Portside

The Vietnam War has doomed President Lyndon Johnson to a lowly status among presidents, overshadowing his domestic successes. But LBJ's ranking might change if the new evidence on Richard Nixon sabotaging LBJ's Vietnam peace talks were factored in, writes Robert Parry.

"The number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world's population. So poverty is spreading even as wealth accumulates. It is not enough to bemoan this enormous inequality, we must also explain why it is happening."

First European Citizens' Initiative calls for water to be human right, not a commodity.

During Black History Month, let’s not forget the speech-stifling history of US government spying that has targeted communities of color.

Two items on the Keystone Pipeline: Native Americans discuss the Keystone pipeline; and a link to '10 Reasons to Oppose the Keystone XL Pipeline' by Rose Ann DeMoro

More than two dozen states now have similar Stand Your Ground laws on the books, thanks to the American Legislative Exchange Council, or "ALEC."

When the new farm bill is enacted, many of America’s hardest working families will experience cuts in services and have trouble putting food on their family’s table. But there will be major gains for an industry that most Americans might not expect: banking.

“Profiting from Probation: America’s ‘Offender-Funded’ Probation Industry,” describes how more than 1,000 courts in several US states delegate tremendous coercive power to companies that are often subject to little meaningful oversight or regulation. In some of these cases, probation companies act more like abusive debt collectors than probation officers, charging the debtors for their services.

The dark money strategies Noble helped pioneer at the Center are likely to play a substantial role in the upcoming midterms. Targeted blasts of spending by outside groups could have far more effect on this year’s smaller slate of congressional and local races than they had on 2012’s megabuck national and statewide contests, campaign finance experts said.

In one of the worst coal ash spills in U.S. history, up to 27 million gallons of contaminated water and 82,000 tons of coal ash spilled into North Carolina’s Dan River after a pipe burst underneath a waste pond. Did state regulators intentionally block lawsuits against Duke Energy in order to shield the company where Republican Gov. Pat McCrory worked for 28 years?