Portside

Texas new voter ID law could prevent women who use maiden names or hyphenated names from voting. Women must present original documents verifying their name change. So far Texas has issued 41 free voter IDs to women who request one - out of 1.4 million Texas voters who lack the required documents.

We need to own up to is that privatization experiments, based on ideology rather than evidence, have created disruption, neglect, and harm to vital public services and infrastructure - and those effects have undermined the private sector which depends on high quality public services. We seem to have forgotten that the public sector has long created the environment and resources necessary for businesses to prosper.

The nation's largest labor unions are ready and willing to help fight global warming, but are cautioning environmentalists that workers need new clean-energy jobs before existing industries are shut down.

More than 80% of parents voted to skip an exam that the state says helps evaluate teachers. Move is believed to be unprecedented.

Democrats like moderate Keynesianism. Republicans favour free markets unfettered. The crisis-ridden system is never challenged

Revelations before the trip of a covert U.S. Internet surveillance program, code-named Prism, caused outrage in a country where memories of the eavesdropping East German Stasi secret police are still fresh.

More than 100 children’s book authors and illustrators have sent a letter to the White House to ask President Obama to ease the country’s mandates for "excessive" standardized testing in our nation’s schools. Such an emphasis has a negative impact on kids’ love of reading and literature, they say. The letter is being promoted by advocacy group FairTest (The National Center for Fair & Open Testing).

A wider view of the War on Terror may be necessary, but it is by no means more comforting.