The tax deal that passed  Congress doesn’t just cost the federal government $850 billion in lost revenues. It also pushes state governments closer to defaulting on loans by failing to extend a federal subsidy program for states that has allow…

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Crossposted on Tikkun Daily
by Harold Jacobs
There recently has been a wave of commentary in the established media depicting Obama as being concerned more with appearance than specific substantive accomplishments, craving acceptance by the economic a…

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“Roadmaps to New Power” will be a series of interviews with activists, residents, entrepreneurs and industry analysts about current plans and visions for a just transition to clean energy and sustainable economic development in coalfield co…

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Does holiday shopping & spending stress you out?
A few years ago I stopped doing the holidays. My corporate job had me on a plane every 3 to 4 days. My daily work hours were in the double-digits, and the mere thought of picking out – let alon…

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Julian Assange of WikiLeaks is out on bail—apparently headed for the 10-bedroom home of British former army officer Vaughan Smith, described by the Guardian as a rightwing libertarian. Assange’s lawyer joked that it would not be so much “hous…

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Yesterday morning, the Family Research Council announced a huge campaign complete with full page ads in Politico and the Washington Examiner attacking the Southern Poverty Law Center for “daring” to call them and other religious right grou…

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Over at The Agitator, Radley Balko says liberal outrage over Judge Henry Hudson’s ruling that the individual mandate is un-Constitutional causes him to wonder if we accept any Constitutional restraints on what the federal government can do.Puttin…

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On her new TLC live-action show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, Palin bludgeons a gigantic halibut to death and then displays its still-beating heart triumphantly for the at-home television audience writes New York Times’ David Firestone.
During an …

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I don’t need no stinking badge to understand the cult of Ronald Reagan.
On the Right he is elevated to the heights of a near deity by partisans that both simultaneously and eagerly overlook his violation of the U.S. Constitution and conciliatory …

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“The question of whether we want a real ‘net is really the question of whether we want a real democracy.”
That’s what Douglas Rushkoff said on Saturday at the Personal Democracy Forum’s conference on WikiLeaks. Real democracy come…

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Since 1975 the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has been tracking students self-reported use of cannabis and other intoxicants, and every year their use of these substances trends either up or down from the prior survey. Predictably, when self-repor…

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Unless something drastic happens between now and the vote on President Obama’s tax-cut “compromise” with congressional conservatives, America is headed for its next failed conservative stimulus. Even with the proposed tweaking around …

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cross-posted from The Revealer, a daily review of religion and media
by Peter Bebergal
Despite their common, and mostly fringe area of concern, the psychedelic subculture — whose kaleidoscopic reflection includes Johns Hopkins scientists, transpe…

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Rumor control has it that the Family Research Council is taking its war against the Southern Poverty Law Center to another level.
FRC is supposedly launching a Start Debating, Stop Hating campaign designed to make it seem that SPLC is unfairly target…

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Today Elizabeth Edwards was laid to rest. It’s a sad day for her family, her friends and her country. If there were ever a time in America when compassionate voices are needed, now is that time. Elizabeth had compassion for children, health care,…

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I am in TOTAL disagreement with other lgbt activists (such as Dan Savage) who think that the news media shouldn’t have religious right organizations on their shows on the grounds that their opinions are akin to those of the Ku Klux Klan.
It&#82…

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It has only been six years since the COX-2 specific inhibitor Vioxx was billed as a super aspirin that didn’t have aspirin’s “risks” by Merck. Widely advertised and pitched by Olympians Dorothy Hamill and Bruce Jenner, Vioxx tur…

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Written by Carmen Barroso for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.This post is published as part of our series in recognition of International Human Rights Day 2010 on Friday, December 10th.&#…

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A new study has come out saying that lgbt youth who receive support from their parents are less likely to engage in destructive behaviors such as suicide or substance abuse.
According to U.S. News and World Reports, the study which appears in Journal o…

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Republican activist Grover Norquist once famously declared that he’d like to shrink the federal government to the point where he could drown it in a bathtub—but a little-noticed provision in the “tax cut compromise” we discussed today with …

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Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.C., is almost certain to be chairman of the Senate Banking Committee next year, once current chair Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is out of office. Johnson has never had a good reputation with consumer advocates, in large part because he&#8…

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On Black Friday/ Buy Nothing Day – we enjoyed our annual turn on national television, cutting into the heavy-breathing shopping reports with our alternative Christmas.  A comment like “But if we stopped shopping – what about jobs? – what about…

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Stop the Death Spiral to Plutocracy
In 2010, an essential moral test of a public policy choice is: Does it further concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few?
Or does it disperse concentrated wealth and power –and strengthen possibilities for…

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Julian Assange turned himself in Tuesday — he’s been arrested and is being held without bail in London ahead of a hearing on extradition to Sweden. The head of the “stateless” news-leak organization WikiLeaks is accused of sexu…

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Crossposted on Tikkun Daily
by Be Scofield
In the wake of the latest Wikileaks releases and the predictable response to them by the powers that be we can look to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of someone who persistently and emphatically r…

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Written by Cynthia SooHoo for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.This article is part of a series published by RH Reality Check in partnership with the Center for Reproductive Rights. It is als…

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President Barack Obama and Congressional Republicans want to mortgage the American economy to billionaires in exchange for a few months of unemployment benefits for just some of the workers hit hardest by our Wall Street-induced recession. This deal re…

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From the ashes of Mt. Carmel, the largest forest fire in Israel’s history, a strange phoenix is rising: a clash of civilizations. It’s not between Israelis and Arabs, nor between Jews and Muslims. It’s a clash between two worldviews. Let’s over…

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Written by Amanda Marcotte for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.
Randall Terry isn’t just your everyday anti-choice nut.  It takes someone with a special level of nuttiness to get shun…

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This post is dedicated to those who say that we should ignore anti-gay hate groups and not challenge them when they spout their nonsense:
This is Brian Camenker, head of the organization Mass Resistance, which is listed as an official anti-gay hate gro…

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