Portside

Young black men were again killed by police at a sharply higher rate than other Americans in 2016, intensifying concerns over the expected abandonment of criminal justice reform by Donald Trump’s incoming administration.

Many US historians have advanced the theory that Lincoln spoke against the war for political reasons, subsequent speeches disprove that theory as do his letters to his law partner, William Herndon. He railed against the war a second time a month after his famous “spot resolutions” over objections of the younger members of his party, and even voted for an amendment condemning the war which was tacked on to a resolution honoring war hero Zachary Taylor, who would be next

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the most influential black leaders in history. His legacy has inspired people around the world to fight for equality — but that hyper-visibility also led to the whitewashing and sanitization of his life. It's a disservice to King's memory to ignore the full scope of his beliefs and his complexity as a person. His words can teach us a lot about what it means to be an activist and advocate for social justice.

1,424 law professors from 180 different schools in 49 states (Alaska doesn't have a law school), including this writer, signed a letter to Senators Charles Grassley and Dianne Feinstein of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stating, "Nothing in Senator Sessions' public life since 1986 has convinced us that he is a different man than the 39-year-old attorney who was deemed too racially insensitive to be a federal district court judge."

Rep. Greg Walden speaks in 2014 alongside those who said they had been negatively affected by the Affordable Care Act. Today, with Obamacare on the chopping block, Walden says he wants to see the program funded “one way or another.” “If you don’t,” he said, “the plans have the ability to cancel midyear and we said we wouldn’t pull the rug out from under people — and we shouldn’t.”

Or Is That the Least of Our Problems When It Comes to U.S.-Iranian Relations?

Regarding the future of quantum mechanics, I have to echo Viola in Twelfth Night: “O time, thou must untangle this, not I.”

The resignation of Shai Masot, the Israeli embassy’s senior political officer, is the latest fallout from Al Jazeera’s six-month investigation of Israel’s plot to influence UK politicians, which included a political “hit list” and “taking down” a British cabinet minister who criticized Israeli settlement policy. A former CIA station chief warns of such “insidious threats” and the “shame” of those who passively allow their institutions to be suborned by a foreign power.

Still, it’s worth emphasizing that these findings may not be exclusive to Chicago. Whether it’s Baltimore, Cleveland, New Orleans, or Ferguson, Missouri, the Justice Department has found horrific constitutional violations in how police use force, how they target minority residents, how they stop and ticket people, and virtually every other aspect of policing. These issues come up time and time again, no matter the city that federal investigators look at.

True, the Republicans played hardball and blocked many of his initiatives, but Obama did little to fight back in kind. If he was a community organizer, he was from the most timid in that genre. He kept extending a hand to the Republican dog that kept biting it at every overture.