Portside

Saying Israel is a Jewish state in the sense of observant believers would be like asserting that the United States is a Christian state even though about 22% of the population does not identify as Christian (roughly the same proportion as non-Jews in Israel). The point of the US first amendment is to forbid the state to to “establish” a religion.

There is a major retrospective of Art Spiegelman's Life that runs through March 23 at the the Jewish Museum in New York City. I caught up with the esteemed artist to talk about life after Maus, his rejected New Yorker covers, and how Mad magazine shattered Norman Rockwell's America.

Francis is calling for a wider struggle in the defense of the poor and working classes. He writes: “I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”

The main reason for entering electoral or even government terrain and waging struggle there is not so much to `show' the power of our organizations. Rather it is mainly the matter of an earlier step: to build these organizations in the first place, or to take the miniscule ones we have now, and through these struggles, grow and multiply them.

The Machinists’ vote assures the 777x will be built here, but also affirms the company’s hard-nosed negotiating tactics with labor and elected officials.

With 51 percent of the 24,000 or so local machinists who voted saying yes to the pact, Boeing's " 'best and final' offer [now] guarantees assembly of the next 777 widebody jet and the fabrication of the plane's carbon-fiber wing" will be done at plants in the Puget Sound region.

If the FDA’s intention to remove growth promoters is going to be meaningful. Simply reducing antibiotic use (if that does indeed happen) isn’t adequate; by itself, it may even be a threat to welfare. Changing the livestock practices that made antibiotic use necessary will improve animal and human health both.

Since 2000, the Latin American region as a whole has increased its growth rate to about 1.9% annually per capita – not like the pre-1980 era, but a serious improvement over the prior two decades when it was just 0.3%. But Mexico hasn't joined in this long-awaited rebound: its growth has remained below 1%, less than half the regional average, since 2000. And not surprisingly, Mexico's national poverty rate was 52.3% in 2012, basically the same as it was in 1994 (52.4%).