The gun violence figures flooding the media in the wake of the Newtown massacre are startling, “but they do not tell us enough about the cult and spectacle of violence in American society. Nor do they make visible the myriad of forces that has produced a country drenched in bloodshed and violence,” Henry Giroux told C.J. Polychroniou in a Truthout interview.

One proposed method of counteracting greenhouse gas emissions—fertilizing the oceans with algae-nurturing iron—would be hugely expensive, requiring a new industry to match the size of the global coal-mining sector, a study says.

Reflect for a moment: A black man stood on the Capitol steps and took the oath of office as president of the United States. For the second time. Meaning that voters not only elected him once—which could be a fluke, a blip, an aberration, a cosmic accident—but turned around and did it again.

President Obama seems to grasp that he has a lot more power to move public opinion than he used in his first term. He also understands that most of the GOP’s positions on the issues are unpopular with the public, divisive within the Republican Party and just plain bad policy. So will he maximize his advantage?

Barack Obama, the nation’s 44th president, was ceremonially sworn in for his second term Monday. Here is the entire text of the inaugural address that the president delivered at the Capitol.

Only in the depths of human imagination can we find the resources to fight against the ceaseless assaults on civil liberties and the planet itself. Only there can we unearth the strength and passion to resist.

The president can begin his second term liberated by the confidence that he is already a landmark figure in American history. Obama’s task is not to manufacture a legacy but to leave his successors a nation that is more tranquil because it finally resolved arguments that roiled it for decades.

More than 40 years after his death, Martin Luther King Jr., one of the great prophets of American democracy, has been reduced to little more than a lifeless statue. Yet his courageous call for peace and criticism of his government at a time of war must not be lost to history.

The historian and author’s new book about the Vietnam War reveals for the first time, in painstaking detail, the full atrocities committed by American forces in that country.

There is nothing in the lives of human beings more brutal and terrifying than war, and nothing more important than for those of us who have experienced it to share its awful truth.

Internet activist Aaron Swartz was facing up to 13 felony counts and 50 years in prison at the time of his death. His alleged crime? Pulling millions of academic articles from JSTOR. Swartz’s downloads were criminalized under the federal CFAA, an act designed to prosecute hackers. But as his case demonstrates, you don’t necessarily have to be a hacker to be viewed as one by federal law.