Vanuatans prepare for protest Many environmentally related posts appearing at Daily Kos each week don’t attract the attention they deserve. To help get more eyeballs, Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue) appears twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The most recent Wednesday Spotlight can be seen here. […]
This week in the war on workers: $10.10 minimum wage could save the government $7.6 billion
Hey, surprise. When companies like Walmart and McDonald’s pay low wages, their workers have to go on public assistance. And that means that low wages lead to higher public assistance use. In fact, raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would save the government $7.6 billion a year, because working people would be paid enough to […]
Saturday nutpick-a-palooza: The communist plot against conservative self-esteem
This week’s source material: Those who run watchdog news websites are scratching their heads and trying to make sense of the latest data released by a California company that measures website traffic. According to data for July through September, almost every major website – from WND to the Drudge Report and Breitbart – saw its […]
This week in the war on voting: SCOTUS gives TX voter ID law the go-ahead, AR tosses its ID law
This week in the war on voting is a joint project of Joan McCarter and Meteor Blades The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Saturday that Texas can use the voter ID law it originally passed in 2011 in the upcoming election. For the moment, that puts the kibosh on challenges to the law that have ensued […]
This week at progressive state blogs: A bully for TX rep, a gay-hater in AK, a progressive in NJ
Just as states with progressive lawmakers and activists have themselves initiated innovative programs over a wide range of issues, state-based progressive blogs have helped provide us with a point of view, inside information and often an edgy voice that we just don’t get from the traditional media. This week in progressive state blogs is designed […]
Obama explains Ebola to the fear-based, freaked-out public in weekly address
This is a serious disease, but we can’t give in to hysteria or fear-because that only makes it harder to get people the accurate information they need. We have to be guided by the science. We have to remember the basic facts. It’s time to sit down, get a grip, take a deep breath and […]
This week in science: Death to the ITAR!
A little over five years ago the principal investigator for NASA’s New Horizons mission, Dr. Alan Stern, visited our corner of cyberspace to brief us on the probe’s design and progress. Now we’re mere months way from our first close-up encounter with distant, mysterious Pluto! But there’s more: the plucky little spacecraft now has several […]
Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Of travel bans and Ebola czars
Jonathan Cohn: Are these calls for closing the borders the product of political opportunism? Xenophobia? In some cases they are. But some of them represent good faith attempts to protect public health, both here and abroad. The editors of the National Review have endorsed a travel ban, for example. In their editorial, they went out […]
Open thread for night owls: Race plays big part in how much home values have recovered nationwide
Standard Oil Co. founder John D. Rockefeller (carrying the cane) escorts his sister-in-law Lucy Spelman through Coit Rd. Station in East Cleveland, en route to Rockefeller’s Forest Hill summer home, 1912. On this date in 1877, John D. Rockefeller, who would live another 60 years, and his business partner at the Standard Oil Company, Henry […]
Public backs Supreme Court on allowing marriage equality to move forward, even in states with bans
The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll has some really good news on public support for marriage equality—not only does the public as a whole strongly back the Supreme Court’s recent decision to allow same-sex marriages to proceed in 11 states where it had previously been banned, but the court’s decision even has plurality support in […]