Portside

Ernest Lawrence was a leading member of the scientific community that invented the atom bomb. He was also a pioneer in the growth of the military industrial complex. Michael Hiltzik tells this history in his new book. Sam Kean observes in this review that "there is much to admire and much to mourn" here, as we continue to live with the complex legacy of Big Science three quarters of a century after its emergence.

As far as Yanis Varoufakis is concerned, the Greek election campaign will be 'sad and fruitless'. He tells Late Night Live why he won't be running and why he is instead putting his energy into political action on a European level.

Guatemalan civilians who support the ousting of President Otto Pérez Molina have formed a wall of bodies to let lawmakers into Congress, protecting them from presidential loyalists trying to prevent a vote on withdrawing the leader’s immunity from prosecution in a corruption scandal. A commission of lawmakers has recommended that Pérez Molina’s immunity of office be withdrawn, and now the issue is before the full congress.

Settlement Reached in California Class Action Suit Moves Out of SHU Those There 10 Years or Longer, Ends Solitary Purely Due to Gang Validation

MSNBC Confidential; Black Twitter; Web of Freedom; Facebook Gulag; Who’s Afraid of the Dark Web?; Pentagon Dirty Pool

Mullins asked for their latest comments on current proposals to preserve the area, focusing on the 1,600-acre Blair Mountain Battlefield National Register of Historic Places Nomination Area, or the BMBNA. The companies interested in mining the area include: Aracoma Coal Co., a subsidiary of Alpha Natural Resources; Mingo Logan Coal, a subsidiary of Arch Coal; and WPP LLC, a coal-leasing company with offices in Delaware.

It was when philanthropist Julius Rosenwald read Booker T. Washington's 'Up From Slavery' and then met the celebrated black educator on the campus of Tuskegee Institute that his life work came into focus. Rosenwald became passionate about providing funding for more than 5,300 schools in the Jim Crow South. At one point in the pre-civil rights era, it was estimated, one in three black youths in the South attended a Rosenwald school.

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, an umbrella entity representing 600,000 workers, has arguably reached a zenith of its influence under Durazo, its first woman leader. It helped land allies on the Los Angeles City Council and county Board of Supervisors and recently pushed through a minimum wage law requiring large Los Angeles hotels to pay workers at least $15.37 an hour, one of the nation's highest base wages.

The US Supreme Court decided that it's constitutional to exclude women from registering for the draft because they're banned from combat units. That ban ends in 2016.

Far from signaling the retreat of the state from investment in urban economies, this process has witnessed the shift of robust public spending on cities away from public goods like affordable housing and toward spaces and structures designed to provide the elite with new opportunities to consume conspicuously.