Portside

Powerful new quantitative tools are now available to combat partisan bias in the drawing of voting districts.

In dismissing both men's convictions, Judge James Linn said he was "stunned" by the prosecution decision to abandon the case. "I'd never seen anything like this," the longtime judge said before tossing their convictions. No physical evidence linked Almodovar to the 1994 double homicide, according to an investigation led by former U.S. Attorney Scott Lassar, who found it "more likely than not" that Almodovar was in fact innocent of the murders.

Theoretically, a bill or nomination could pass out of the Senate with the support of senators representing only 16.2 percent of the population.

Four companies have publicly raised concerns about how the Arkansas Department of Correction came to stockpile the drugs for its lethal injection cocktail — midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride — but only the McKesson Corporation, the drug distributor that ranks fifth on the Fortune 500 list of companies, made an explicit allegation of deception.

Far from a bucolic idyll, farming in America is one of its most dangerous professions. And almost no one is trying to change that.

Part 2 of Baz Luhrmann’s Netflix series about hip-hop’s origins continues the squandering of great material and talent.

Last year Portside published Whither the Socialist Left? Thinking the "Unthinkable", which created a lot of controversy, discussion and debate. Now, the author has written an update "Whither the Socialist Left? Round 2." Today he finds the broad progressive community remains largely fragmented, lacking a coherent overarching vision that would not only react to recurring crises, but offer ideas and values to guide and illuminate the road to more transforming change.

Whole Foods has attempted to crush anything resembling a union drive among its employees. In two Chicago stores, workers have staged wildcat strikes and walkouts to protest what they say are draconian attendance policies and unfair dismissals of workers.

Different music encourages different frames of mind. That music can move us is no surprise; it's the point of the art form, after all. What's new here is the manner in which the researchers have quantified in fine-grained detail the cognitive ramifications of unpacked melodic compounds. This investigation of music's building blocks may be more relevant than you suppose.

Today, the Supreme Court handed down a decision striking a Massachusetts law that protects patient access to abortion clinics. The Court, upheld the historically broad interpretation of the president's recess appointments power, and opened the door to new forms of Senate obstruction by ruling that the president's recess appointments were invalid because the Senate had used "pro forma sessions" - sessions in name only - to avoid going into recess.