Since the financial crash, jobs have held a top spot in public discussion. But among all the employment talk, one sector of the workforce has consistently received relatively little attention: interns.

In the past few decades, the number of internships in the United States has ballooned. One recent study found that just over half of graduating college seniors had held some sort of internship. That’s more than double the rate another study found two decades ago.

But …

Read more

In mid-April, Kansas passed a law asserting that federal gun regulations do not apply to guns made and owned in Kansas. Under the law, Kansans could manufacture and sell semi-automatic weapons in-state without a federal license or any federal oversight.

Kansas’ “Second Amendment Protection Act” backs up its states’ rights claims with a penalty aimed at federal agents: when dealing with “Made in Kansas” guns, any attempt to enforce federal law is now a felony. Bills …

Read more

• Listen to this segment

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

HARTMANN: Suicide. Pretty grim stuff. I’ll just say this straight up and let all the Conservative heads explode.

The suicide rate among middle-aged Americans climbed 28 percent in the last ten years. Twenty eight percent! It was most pronounced among White men and women in that age group where it jumped 40 percent. There is speculation that the reason why it didn’t go up as …

Read more

Days after she became the first woman to appear on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist List, Assata Shakur issued an open letter to her supporters. The letter, published on May 3, came amid renewed efforts by the FBI and the New Jersey State Police to capture Shakur for the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state police officer. Shakur has long maintained her innocence, and has lived in Cuba as a political refugee for over …

Read more

The scheme that Apple cooked up this week to finance a $55 billion stock buyback for its shareholders was orchestrated to avoid paying $9.2 billion in taxes, Bloomberg reported Friday.

That $9.2 billion tax bill that Apple dodged would have been enough to make unnecessary all of the major budget cuts we’ve been writing about this week as part of our “Repeal the Sequester” campaign. With $9.2 billion, the federal government could have (based on lists …

Read more

We have hardly attained a post-racist society, Angela Y. Davis argued in a 2008 speech in which she denounced the legacy of structural racism. It is part of her latest book, in which she fully explores “The Meaning of Freedom.”

Davis offer profound insights into how the appearance of democracy and equality are undermined by the racist bias of many institutions, perhaps most profoundly by the prison-industrial complex. Her insights are both troubling and liberating, because …

Read more

Face flushed in the near-100 degree heat, body limp, white rings of dried sweat and scabs circling his scalp, 3-month-old Ezekiel lay in the arms of his 29-year-old mother, two among an estimated 1,000 Filipino workers now living in a vacant lot next to their country’s consulate in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

“All of us us here, we want to go back home to the Philippines. As soon as possible,” said the mother, …

Read more

In China, procreation and childbirth are, like every facet of human life, deeply political. Since the Communist party came to power in 1949, it has viewed the country’s population as a faceless number that it can increase or decrease as it chooses, not a society of individuals with unique desires and inviolable rights. At first, Mao Zedong encouraged large families and outlawed abortion and the use of contraception, urging women to produce offspring who would …

Read more

The Syrian government said that Israeli air strikes against military targets around Damascus amounted to a “declaration of war” and threatened retaliation, in the latest sign that the fighting is spilling across the Syrian border and risks sparking a wider regional conflict.

Israel made no official comment on the strikes early on Sunday, which were the second in two days and the third and heaviest this year. Security sources said they were aimed at preventing the …

Read more

Prescription contraceptives cost more in some low-income neighborhoods than in wealthier ones, according to a small study that analyzed prescription price data from Florida.

Though the findings are preliminary, the University of Tennessee physicians who led the study said it may have implications for low-income women hoping to prevent pregnancy.

“We saw several contraceptive options that are more expensive in lower income areas, and that expense may limit access,” researcher Dr. Nikki Zite, an OBGYN at The …

Read more