Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made a point of emphasizing during the Bush v. Gore arguments in December 2000 that there is no federal constitutional guarantee of a right to vote for president. Scalia was right. Indeed, as the reform group FairVote reminds us: “Because there is no right to vote in the U.S. Constitution, individual states set their own electoral policies and procedures. This leads to confusing and sometimes contradictory policies regarding ballot design, …

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Years from now, when the United States is a shell of its former self and we are ruled by hedonist overlords, schoolchildren will look back on April 29, 2013 as the fateful day when President Obama called Jason Collins after he became the first openly gay NBA player, thus undermining American culture forever.

This is the type of future envisioned by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on the House floor last week. In a freewheeling discussion of …

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This is a tough moment in the fight against poverty.

Sequester is the latest chapter in a time-honored tradition of kicking the poor when they are down. A do-nothing Congress certainly isn’t going to do something about poverty without pressure from the grassroots. And it seems that the only way most of the mainstream media will pay attention to the more than 1 out of 3 Americans living below twice the poverty line — on less …

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Part 1: A Glaring Lapse in Climate and Energy Coverage

One of my morning rituals is half-listening to NPR’s “Morning Edition” while I’m getting ready for work. But on January 3, when a story came on about the fate of the wind industry’s production tax credit, I snapped to attention. It was good news. Congress’s eleventh hour “fiscal cliff” agreement had left the tax credit in place for at least one more year.

The NPR story featured …

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Global Witness, a group that campaigns on resource issues, has accused Vietnamese rubber firms bankrolled by an arm of the World Bank and Germany’s Deutsche Bank of driving a land-grabbing crisis in Southeast Asia.

Indigenous ethnic minorities are bearing the brunt of the seizures, which have affected tens of thousands of villagers and led to the clearance of swathes of protected forests, according to the group.

Vietnam, the world’s third-largest rubber producer, is keen to tap surging …

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The civil war in Syria has been devastating, generating a death toll fast approaching 100,000, while uprooting millions of civilians from their homes.

But as the US and Russia signed an unprecedented accord on Wednesday in search of a political solution to an increasingly intractable conflict, its underlying causes in a fatal convergence of energy, climate and economic factors remain little understood.

The UN high commissioner for human rights has offered a conservative under-estimate of the death …

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Thursday’s landmark decision by the Pakistani high court in Peshawar is a remarkable document: Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan examines the US use of drones against Pakistan’s tribal areas and reaches several conclusions that, while obvious to most sensible observers, seem to have eluded American authorities for several years.

The case was filed last year by Shahzad Akbar, of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights (FFR), a legal charity based in Islamabad. The case was brought by …

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Bangladesh’s government agreed on Monday to allow the country’s 4 million garment workers to form trade unions without prior permission from factory owners, a major concession to campaigners lobbying for widespread reforms to the industry following a building collapse last month that killed more than 1,100 people.

The cabinet decision came a day after the government announced a plan to raise the minimum wage for garment workers, who are paid some of the lowest wages in …

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YANGON, Myanmar — Those who have wandered the fluorescent-lit aisles of America’s largest superstore would hardly recognize the “Wal Mart” in Myanmar’s crumbling city of Yangon.

For starters, the store is scarcely larger than a typical Wal-Mart parking spot. Only two incongruous items are sold there: cellphones and washing machines. The teen clerks must shoo out intrusive stray mutts and, by the showroom, a half-exposed sewer gurgles under the tropical sun.

Ask for the manager and out …

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Julian Assange’s newly formed Australian WikiLeaks Party (WLP) announced that if elected, it will immediately introduce a national shield law to protect a reporter’s right not to reveal a source, as current state-based shield laws are “inadequate.”

“Only a uniform shield law covering the whole Commonwealth is acceptable,” WLP spokespersons Cassie Findlay and Sam Castro said. “Government agencies, at federal, state and local level, are increasingly gaining powers to obtain information about individual citizens.”

The proposed law …

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