Portside

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.

Why has the law been such a flop in a state that had so much to gain from it? When I traveled across Mississippi this summer, from Delta towns to the Tennessee border to the Piney Woods to the Gulf Coast, what I found was a series of cascading problems: bumbling errors and misinformation; ignorance and disorganization; a haunting racial divide; and, above all, the unyielding ideological imperative of conservative politics.

These efforts to curb young and minority voters come as youth -- and especially minority youth -- are becoming increasingly larger parts of the American electorate. Voters between 18 and 29 years old were critical to President Barack Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012. In North Carolina in 2008, the only age group of which a majority voted for Obama was voters aged 18 to 29, according to CNN. Obama won the state by just 14,177 votes.

A book review by Michael Hirsch of Stanley Aronowitz's latest book, The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement, Verso 2014. Stanley Aronowitz is a former factory worker and organizer with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the Oil,Chemical and Atomic Workers. Mr Hirsch writes that Aronowitz argues for direct action, workplace democracy and that unions become partners in job and community struggles. He calls this a book of wonder.