Progressive Review

• Rebuilding America: Mix & match
  Sam Smith  If you want to scare the establishment, get people together who it doesn't think belong together. If you are students having a problem with your principal don't just go to his or her office with the usual troublemakers; walk in with some of the smartest kids, some jocks, a few punks, blacks, whites, latinos, and, best of all, the kids wh […]
• The Hillary horror show
  Sam Smith  If and when, as now seems likely, Hillary Clinton is nominated as the next Democratic candidate for president, the nature of political debate will change radically. Right now, the Republicans are keeping quiet, waiting for it to happen and then all hell will break loose. The reason is that the true story of Hillary Clinton has been ignored, mythol […]
• IRS is spying on you, too
  MSN - The Internal Revenue Service is collecting a lot more than taxes this year -- it's also acquiring a huge volume of personal information on taxpayers' digital activities, from eBay auctions to Facebook posts and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction records, as it expands its search for tax cheats to places it's […]
• What food stamps have really done
  Greg Kaufmann, Nation - University of California at Davis economist Hilary Hoynes and her colleagues looked at adults born between 1956 and 1981 “who grew up in disadvantaged families (their parent had less than a high school education)”, and the impact of access to food stamps early in life. The authors find that “access to food stamps in utero and in early […]
• Problems we hadn't started worrying about yet
  In all, 13 175 injuries related to toilets presented to ERs during 2002–2010. The most common mechanism involved crush from accidental fall of toilet seat, described in 9011 (68.4%, 95% CI 6907–11 115) cases. Most crush injuries were isolated to the penis (98.1%). Of crush injuries, 81.7% occurred in children aged 2–3 years and 99.3% occurred in the home. Cr […]
• DC's war on free enterprise
  If you want a good example of free enterprise, check with a  street vendor and not a Fortune 500 CEO. And the fact is, many cities dislike free enterprise, witness this planned restriction on DC street food vendors: "Food trucks that park at an expired meter could face $2,000 fines for a first-time offense.  From there on, fines would escalate quickly, […]
• America's war on aspargus farmers
  Now I Know - According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, American asparagus farms were worth just over $233 million in 1999. That, to date, is their highest total value. A decade later, those farms (or, those which still existed, as the farm sizes fell by two-thirds over that same decade) were worth just under $90 million. The drop off is stark, but it’ […]
• Biggest protests in 20 years hit Brazil
  Reuters - As many as 200,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Brazil's biggest cities on Monday in a swelling wave of protest tapping into widespread anger at poor public services, police violence and government corruption.The marches, organized mostly through snowballing social media campaigns, blocked streets and halted traffic in more tha […]
• Obama becoming irrational
  In his interview with Charlie Rose, Barack Obama actually cited the ultra secret FISA court as an example of transparency: Rose - Should this be transparent in some way? Obama - It is transparent. That’s why we set up the FISA Court. Also: Charlie Rose: But has FISA court turned down any request? Barack Obama: The — because — the — first of all, Charlie, the […]
• Jerry Falwell's killers for Christ
  David Swanson, Sojourners Magazine - Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., was founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell. Its publications carry the slogan “Training Champions for Christ since 1971.” Some of those champions are now being trained to pilot armed drones, and others to pilot more traditional aircraft, in U.S. wars. For Christ.Liberty bills itself a […]
• Word: FISA court
  From a USA Today interview with former NSA official & whistleblower Thomas Drake Q: What did you learn from the document — the Verizon warrant issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — that Snowden leaked? Drake: It's an extraordinary order. I mean, it's the first time we've publicly seen an actual, secret, surveillance-court […]
• 8th grader could face year in prison for wearing NRA shirt
  National Revew - In April, [Jared] Marcum, an eighth-grader at Logan Middle School in Logan, W. Va., was arrested when he refused to take off his NRA t-shirt. The clothing kerfuffle began when Marcum wore a shirt bearing the NRA’s logo and a hunting rifle. As he stood in line in the cafeteria, a teacher ordered him to either change shirts or turn it inside o […]
• NY police commissioner blasts NSA spying
  NY Post - Police Commissioner Ray Kelly launched a stinging rebuke to the federal government’s secret phone and Internet monitoring campaign — and suggested leaker Edward Snowden was right about privacy “abuse.”“I don’t think it ever should have been made secret,” Kelly said today, breaking ranks with US law-enforcement officials.His blast came days after th […]
• Britain spied on foreign officials at G20 summit
  Guardian, UK - Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British i […]
• Why Obama's secret trade agreement matters
  From the Green Party shadow cabinet: If you oppose the industrial farming practices of Monsanto, Cargill and other giant food and agribusiness corporations, with their intense use of toxic herbicides and other harmful chemicals, production of untested genetically modified food, efforts to control the seed supply and patent life, their pollution of the water, […]