Progressive Review

• Meanwhile, furthermore & on the other hand
  Questions & answers concerning the killing of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's would-be accomplice  The future of labor unions and community coalitions 759 bridges in Washington State have a worse rating than the one that collapsed Infrequently asked questions Concerning Barrack Obama's speech on drones, isn't he the same guy who said he was going to c […]
• Chicago school closings largest in history
  Diana Ravitch -  Never in U.S. history has a local school board - or any other board, appointed or elected - chosen to close 49 public schools.That's what the Chicago Public Schools did.Thousands of parents, students, and teachers objected, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his puppet board didn't care.Yesterday was a day of infamy in Chicago and in the h […]
• Police blotter
  Gawker - An eastern Pennsylvania woman was found guilty of first degree murder for stabbing her fiance to death just hours before their wedding last summer.Na Cola Franklin, 32, stabbed her fiance, Billy Brewster, 36, several times last August 11 at approximately 2 a.m., eight hours before their scheduled wedding, reportedly after Brewster came home drunk fr […]
• Entropy update: Detroit dictator wants to sell off city's art
  Detroit Free Press - Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr is considering whether the multibillion-dollar collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts should be considered city assets that potentially could be sold to cover about $15 billion in debt. Even the possibility has set off a sharp reaction. The DIA hired a bankruptcy lawyer to advise it, and philanthr […]
• Rebuilding America: Create a counterculture
  Another in our series on rebuilding America Sam Smith - Sane and decent America is acting like gays in the closet. Having been convinced by the corporate media and our leaders - either by being ignored or dismissed – that its views have no status or power, it accepts the unacceptability that has been assigned to it. What is missing is not just organization b […]
• Facebook generation losing enthusiasm for Facebook
  Huffington Post - The Facebook generation is fed up with Facebook. That's according to a report by the Pew Research Center, which surveyed 802 teens between the ages of 12 and 17 last September. Pew's findings suggest teens' enthusiasm for Facebook is waning, lending credence to concerns, raised by the company's investors and others that […]
• FBI wants to trash the Fourth Amendment
  Electronic Frontier Foundation -  According to the New York Times, President Obama is "on the verge of backing" a proposal by the FBI to introduce legislation dramatically expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. CALEA forces telephone companies to provide back doors to the government so that it can spy on users […]
• Rioting in Sweden
  Guardian, UK - Police in Stockholm are to seek reinforcements after youths set cars ablaze and threw stones at police for a fifth night running, officials said.About 30 cars were set on fire in poorer districts in north-western and south-western parts of the Swedish capital on Thursday night, with rioters causing widespread damage to property, including scho […]
• Meanwhile, furthermore & on the other hand
  Textbook for the war on education Food brands using Monsanto seeds From 1999-2010, the total U.S. prison population rose 18 percent, an increase largely reflected by the "drug war" and stringent sentencing guidelines, such as three strikes laws and mandatory minimum sentences. However, total private prison populations exploded fivefold during this […]
• Police blotter
  Smoking Gun - A North Carolina mother had her son arrested this week for taking her Pop-Tarts without permission, police report.The child was busted on a larceny charge, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, whose officers were summoned Monday night to a Charlotte home by Latasha Renee Love, the accused juvenile’s 37-year-old mother.A pol […]
• How lobbying pays off big time
  Tom Edsall, NY Times - According to statistics United Republic assembled, the prescription drug industry spent $116 million lobbying for legislation to prevent Medicare from bargaining down drug prices — legislation that enabled drug companies to make an additional $90 billion annually. That amounts to an extraordinary 77,500 percent return on investment. Oi […]
• How the police spy on social media
  IT News, Australia - A dedicated team of British police officers are monitoring social media around the clock in the wake of last night’s fatal attack on a soldier in the south-east of London, in order to gauge sentiment and be ready to respond.Umut Ertogral, who runs the Opensource Intelligence Unit for London’s Metropolitan Police Service, today told the A […]
• Great moments with Hillary Clinton
  1999 Mrs. Clinton is mentioned 36 times in the fraud indictment against Webster Hubbell. Writes the AP's Peter Yost: "Starr alleges Hubbell concealed his own and Mrs. Clinton's work during the 1980s on a failed Arkansas land deal, known as Castle Grande, that federal regulators say was riddled with 'insider dealing, fictitious sales and l […]
• Great moments in school discipline: camper punished for having Swiss Army knife
  Daily Caller - A fifth-grader in Cupertino, California was suspended and threatened with expulsion for bringing a small Swiss Army knife on a school-sponsored, science-oriented camping trip. In early April, Braden Bandermann’s class set off on Garden Gate Elementary School’s annual, week-long pilgrimage for fifth-graders to the Marin Headlands, just north of […]
• Shop Talk: It's lead, not lede
  Sam Smith - One of the true joys in life is to discover that something you thought was true or false but couldn't prove turns out to be what you thought. For example, I could never understand why journalists were starting to spell lead as lede.Journalist Howard Owens has come to my rescue. Howard Owens - Early in my career somebody I obviously respected […]