Portside

At least 27 human species have walked the Earth, but only our lineage survived. Our ancestors may have crossed a cerebral Rubicon that led to babies being born “early”

Daniel McGowan is now serving the last six months of his seven-year sentence for an environmentally motivated arson at a halfway house in Brooklyn. The Bureau of Prisons has retaliated against McGowan for writing constitutionally protected political blogs by placing him in a special prison unit and then after he was released, re-imprisoned him when he exercised his free speech rights by writing an article complaining about it. Kafka is twirling in his grave.

Henry Kissinger's quote recently released by Wikileaks, "the illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer," likely brought a smile to his legions of elite media, government, corporate and high society admirers. Oh that Henry! That rapier wit! That trademark insouciance! That naughtiness! It is unlikely, however, that the descendants of his more than 6 million victims in Indochina share in the amusement.

The fact that journalists assigned to cover this story could fail to remember that political violence has been part of the United States landscape for the past decade and more is testament to a narrow definition that dismisses right-wing domestic violence as not really terrorism–and to a will to believe, for partisan or psychological reasons, that George W. Bush "kept us safe" after 9/11. The reality is not so comforting.

Scientists create a see-through brain. Boston Marathon suspect interrogation may answer many questions. Lewis Black on the moocher class. Brubeck's 'Take Five' with sitar and tabla. Glenda Jackson's 'tribute' to Baroness Thatcher. Documentary film: Ain't I a Person?

The report, which compares kids in 29 Western countries, measures well-being across five metrics: material well-being, health and safety, behaviors and risks, housing and environment, as well as education. It ranks the United States in the bottom third on all five measures of well-being and particularly low on education and poverty. The

There are many interesting things to be said about this election, one being that it really wasn’t a fight over ideology. Maduro, who had been directly named by Chávez as his preferred replacement, ran as the Chavista candidate. But in a way so did Capriles, who pledged to be a better administrator of the society Chávez left behind.

Eight University of Michigan students were arrested Wednesday night after they blocked a busy intersection near campus in protest over the university's policy not to offer undocumented students from Michigan in-state tuition.

For some reason, all the billionaire reformers and all their politician friends prefer ordering cuts to fixing the state’s revenue system. Some argue, not without plausibility, that they welcome fiscal crisis as an excuse to push privatization.

Every year in the United States, 4,500 Americans die a year in workplace accidents. And yet we only spend approximately $550 million on OSHA’s budget to prevent workplace accidents—on OSHA’s total budget.