By Jacob Sullum|
Last March Mother Jones, which usually inveighs against the war on drugs, discovered its inner prohibitionist, warning that “More Cocaine Could Soon Be on Our Streets, Thanks to the Sequester.”
By Bernie Sanders
I start my approach to health care from two very basic premises. First, health care must be recognized as a right, not a privilege.
As political attention has shifted from a potential U.S. military strike against Syria to a potential agreement on the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons arbitrated by Russia, all eyes are on the United States, the Middle East, and key actors in Europe.
By Robert Parry
American pundits are missing the bigger point about the Republican shutdown of the U.S. government and the GOP’s threatened default on America’s credit.

By Cong. John Connyers
In January of 1989, I first introduced the bill H.R. 40, Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. I have re-introduced HR 40 every Congress since 1989, and will continue to do so until it’s passed into law.
President Barack Obama placed his presidency on the line for national healthcare, known as Obama-care. Conservative Republicans shut down America’s national government over it. Here are five reasons why Obamacare scares people.

We were/are both products and co- producers of the Black Freedom Movement, members of a defiant and determined generation and organization, Us, which self-consciously responded to Frantz Fanon’s challenging insight and insistence that “each generation must. . .
While Colorado and Washington have de-criminalized recreational use of marijuana and twenty states allow use for medical purposes, a Louisiana man was sentenced to twenty years in prison in New Orleans criminal court for possessing 15 grams, .529 of an ounce, of marijuana.
We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades.
After the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, as Nation editors were trying to figure out what should go into that week’s issue, William Greider, the magazine’s national affairs correspondent, offered some wise words that I’ve never forgotten. “Later, there will be time for analysis of who and what was responsible,” he said. “Right now, it’s time to grieve.”

Only a couple of weeks ago, as the nation celebrated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful “I Have a Dream” speech, I was reminded of the Rev. King’s last birthday, in January 1968.
By Michael Ortiz
We’ve heard the argument over and over. “Of course we’re in a post-racial society; racism is over; slavery is long gone; the president is black, etc.” And then we’ve heard the counterargument over and over. “Post-racial?! How can that be the case when health disparities remain significant along racial lines? When unemployment and incarceration continue to disproportionately affect people of color, etc.?”