VOICES

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Reports about what has been the most horrific assault yet on human rights by the US Supreme Court in modern times started trickling out on Monday. Our fears and imaginations ran rampant. 

THE VIEW FROM HERE - Preliminary Note about Roe vs Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)

SCOTUS - The Politico release of the unprecedented leak of the initial draft majority opinion that indicates the Supreme Court has voted to strike down Roe v. Wade has unleashed a tidal wave of responses from politicians.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Despite its boys’ club origins, science fiction long exhibited a leftist streak.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Keep On Truckin’” was an iconic underground cartoon created in 1968 by comic master Robert Crumb.

UNION WATCH - "Starbucks has this image of being a progressive company that takes care of its employees.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - Everyone is fond of quoting Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” 

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Four hundred people died from gun violence in the United States in the first four days of 2022.

GUEST COMMENTARY - For most Democrats throughout deep blue L.A. County, the incumbent Sheriff is a disaster whose misconduct each day escalates the urgency to replace him.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - Los Angeles has no legacy of democracy.  The city government does not even attempt to have the traditional separation of powers since the city makes the laws and then enforces its laws or ignores its own laws. 

GUEST COMMENTARY - The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition filed a public records lawsuit today confronting City Councilmember Paul Koretz's failure to respond to a public records request regarding his office’s communications with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a nonprofit political association that works with government surveillance agencies. 

GUEST COMMENTARY - As wars rage, as cruelty shatters lives across the planet — as nuclear Armageddon remains a viable option for all of us — I think it’s time to claim some stunning awareness in this regard.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Land ownership has shaped civilizations from their beginnings, with a constant interplay between great powers—the aristocracy, the state, the Church, the emperor—and those below them.

UNION WATCH - The improbable April 1 victory of Amazon workers in Staten Island, who fought for over two years to establish the very first union at the retail behemoth,

GUN CONTROL - The tragic Sacramento shooting on April 3 that claimed six lives joins a long list of shootings in California that occurred that same weekend:

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Of all social media applications currently in use in the United States, Facebook and Twitter have by far the most penetration and, perversely, the greatest influence. 

MEDIA WATCH - CBS News hiring former Trump aide Mick Mulvaney speaks volumes about systemic problems in our media.

FEDERAL JUDICIARY - Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle's decision exemplifies how completely former President Donald Trump and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell broke the judicial selection process in their drive to place conservative ideologues in the federal judiciary. 

RACIAL RECKONINGS - In August of 2020 as the world cried out for justice for George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police, the quiet town of Tiburon, California was mismanaging its own officer encounters with the public.

THE DOCTOR IS IN - A long time ago, shortly after I finished my Dermatology residency, one of my colleagues jokingly (but accurately) referred to me as a "corporate socialist". I did and still do take that as a compliment.

ACCORDING TO LIZ - George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four was published 75 years ago this coming June.