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Give Us the Ballot

Michael O'Donnell Barnes & Noble Review
The Voting Rights Act (VRA), passed by Congress in July, 1965 and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson fifty years ago this month, has had a storied history. This basic achievement of the Civil Rights Movement has also seen conservatives, including long-time anti VRA campaigner and now U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, fight it tooth and nail. Ari Berman tells this story, in a book Michael O'Donnell calls both a "depressing" and a "galvanizing" read.

The Problem with Female Superheroes

Cindi May Scientific American
Given that gender portrayals in music videos, advertisements, video games and other popular culture powerfully shape expectations and attitudes about gender roles, it is not surprising that the emergence of powerful, but still hypersexualized, heroine images has affected popular beliefs and self-images. But the impact has not always been what you might think.

Stunning Truths About Mass Shootings in America

Erica Hellerstein ThinkProgress
Among the findings of a new survey of all public mass shootings in the United States over the last 50 years: we account for one third of all such events in the world, mass murderers here use more weapons than elsewhere, and a nation's civilian firearm ownership rate is the strongest predictor of mass shootings.

On World Dog Day, How Dogs Saved Humankind

Caren Cooper Plos Blogs
August 26 is World Dog Day, a good time to reflect on the very reasonable possibility that dogs enabled modern humans to outcompete Neanderthals, and also on the fact that dogs are smarter, more empathetic and more devious than you knew. These days, both ordinary dogs and their ordinary humans can participate in Citizen Science, advancing our understanding of this oldest human coevolution.

Nurses' Union Election Shows Faster NLRB Pace

Jane M. Von Bergen, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer The Philadelphia Inquirer
New NLRB rules quicken the union election process between petitioning the NLRB for an election and the election itself - leaving less time, the unions say, for union-busting intimidation.

In Chicago, Hunger Striking to Save a School

Jeanette Taylor-Ramann EduShyster
Why are Chicago parents on a hunger strike to save a neighborhood school? Because after five years of fighting, they’ve run out of options...

America’s First Red Scare

Andre Fleche Jacobin
For many of its ideologues, a slaveholding Confederacy was meant to be a bulwark against radical politics of all stripes.The development of Southern nationalism sprang in part from the desire to forestall the influence of radical ideas on American society. Conservative Southern writers developed a term for left-wing social theory — “red republicanism.”

Coal Dethroned In Appalachia, the Coal Industry Is in Collapse, But the Mountains Aren’t Coming Back

Laura Gottesdiener TomDispatch
Nothing can save the coal industry in the face of market forces -- especially the boom in natural gas extracted from shale deposits via fracking -- and the relentless advance of climate change. If Morrisey and his cohorts had West Virginia’s true interests at heart, they would be petitioning for federal funds to turn the state into an innovation center for clean energy -- the only sure path to economic growth in a climate-ravaged world.