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May 13, 2012
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Featured Reports
AP/Ben Margot

Hope and Hesitation in Obama’s Sudden Conversion

Once again President Barack Obama has come tantalizingly close to being terrific.
Featured Arts and Culture
Photo by Scott Beale

Lights, Camera, Activism

In "Hollywood Left and Right," author Steven J. Ross details the public lives of 10 Hollywood notables who made significant marks on American political history, and posits that it is the Hollywood conservatives who have had a lasting effect on the country.
Featured Reports
AP/Sang Tan

Truthdiggers of the Week: 35,000 Striking British Police Officers

Uniformed officers ushered upward of 35,000 of their off-duty colleagues through the streets of London on Thursday in a march against cuts that could leave 16,000 police members jobless.
 
 

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The Latest
The NYT Charts Student Debt Across the Nation

With data collected by the Institute for College Access and Success, editors at The New York Times created an interactive graph showing annual tuition and fee costs and average graduate debt for a number of American universities.

Posted on May 12, 2012 READ MORE  |  1303 READS
Abbott Labs to Pay $1.5 Billion for Unapproved Marketing

The pharmaceutical company will pay $1.5 billion to settle criminal and civil liability charges for promoting the drug Depakote for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Posted on May 12, 2012 READ MORE  |  378 READS
California Committing Educational Suicide

A Public Policy Institute of California report shows that amid soaring tuition costs and diminishing state government support for higher education, large numbers of students are surrendering the quest for a four-year degree because they simply can’t afford it.

Posted on May 12, 2012 READ MORE  |  981 READS
Romney Doubles Down on Opposition to Gay Marriage

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romey confirmed Saturday that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction when he told an audience at Liberty University that marriage is between a man and a woman. President Obama had voiced his support for marriage equality just a few days earlier.

Posted on May 12, 2012 READ MORE  |  335 READS
‘Left, Right & Center’: Gay Marriage: State or Civil Right?

President Obama says he thinks gay marriage should be legal, but isn’t looking to legislate. JPMorgan Chase, the “best of the banks,” loses a $2 billion bet and reignites the debate over bank regulation. The French election has austerity hawks worrying about a resocialized euro, and Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar’s primary loss could usher in a new era of ideological warfare.

Posted on May 12, 2012 READ MORE  |  146 READS
Rep. Owens Will Reimburse Cost of Taiwan Trip

The congressman who last year took a $22,000 four-day trip to Taiwan organized by lobbyists said Friday that he will personally reimburse the university that paid for the trip.

Posted on May 12, 2012 READ MORE  |  179 READS
Truthdiggers of the Week: 35,000 Striking British Police Officers

It must have been a strange sight in London on Thursday when uniformed police officers ushered upward of 35,000 of their off-duty colleagues from across the U.K. through the streets during a protest against cuts that could leave 16,000 police members across the country without jobs.

Posted on May 11, 2012 READ MORE  |  1155 READS
Social Security Checks Garnisheed for Student Debt

Not so many years ago, President Jimmy Carter and his successor, Ronald Reagan, championed Social Security as a necessary protection for American citizens in old age. But that was before Congress voted to allow federal agencies to hold back portions of the program’s payments to collect debts owed to them.

Posted on May 11, 2012 READ MORE  |  3795 READS
Fallout From JPMorgan Chase’s $2 Billion Loss

JPMorgan Chase & Co. weathered the 2008 financial crisis without reporting a loss. But a failed hedging strategy that recently cost the company $2 billion has called into question the ability of its leaders to manage risk and intensified the debate on banking reform.

Posted on May 11, 2012 READ MORE  |  792 READS
Observer in Courtroom Throws Shoe at Breivik

A relative of one of the victims of Anders Breivik’s rampage on the Norwegian island of Utoeya interrupted his mass murder trial by throwing a shoe at him and shouting, “You killed my brother! Go to hell!”

Posted on May 11, 2012 READ MORE  |  369 READS
Nazi Sniper Tamed With a Trumpet

Americans hear a lot about the need to vanquish their supposed enemies abroad with bullets, bombs, and other tools of overwhelming force. Evidence that a common humanity can be called upon to settle differences is scarce in the media. Count this brief story from a World War II vet among the few exhibits submitted to that effect.

Posted on May 11, 2012 READ MORE  |  848 READS
Lobbyists Arranged N.Y. Congressman’s $20,000 Trip To Taiwan

Though rules laid down by the House Ethics Committee expressly forbid participation in lobbyist-organized trips, Rep. Bill Owens and his wife took a four-day tour of Taiwan late last year that was arranged by lobbyists with ex-New York Sen. Al D’Amato’s firm, Park Strategies.

Posted on May 11, 2012 READ MORE  |  454 READS
Military Course Taught That ‘Islam Is the Enemy’

U.S. officials have repeatedly said that the nation is at war with Islamic extremists, not with Islam itself. But that statement conflicts with a course for military officers that taught that the U.S. might have to obliterate the Islamic holy cities of Medina and Mecca, regardless of civilian casualties.

Posted on May 11, 2012 READ MORE  |  642 READS
Lights, Camera, Activism

In “Hollywood Left and Right,” Steven J. Ross details the public lives of 10 Hollywood notables who made significant marks on American political history, and posits that it is the Hollywood conservatives who have had a lasting effect on the country.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  1011 READS

President Obama’s evolutionary leap on same-sex marriage is a historic advance in the nation’s long march toward equality and justice.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  614 READS

There are troubling consequences that come from the particular kind of export economy we’re building.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  1065 READS
Michele Bachmann: Swiss Citizen Since 1978

But maybe not for much longer. The Minnesota congresswoman asked the Swiss government Thursday to revoke her double citizenship, which she acquired upon marrying her husband in 1978. Bachmann didn’t tell voters about her dual nationality when she ran for Congress or president of the United States.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  23774 READS
Scenes From Romney’s Prep School Days

Strict headmasters, effete manners and practical jokes both harmless and humiliating pepper the memories held by the probable Republican nominee’s boyhood friends and acquaintances of their time behind the arches at Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., almost 50 years ago.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  1049 READS
Two More Deadly Blasts Rock Damascus

Two explosions left a scene of smoldering carnage in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Thursday morning, killing 55 people and injuring nearly 400.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  220 READS
IUDs Effective as Emergency Contraception

Data collected over 35 years shows that the use of intrauterine devices as emergency contraception has a 99.86 percent success rate. The findings prompted researchers at Princeton University to conclude that the devices could be routinely promoted as a defense against unwanted pregnancy.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  406 READS
High School All Over Again

Washington journalism is like high school. It has the same cool kids, mean girls, social rankings and the big prom—the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner. But unlike what happens in high school, the insular behavior of the Washington media affects the whole nation.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  1446 READS
Tony Kushner on Marriage Equality, Sendak and Lincoln

Award-winning playwright and gay rights activist Tony Kushner speaks with “Democracy Now!” about Obama’s decision to support same-sex marriage, the life of children’s author Maurice Sendak, and his regard for Abraham Lincoln, about whom he wrote a screenplay for an upcoming film directed by Steven Spielberg.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  408 READS
The Energy Wars Heat Up

Conflict and intrigue over valuable energy supplies have been features of the international landscape for a long time. But we are now seeing a whole cluster of oil-related clashes stretching across the globe, involving a dozen or so countries, with more popping up all the time.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  1287 READS
Hope and Hesitation in Obama’s Sudden Conversion

Once again President Barack Obama has come tantalizingly close to being terrific.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  8372 READS

Two incidents tested Mitt Romney this week—and both times, his ambition overwhelmed his judgment.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  2308 READS

After Richard Mourdock defeated Sen. Richard Lugar by 20 points in Tuesday’s Indiana Republican Senate primary, he called, more or less, for one-party government.

Posted on May 10, 2012 READ MORE  |  1929 READS
 





 
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A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
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