London Mayor Boris Johnson’s ambitious plan to reshape how the city handles cyclist traffic got final approval Wednesday, clearing the way for the spread of segregated bike lanes and dedicated traffic signals. Johnson plans to create a network for cyclists that rivals the city’s transit system. “The board of Transport for London approved a plan…
Category: News & Opinion
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality
The internet wouldn’t have emerged as it did, for instance, if the FCC hadn’t mandated open access for network equipment in the late 1960s. Before then, AT&T prohibited anyone from attaching non-AT&T equipment to the network. The modems that enabled the internet were usable only because the FCC required the network to be open. Companies…
In Which The Democrats Finally Get A Clue
There is something truly odd about the wealthiest country no longer with the wealthiest middle class, and in which every major competitor’s middle class is converging with ours’ in standards of living. This is the real end of American exceptionalism, in which working hard in the middle class is like being on a treadmill rather…
The Senate Just Cemented Obama’s Judicial Legacy
In its final act of the year, the Senate blew through a dozen U.S. district court nominees on Tuesday night. That puts Obama at a whopping 89 district court and circuit court confirmations for the year, and means he’ll wrap up his sixth year in office with a grand total of 305 district court and…
Officials: Kansas Faces $279M Budget Gap By July
For the next fiscal year, the new projection was $5.8 billion in revenues — short of the nearly $6.2 billion that legislative researchers had been assuming in their unofficial forecasts. The projected shortfall of $436 million is about 7 percent, and higher than the $282 million gap estimated unofficially. The new revenue projection for the…
Israelis Chant “N*ggers Go Home” Carrying ISIS-Style Flags At Anti-African Rally
Video footage of Jewish Israelis with ISIS-style flags, chanting “niggers go home” at an anti-African rally in Tel Aviv on October 5 has surfaced. Hundreds of protesters could be heard in streets of Tel Aviv chanting anti-African racial slurs, following an Israeli High Court ruling to close down “Holot” detention facility within 90 days. Holot is…
St. Louis Cardinals fans clash with Ferguson protesters: ‘Let’s go, Darren!’
The fans then begin chanting “Darren Wilson” and clapping, and a man in a Cardinals jacket calls a protester a “crack head” and urges him to see a dentist. Some of the fans engage protesters in arguments over who is tougher, and at least one fan invites a protester to cross the guardrail into the…
Mass shooting hysteria and the death of John Crawford
…there may be unintended consequences to our oversaturated coverage of mass shootings and the widespread belief that they’re increasing, even if neither produces a single new law. In 2010, there was an incident at a Las Vegas-area Costco that bears a striking resemblance to what happened in Ohio. Police gunned down Eric Scott, 38, outside…
Obama Expands Pacific Ocean Preserve, Making It Largest In The World
President Barack Obama is carving out a wide swath the Pacific Ocean for an expanded marine preserve, putting the waters off-limits to drilling and most fishing in a bid to protect fragile underwater life. The revamped expanded Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument will cover 490,000 square miles – an area roughly three times the…
U.S. reaches landmark $554 million settlement with Navajo Nation
The Obama administration has agreed to pay the Navajo Nation a record $554 million to settle longstanding claims by America’s largest Indian tribe that its funds and natural resources were mishandled for decades by the U.S. government. The accord, resolving claims that date back as far as 50 years and marking the biggest U.S. legal…
House Of Representatives Gives D.C. The Big Foam Finger
It hasn’t always been this way. When Nancy Pelosi D-Calif. took over as Speaker of the House, she launched the Green the Capital initiative, which directed House cafeterias to use compostable cutlery made with corn-based plastic substitutes and carryout containers made with plant fibers, and instituted a composting program. A 2010 report on the Green…
NAACP accuses Mississippi country clerk of failing to process thousands of voter registrations
Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson announced at a press conference Tuesday morning that an unknown number of voter registrations have gone missing in Hinds County, Mississippi, and urged voters to cast what is known as an affidavit ballot if they arrive at the polls and find that they are not listed. According to the Jackson…
Ohio lawmakers want to limit the teaching of the scientific process
Science educators have recognized that teaching science as a large compendium of facts, without reference to the scientific process and theories that bind them together, simply leads to uninterested and uninformed students. So it’s a bit mind-boggling to discover that an Ohio state legislator is attempting to block educators from teaching anything about the scientific process. And…
Ferguson – You’re Doing It Wrong
Last night someone shouted. Last night someone moved a traffic cone. Last night someone stood in the street. Someone threw a bottle, threw a rock. Last night someone threw their hands in the air. Today, people are waking to closed schools and a state of emergency. They are waking to military troops and military vehicles. Some walk through streets…
Police refuse to release video after Dayton-area killing
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine says that Crawford was shot while carrying a toy gun that fires BB pellets. Crawford had picked the gun up off the sporting goods shelf where Walmart displays it. The gun is manufactured by Crosman and is classified as a “variable pump air rifle.” Police said that Crawford was waving…
Civil Rights Groups To Missouri Gov: Ferguson Curfew Is Unconstitutional
Three civil liberties organizations raised First Amendment concerns with Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon’s imposition of a curfew in Ferguson to quell ongoing clashes between law enforcement and civilians over the slaying of an unarmed black teenager on Aug. 9 by a police officer. Amid another night of unrest on Sunday, the American Civil Liberties Union,…
The St. Louis Area Has a Long History of Shameful Racial Violence
That May, a local aluminum plant brought in black workers to replace striking white ones. Soon, crowds of whites gathered downtown, at first protesting the migration, then beating blacks and destroying property. On July 1, a group of white men drove through a black neighborhood, firing a gun out their car window. (The perpetrators were…
Mining Spill Near U.S. Border Closes 88 Schools, Leaves Thousands Of Mexicans Without Water
An acid spill from a large copper mine in northern Mexico is keeping 88 schools closed starting Monday due to uncertainty over the safety of drinking water. The 12-day-old spill, which sent 10 million gallons (40,000 cubic meters) of toxic wastewater into portions of the Bacanuchi and Sonora rivers, may keep schools closed for over…
Alabama Prisons Are Facing A Record-Breaking Tuberculosis Outbreak
“This is a very serious outbreak,” Pam Barrett, director of the tuberculosis control, told the Associated Press. “We think we’re at the end of it. The Department of Corrections is a hotbed of TB because of the living arrangements.” In June, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Center filed a…
Ron Johnson can’t save Ferguson
Brown was the fourth black unarmed black man to be killed by police in the last month. Blacks are imprisoned for drug offenses at ten times the rate of whites despite breaking drug laws at similar rates, according to the ACLU. Black motorists are far more likely to be stopped than white motorists even though…