Apr
17
2013
I ran the Boston Marathon back in 1968, and, my feet covered with blisters inside my Keds sneakers, dragged across the finish line to meet my waiting uncle at a time of about 3 hours and 40 minutes. It was close enough to the time that the current bombing happened in this year’s race — about four hours from the starting gun — that had I been running it this year, I might still been …
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Apr
17
2013
Only the government knows the exact statistics, but four years after Barack Obama ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and eleven years since the first people were imprisoned there, detainees at Gitmo are involved in what may be the largest and longest single act of civil disobedience in the camp’s history.
“I’ve never seen [a protest] of this magnitude that’s gone on for this long,” says Col. Morris Davis (Ret.), a …
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Apr
17
2013
The country’s largest non-union workers’ group will soon announce plans to establish chapters in every state, achieve financial self-sufficiency and extend its organizing—so far focused on politics and policy—directly into the workplace.
“This organization has done really what nobody else thought could be done,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told The Nation, “and that’s recruit more than three million people without a union to be part of the labor movement.”
That organization is Working America, the AFL-CIO affiliate …
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Apr
17
2013
More than 46 million people, or about 15 percent of the US population, lived below the official poverty level in 2011, according to the US Census Bureau. A new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that the “working poor” account for 10.4 million of this number, or nearly a quarter of all those living in poverty according to government guidelines.
The statistics revealed by the BLS report are a stunning indictment of the …
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Apr
17
2013
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) admitted Wednesday that his background check amendment did not have the votes for passage, and said in a television appearance that the National Rifle Association was lying about his bill.
“We will not get the votes today,” Manchin told NBC News. That was a big admission for the West Virginia senator, who had been pushing an amendment to strengthen background checks with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.).
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said …
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Apr
17
2013
(Washington, DC) – The United States Senate is set to take an important step toward establishing landmark protections for unauthorized immigrants. The plan could grant eventual legal status to millions of people and reduce their vulnerability to human rights abuses.
A summary of the proposed Senate Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act was made public on April 16, 2013, outlining significant changes to the complex array of immigration laws in the United States. The …
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Apr
17
2013
The immigration bill senators introduced Wednesday bans racial profiling by federal law enforcement officers in most routine encounters, such as traffic stops.
Under current federal law and court precedents, racial discrimination is illegal — but there is no specific ban on racial profiling by federal officers.
But buried inside the 844-page Senate immigration bill is a section specifically prohibiting the use of race or ethnicity as a factor in “routine or spontaneous law enforcement decisions, such as …
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Apr
17
2013
On April 11, more than 400 people packed the third public Portland Budget Hearing, which was organized by the City of Portland and which left many spilling out beyond the room where the hearing took place. More importantly, for the City Council there was an unexpected critical outpouring from the vast majority who attended. For the first time, the City Council and Mayor Charlie Hales began to lose control over their attempts to sell austerity.
This …
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Apr
17
2013
April 15, 2013 Egyptians are getting hungry. The fall of the Egyptian pound to just 60% of its 2012 exchange rate against the dollar has priced everything but bread out of the reach of the poorer half of the population, and the bread supply is now at risk.
The news late last week that Libya and Qatar may lend US$5 billion to Egypt was overshadowed by reports that Cairo owes $5 billion …
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Apr
17
2013
When Thomas Drake, then an official at the National Security Agency, realized that the agency’s decision to shut down an internal data analysis program and instead outsource the project to a private contractor provided the government with less effective analysis at much higher cost, he tried to do something about it. Drake’s decision to join three other whistleblowers in asking the agency’s inspector general to investigate ultimately made him the target of a leak investigation …
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