Portside

If you think this suggests that early animals started out simple and gradually evolved new features, and things like sponges branched off before they were added, you wouldn't be alone. Over the years, lots of researchers argued the same thing. But a recent genome sequence indicated that the oldest branch of the animal family tree that led to the comb jellies, with muscles, nerves, and tentacles, were an older branch than sponges.

According to a new white paper by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, our labyrinthine tax system is encouraging corporations to invest in creating jobs overseas, when unemployment remains doggedly high here at home, while giving US-based multinationals good reason to deprive our treasury of revenues when we should be investing in infrastructure and the American people.

Two new imaginative state proposals are now seeking to leverage the power of the public purse against executive excess. In California, lawmakers are zeroing in on how government taxes. New legislation pending in Rhode Island targets how government spends.

The big bad thing she confessed to was… ambivalence. Ambivalence about the early days of motherhood. Sideswiped by the consuming reality of parenting, she admitted that she often wanted to escape; she didn’t want to spend every round-the-clock moment with her new child; she wanted to work!

An amendment that would prohibit the Fed from interfering in state medical pot laws is still up in the air.

Teacher unions must unite with parents, students and the community to improve our schools—to demand social justice and democracy so that we have strong public schools, healthy communities, and a vibrant democracy.

“Today, President Obama showed once again that he doesn’t get it.”

Edward Snowden is the greatest patriot whistleblower of our time, and he knows what I learned more than four decades ago: until the Espionage Act gets reformed, he can never come home safe and receive justice

Drone warfare is based on the lie that war can be made more exact, limited and humane through technology.

Hunter-gatherers—and presumably all our ancestors—lived as equals