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 A commission of lawmakers has recommended that Pérez Molina’s immunity of office be withdrawn, and now the issue is before the full congress.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 House and Senate passed a “CROmnibus” spending bill packed with giveaways to Wall Street, big banks and big corporations and then quit town. Congress failed to take what the unions representing postal workers identify as the most necessary immediate step to aid the postal service: initiation of “a one-year moratorium on a reduction in service standards and plant closings.”

Lords take a stand; Michael’s protest single is back; D’Angelo carries it on; Wall Street’s generosity; GOP Cuba snit; Woody sez

Established in 1930 after a schism within the Jewish socialist Workmen's Circle, the IWO's founding members came from the ranks of prominent leaders of the American communist movement. Supporting the left wing of the New Deal, IWO leaders hoped that once workers came to see state-supported healthcare, unemployment insurance, and minimum wage as a right, they would work to put the Communist Party at the helm of a worker-led American revolution.