News at Home

Hey Mitch Daniels, My Book is Dangerous, Too!

by Peter Dreier

Mitch Daniels's crusade against Howard Zinn has sold thousands of copies of A People's History -- how about showing some love to my book, too?

What the History of Slavery Can Teach Us About Slavery Today

by Brenda E. Stevenson

Modern human trafficking functions in a remarkably similiar way to the antebellum slave trade -- only in secret.

Richard A. Baker: If You Think the Senate is Dysfunctional Now, Wait Until After the Nuclear Option (INTERVIEW)

by David Austin Walsh

The former official historian of the US Senate puts the current dysfunction into perspective.

Why the Business Community and the GOP Base are Parting Ways on Immigration

by Elizabeth Tandy Shermer

Executives have made little attempt to bridge the economic and political divides their predecessors created between workers and managers.

Why the Relentless Assault on Abortion in the United States?

by Ruth Rosen

“Abortion is the relatively rare issue in which the cliche is true: public opinion does actually rest about midway between the parties’ platforms.” 

California's Dark History of Eugenics and Compulsory Sterilization

by Alexandra Minna Stern and Tony Platt

20,000 patients in more than ten institutions were sterilized in California from 1909 to 1979.

Black People Have a Duty to Bear Witness to Racial Violence

by Kidada E. Williams

As the people who have testified about this recent violence in court, on television, or on social media make clear, African Americans take racial violence personally, and with good reason.

The Roots of White Rage

by Carole Emberton

 In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, white Southerners lashed out with homicidal rage against their former bondsmen. 

How George Zimmerman is Different from '80s Subway Vigilante Bernhard Goetz

by Jim Sleeper

The day I stopped a mugging.

Warehousing is as American as Apple Pie (and Whiskey)

by Daniel S. Margolies

Who knew warehouses could be so interesting, let alone so powerful?

Saying No To The Surveillance State

by Jackson Lears

These are dark days for the republic. 

Why Is Arbitration Legally Binding?

by Imre Stephen Szalai

 The Supreme Court is wrongfully outsourcing justice for millions of Americans who are being shut out from the courthouse and relegated to a secretive justice system with very limited rights.

If Only Trayvon Had Freedom Papers

by Stephanie Jones-Rogers

Trayvon Martin needed a slave pass.

Trayvon Martin the Latest Victim of America's Fear of Black Men

by Elaine F. Parsons

Today, as under Reconstruction, the idea that fear justifies violence is as dangerous one.

Libertarianism's Neo-Confederate Southern Avenger Delusion

by Carole Emberton

Some people undoubtedly choose to wave Confederate flags just to get attention. But what binds people today to yesterday's Confederates is not so much an abhorrence of centralized state power as it is a fear of change.

Sanford, Fla., Threatened to Lynch Jackie Robinson

by Peter Dreier

Neither of the Robinsons would ever forget their Florida ordeal.

Women Played Critical Role in George Zimmerman Decision

by Brenda E. Stevenson

It has only been in the last fifty years or so that women have gained such significant presence as lawyers, prosecutors, and jurists. It will become increasingly important, therefore, that we understand the kinds of histories and socializations of females in our society that they bring into the courtroom, that weighs in when they consider the evidence, victims and defendants before them.

Summer is the Season to Fix Immigration

by Adam Arenson

Summer is the season for declaring Americans -- whether on July 4, 1776, as the nation came into being, or in July 1863, as the fight to end slavery intensified at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, or in July 1870, when the limited view of a whites-only America was first removed from the naturalization standards.

MLK's Forgotten Plan to End Gun Violence in Chicago

by Simon E. Balto

Although fully ignoring the plights of poor urban areas was not quite what Daniel Patrick Moynihan meant when, in 1970, he encouraged President Richard Nixon to take a position of “benign neglect” around questions of racial justice, that has nevertheless been precisely what has happened. 

Why Doesn't D.C. Have a Military Parade on the Fourth of July?

by David Austin Walsh

On Bastille Day in Paris, the trees lining the Champs-Élysées are covered in the French tricolor. Battalion after battalion of French troops march down the avenue, gleaming bayonets attached to their Space Age rifles. Tanks, armored cars, and nuclear missiles roll past a viewing stand where the French president and his generals look on as martial music plays.It's one of the largest military parades in the world, and it's been going on nearly every year since 1880 (except from 1940-1944, for obvious reasons). Here's what it looks like:Here's what the Fourth of July parade down Constitution Ave. in Washington, D.C. looks like: