Across the country, state legislatures and governors are pushing laws that seek to restrict access to the voting booth, laws that will disproportionately harm people of color, low-income people, and young and elderly voters.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund have just released a comprehensive report on the crisis, "Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America."
The new wave of US voter suppression
Growing wealth widens distance between lawmakers and constituents
Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House more than doubled, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home equity.
Over the same period, the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the comparable median figure sliding from $20,600 to $20,500, according to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan.
The Obama Administration on the Defensive on Israel; Republicans to the Rescue
You see, in the Never-Never land of the ADL, Muslim hostility toward Jews has nothing to do with actual Jewish behavior toward Muslims in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. It’s a corollary of the general Jewish stance that anti-Semitism never has anything to do with the behavior of Jews but only with various psychopathologies and delusions of non-Jews. Both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney called on the Obama administration to dismiss Gutman for these remarks, and the ADL was predictably outraged.
Bank on this: If the Israel Lobby doesn’t get its war by pressuring the Obama Administration, it will certainly get it from the Gingrich administration. As Gingrich said, “The only rational long-term policy is regime replacement.”
The top 10 health freedom stories of 2011
Throughout 2011, health freedoms were under attack as both state and federal governments deliberately sought to criminalize foods, mandate vaccine injections and arrest parents who refused to subject their children to toxic conventional medical care.
TVNL Comment: Most Americans have no clue what goes on in this world. As long as it is American they simply assume it is good, honest and nobel. If the public knew what was going on they would revolt...and if the Occupy movement really understood the scope of what is going on...they would arm themselves!
U.S., Israel Discuss Triggers for Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Infrastructure
The Obama administration is trying to assure Israel privately that it would strike Iran militarily if Tehran’s nuclear program crosses certain “red lines”—while attempting to dissuade the Israelis from acting unilaterally. Eli Lake reports exclusively.
When Defense Secretary Leon Panetta opined earlier this month that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could “consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret,” the Israelis went ballistic behind the scenes. Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, lodged a formal diplomatic protest known as a demarche.
Court finds 9/11 toxins likely caused NYPD Officer Frank Macri's fatal cancer
The widow of a city cop killed by lung cancer after two months of toxic post-9/11 duty won a bitter four-year fight Tuesday to collect enhanced line-of-duty death benefits.
The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court ruled in favor of Nilda Macri, whose husband Frank was an iron-pumping, non-smoking housing officer known for his buff physique.
Palestinians in a 'Jewish state'
Israel's crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories - like the settlements, the killing of civilians and the demolition of homes - are openly condemned in the West by human rights groups and others like never before. But as the peace process remains stuck, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu forces the issue of Israel as a "Jewish state" into the spotlight, understanding the situation of Palestinian citizens of Israel has become crucial to grasping the core of the entire conflict.
So-called "Israeli Arabs" have got it better than most Palestinians, who are either under military rule or forcibly excluded from their homeland. But the institutional discrimination they have faced since 1948 goes to the heart of the contradiction that Israel is "Jewish and democratic".
Lynn Samuels, NY Radio Talk Show Host, Dies At 69
Lynn Samuels, the former left wing radio host on WABC, died of a heart attack on Saturday. The 69-year-old had missed her Saturday morning Sirius XM radio, so, the Post reports, "SiriusXM sent someone to her apartment, and that person notified police, who found her body."
The Daily News' David Hinckley has a thorough obituary, noting how she worked at WBAI and then WABC for 15 years, where she was fired three times and rehired twice.
No U.S. Troops, But An Army Of Contractors In Iraq
The U.S. troops have left Iraq, and U.S. diplomats will now be the face of America in a country that remains extremely volatile.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, along with several consulates, will have some 15,000 workers, making it the largest U.S. diplomatic operation abroad. Those diplomats will be protected by a private army consisting of as many as 5,000 security contractors who will carry assault weapons and fly armed helicopters.
Page 508 of 1143
