

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On December 3, Texas executed Bobby Wayne Woods, who had been convicted of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl. His was certainly a h...
05 December 2009

Amnesty's global write-a-thon starts today

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Each year, in the days surrounding Human Rights Day -- December 10 -- Amnesty International holds a global write-a-thon, in which activists ...
04 December 2009

Will there be jobs? Or will the foxes continue to guard that henhouse too?

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President Obama inherited a huge mess from his predecessor -- very expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a society in which 45,000 peopl...
03 December 2009

Bhopal: 25 years of injustice - and what you can do

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Something terrible happened 25 years ago. And justice has yet to be served. At around midnight on December 3, 1984, there was a catastrophi...
02 December 2009

More war but still no jobs

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It sounds as though President Obama plans to keep us in Afghanistan through most, if not all, of his first term. Is he gambling with his own...
01 December 2009

On World AIDS Day, no cure yet, but good news on treatment

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Today, December 1, is World AIDS Day. And, while we still have no cure for HIV/AIDS, there are still some reasons to celebrate this year. A...
30 November 2009

Obama's Vietnam?

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Tomorrow evening, President Obama will give a speech in which he will lay out his plans for a troop escalation in Afghanistan. Apparently he...
29 November 2009

Mr. President, why do we need landmines?

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On November 24, again following in George W. Bush's footsteps, the Obama administration announced that the U.S. will again refuse to si...