VOICES

ANTI WAR HAUL - As the US after 20 years finally began its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the story dominated TV news.

PEACE VOICE - President Biden is continuing the disengagement policy toward China that began under Donald Trump, with strong bipartisan support. 

PEACE VOICE - Suddenly there’s major concern across the country — from the mainstream media to every last rock-ribbed Republican — for the rights of Afghan women and girls to be able to work, to go to school.

HUMAN RIGHTS - Journalism needs a new rule. Are you reporting about a human rights violation in another country? If the United States commits the same offense, you should be required to refer to that fact in your article or broadcast.

LGBTQ NATION - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), saying that the federal agency’s guidance on LGBTQ rights is “extreme federal overreach” that violates Texas’s “sovereign right” to determine workplace policies, specifically when it comes to LGBTQ job discrimination protections in the workplace.

COMMENTARY-I’m going to lay down my sword and shield. . . So why can’t today’s politicians take that to heart? 

EASTSIDER - Almost everyone witnessed the news media attacks on Joe Biden as he sought to end the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

COMMENTARY - The costs and consequences of America’s twenty-first-century wars have by now been well-documented — a staggering $8 trillion in expenditures and more than 380,000 civilian deaths, as calculated by Brown University’s Costs of War project.

COMMENTARY - FDR understood that we must fight for what we believe in and not worry about angering powerful special interests. 

IMMIGRATION WATCH - For up to 15,000 heartsick Haitians languishing in fear, thirst, hunger and 100-degree temperatures under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas,

COMMENTARY - I remember finding out I was about to become a mother. I felt the fear taking hold of me. My brain stopped. I remember crying but had no tears. I remember trying to run, but I couldn’t move.

WORDS ON WAR - A recent New York Times op-ed was perhaps the strangest, most awkward and tentative defense of the military-industrial complex — excuse me, the experiment in democracy called America — I’ve ever encountered, and begs to be addressed.

DC RALLY - You know what they say: “Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice ... well, you can’t get fooled again.”

SUPREME VIEW - When Clarence Thomas wasn’t working as a mute-ass puppet for former Justice Antonin Scalia, he literally was a real-life mute who was apparently attempting to break the Guinness record for being the Black man on the highest court who had absolutely nothing to say about anything.

COMMENTARY-If the leading cause of death among police is COVID and 20% of the LAPD workforce is requesting exemptions (so they can be more efficient incubators of future variants?), where does that leave the residents of Los Angeles? 

COMMON DREAMS - Too often climate change is reduced to quantification of greenhouse glasses or melting ice caps.

GUEST COMMENTARY-In an op-ed entitled “Why California liberals turn into raging conservatives over housing,”

MEDIA MONOPOLIES-We have faced tough times before. World wars, famines, pandemics, economic ruin.

LGBTQ POLITICS - Noted queer academic Judith Butler accused transphobic feminists of allying with fascists in a new interview with The Guardian.

THE SENATE RULES - You’ve probably been hearing a lot about the filibuster these days. But here’s one thing about this old Senate rule you might not know: the filibuster actually violates the Constitution. 

CONSTITUTION WATCH - Bruce Fein, constitutional law specialist who has testified before Congress approximately 200 times, calls Congress “an inkblot.” Let’s see if he is exaggerating.