Portside

A look at Obama's core philosophy, his political appeal and accomplishments, his limitations and the constraints under which he governed.

Why did so many veterans take up the cause of the Native Americans and environmentalists at Standing Rock? My own reasons are rooted in western Pennsylvania’s coal country, where I grew up.

The protests will focus on opposition to Republican budget proposals, especially cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

The Nixonian Ways Of Donald Trump. A Better Man | Keb' Mo'. Neighborhood Atheism. The No Cloning Theorem. You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch.

Reader Comments: Calling Working People of All Colors; The Scandal of Vast Inequality in Retirement Pay; Ohio Factory Workers Fight for a Union; No Rockettes Will Be Required to Perform at Inauguration; 25 Places That Raised the Minimum Wage in 2016; The UN Security Council Resolution; Israeli Hysteria Over UN Vote; Stop Fueling the Anti-Russia Frenzy; History, Political Strategy - for the Future; Resources; National Single Payer Strategy Conference; and more...

On March 16, 1968 American soldiers murdered 407 unarmed men, women, and children in My Lai. The same day, in the nearby village of My Khe, another unit of the same division murdered an estimated 97 additional Vietnamese civilians. I and my fellow Marines routinely killed, maimed, and abused Vietnamese on a near-daily basis, destroying homes, fields, crops, and livestock with every weapon available to us, from rifles and grenades to heavy artillery and napalm.

Without the Medicaid expansion, low-income people across the country would be left with no pathway to affordable health coverage. Repealing the Medicaid expansion would eliminate health coverage for up to, and quite possibly more than, 11 million low-income Americans in the 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have taken up this option.

Ultraconservative politics are bullying the state government, but there is hope in the numbers being rallied to the cause. Donald Trump's triumph across the South and Midwest, which won him the Electoral College and the White House, did not extend to Governor Pat McCrory in my home state of North Carolina.

The passage of UNSC 2334 marks the first occasion since 1980 that the Security Council has censured Israel's settler-colonialist practices, primarily because the United States had consistently threatened to use or exercised its veto power against similar initiatives for the past thirty-six years. On this occasion, Washington once again refused to support the resolution-but on account of its abstention, the Security Council was able to unanimously adopt the draft text.

Steve Thornton has been an activist in Hartford since moving there in the 1970's after graduating from the University of Connecticut. He worked for many years for the Hartford-based health care workers union, New England District 1199, and has been involved in many organizations and campaigns there over the last 40 years. He also has a keen interest in local people's history, and some years ago started a website, shoeleatherhistoryproject.com, to popularize that history