Leland Yee Is the Tip of California's Problems
The collective ethos of dysfunction has made obtaining a supermajority in the California Legislature seemingly the only way to govern. California, with its quirky initiative process by which voters...
View ArticleCongress Should Keep Lights Off on Tax Package That Nets GE Billions in Tax...
Sometimes, the inability of Congress to get things done is a blessing in disguise -- like, for example, failing to renew a bevy of tax breaks that overwhelmingly benefit big corporations and wealthy...
View ArticleMy Extravagant Life as an Unemployed Mother
I've never been a fancy girl. I grew up running around my grandparents' dairy farm barefoot. I stopped wearing make-up in my mid-twenties, and still only force myself to cover my mid-forties face when...
View ArticleA Disturbing Trend: Conscience Clauses Threaten Genetic Counseling
Since the development of their field four decades ago, genetic counselors have sought to acquire greater professional standing and increase the likelihood of reimbursement for services through...
View ArticleThe Death of Truth
I'm 48 years old. I grew up in conservative Alabama atop Sand Mountain amid small rural farms. Perhaps I'm from the proverbial old school, but life was simple back then. We lived by a code. "A man's...
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Obama Poll Watch -- March, 2014
The new normal? President Obama's job approval polling was down a bit last month, ending three months of positive news. He didn't slip back much, but the reversal does bring up a serious question: is...
View ArticleNo 'Little Kid Lobby' in Missouri
My floor speech this week against Missouri's "Most Extreme Gun Bill in the Country", the second year in a row, MO HB1439. Listen HERE. -------------- Exactly 14 years ago my first grade daughter went...
View ArticleBoosting Social Security Benefits
Momentum continues to build inside and outside the halls of Congress to reverse course on the single-minded quest to cut Social Security benefits which has dominated our political discourse for years....
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Will Fair Elections Return to Hawaii?
Our representative democracy has been on a crash course for corruption ever since the Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision in Citizens United v FEC back in 2010. That decision...
View ArticleDear Harvard: You're Not Winning (This Article Is About Rape, Not Basketball)
When I woke up this morning, a friend had emailed me this anonymous article by a current undergraduate about Harvard's mis-handling of her sexual assault case. "This made me think of you," my friend...
View ArticlePapers, Please
Imagine for a moment you work at a U.S. military base as a contractor. You step out of a bathroom after using it, and are immediately confronted by someone with base security. He demands you present...
View ArticleThe Breaking and Dispossession of America's Black Farmers
On February 18, 1998, I attended a conference on black farming at Franklinton Center at Bricks, Enfeld, North Carolina. The Franklinton Center was not just another southern plantation with a history of...
View ArticleWhat's McCutcheon? The Low-Down for Corruption Newbies
It's shocking, disgusting, deplorable -- corruption at its very worst. I'm referring, of course, to this week's Supreme Court ruling on McCutcheon vs. FEC, which strikes down aggregate limits on...
View ArticleOne Possible Legacy of the Northwestern Football Players
An article in today's Washington Post asks: "In a billion-dollar stadium with millionaire coaches, what are the student-athletes worth?" The answer is nothing -- nothing more than a shot at a degree...
View ArticleAffluenza: Plagued With the Complexion for the Protection
Affluenza is quite possibly the only sickness on the face of the Earth where those who are afflicted by it show no sense of urgency to be cured. Although they pose a hazard to the larger community,...
View ArticleBig New York Win for National Popular Vote Drive to Reform (Not Abolish!)...
This post was written with my colleague Andrea Levien. The National Popular Vote interstate compact (NPV) is the single most promising reform effort to change how we vote for president. NPV, using the...
View ArticleWill Civilization Collapse, or Evolve?
A recent NASA-sponsored study, led by mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, warns that modern industrial civilization may collapse in coming decades due...
View ArticleTeach Law Outside of Law Schools
What if I told you that the doctrine closest to the halls of power is largely unknown to the public? That the most pertinent social science subject -- one that affects every single one of us every...
View ArticleWhy Martin Luther King Had to Die
On February 12, 1968, Martin Luther King and his staff completed the master plan for what they dubbed the "Poor People's Campaign." The purpose of the campaign was to mobilize masses of impoverished...
View ArticleIt's Not Just About the Ring Finger
Thank you, Mona Charen. In an opinion piece published yesterday, the syndicated columnist offers a magic cure to the 56 million unmarried women of America who, in many cases, are just struggling to get...
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