Portside

To ask if the rogue Republican’s surge is good for Democrats is the wrong question. The most important question that should be asked about the Trump candidacy is: What is wrong with America that this racist, misogynist, money-cheating clown should be the frontrunner for the presidential nomination of one of its two major parties?

The 9/11 attacks and the thousands of innocents killed were an international crime of the first order. But 14 years later, no one in Washington has yet taken the slightest responsibility for blowing a hole through the Middle East, loosing mayhem across significant swathes of the planet, or helping release the forces that would create the first true terrorist state of modern history.

Odetta: Long Ago, Far Away. How Many Trees Are There in the World? Mexican Donald Trump with George Lopez. New Human Species Discovered: Homo naledi. Bernie Sanders: Why 'Socialism' Isn't a Dirty Word.

Reader Comments: The GOP, Trump and the Appeal to Reaction; No Union Mines in Kentucky; Black Panther Party film; Lessons from Alabama's Black Communists and the #BLM; Indigenous People's History of the United States; Serena Williams; Climate Change and Workers; New Resource: Black Lives Matter Syllabus; Livestream Sept. 18: Unions, Workers, and the Democratic Party

In upcoming votes for the European Union's most indebted countries, the left will have to battle both the forces of austerity and a resurgent xenophobic right. The backdrop for elections in Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland is one of deep economic crisis originally ignited by the American financial collapse of 2007-08. The response of the EU is massive cutbacks in government spending, widespread layoffs, and double-digit tax hikes on consumers.

After nearly a year of deliberation, the state Supreme Court ruled late Friday afternoon that charter schools are not constitutional. Chief Justice Barbara Madsen wrote that charter schools aren't "common schools" because they're governed by appointed rather than elected boards. Therefore, "money that is dedicated to common schools is unconstitutionally diverted to charter schools,

Washington helped create the conditions with its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers keep on growing. The authorities are overwhelmed, as are the solidarity networks. The refugee crisis has revealed a different rift: between thousands of ordinary citizens, from Greece to Germany to Britain, ready to share their bread their homes, and governments determined to fortify their borders and protect their power, backed by both the anxious and the frankly xenophobic.

There's a difference between 'right-to-work', which limits agreements between workers' unions and employers, and First Amendment restrictions on government in matters of religion, speech, expression, association and so on. For conservatives, though, rights are rolled up into one, giant "freedom" ball aimed at imposing individual beliefs at the expense of democracy right down to the duties of a job. Who then are the prisoners of conscience?

Elaine Brown, who led the Black Panther Party from 1974-1977 and ran for president in 2008, dismantles Nelson’s documentary ‘The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution.’

Systemic problems require systemic solutions. Police alone cannot stop urban violence; it requires action on every front. Rising poverty in the nation's capital has been experienced primarily by black and Latino residents. The average white family's income is $110,757, according to Census estimates. For black families it's $39,081. There's a growing income gap nationwide. This kind of disparity breeds hopelessness, which drives people to acts of desperation and violence.