Portside

Last year, the hotel violated federal labor law by suspending five workers for wearing union buttons and talking to their coworkers about the union drive. They were eventually reinstated with back pay. The union also filed an official complaint accusing Trump management of "incidents of alleged physical assault, verbal abuse, intimidation, and threats."

2015 can be viewed as the year in which the epochal transition from one set of fuels to another took off, with renewables making such significant strides that, for the first time in centuries, the beginning of the end of the Fossil Fuel Era has come into sight. This shift will take place no matter how well or poorly the deal just achieved at the U.N. climate summit in Paris is carried out.

"The time surely comes when (justice) must and will be heard," Mayor Mitch Landrieu told the council as he called for the statues to be put in a museum or a Civil War park. "Members of the council, that day is today. The Confederacy, you see, was on the wrong side of history and humanity."

In this strange domain, reality is extremely malleable. The laws of cause and effect no longer apply.

Bernie Sanders' Presidential campaign posted some big wins this week with endorsements by a major national union and a liberal activist group. But tensions with the Democratic National Committee exploded into a crisis, as the DNC hobbled the campaign by blocking access to voter and donor data, and the Sanders campaign hit back with a federal lawsuit.

Bernie Sanders Knocks Donald Trump's Scapegoating. Why Einstein Hated Quantum Mechanics. Merry Confederate Christmas. How Girls Who Code Is Bridging The Gender Gap In Tech. Movie: Where to Invade Next.

Reader Comments: Donald Trump - Anti-Muslim policies are steeped in racism, anti-communism and fascism; Chicago - CITYWIDE WALK OUT PART 2!! Rahm Emanuel & Anita Alvarez Must Resign - Friday, Dec. 18; End of Jewish History?; The Wal-Mart Effect; Kohler strike; Barbara Ehrenreich, working class, race, class, and privilege; Lincoln Brigade; Climate Change and Oil Wars; Cuba; The Big Short; Multicultural trip to Cuba; No Tidbits for next three weeks

Universities giant and small, public and private, bring African-American men to campus at grotesque levels to earn the school millions in football and basketball revenues. Stories about academic freedom and free speech have been appearing in newspapers more frequently over the last few weeks. And curiously enough political actors on and off campus who traditionally have been least likely to be concerned about these subjects are becoming its major advocates.

Whatever party ends on top in the Spanish election, it will have to form a coalition, thus ending the reign of the two-party system that has dominated the country since Franco. Late polls show the right-wing PP taking a beating, dropping from 44 percent that it won four years ago to 28%, but it will still win the largest number of votes of any one party. Followed by the Socialists, at 21%, the center-right Ciudadanos Party at 19%, and the left-wing Podemos Party at 15.7%

The Sanders campaign is resurrecting socialist electoral politics and paving the way for a more radical public discourse. Only the revival of a decimated labor movement and the rebirth of socialist political parties that can bring them all together could result in the major redistribution of wealth and power that would allow real movement on these individual issues.