Portside

The confirmation hearing for Trump's Secretary of Labor nominee, Andrew Puzder, was scheduled to start January 17 but has been pushed back and may not happen until next month. It may be that worker protest is having an impact. Critics have revealed that Puzder's company has frequently violated wage and hour, and safety and health laws.

1,424 law professors from 180 different schools in 49 states (Alaska doesn't have a law school), including this writer, signed a letter to Senators Charles Grassley and Dianne Feinstein of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stating, "Nothing in Senator Sessions' public life since 1986 has convinced us that he is a different man than the 39-year-old attorney who was deemed too racially insensitive to be a federal district court judge."

Rep. Greg Walden speaks in 2014 alongside those who said they had been negatively affected by the Affordable Care Act. Today, with Obamacare on the chopping block, Walden says he wants to see the program funded “one way or another.” “If you don’t,” he said, “the plans have the ability to cancel midyear and we said we wouldn’t pull the rug out from under people — and we shouldn’t.”

Or Is That the Least of Our Problems When It Comes to U.S.-Iranian Relations?

Regarding the future of quantum mechanics, I have to echo Viola in Twelfth Night: “O time, thou must untangle this, not I.”

Andrew Puzder, Donald Trump’s nominee for labor secretary, is uniquely unqualified for that job.

The latest episode of the ABC sitcom expresses anger at the election’s outcome. It also insists on empathy.

The resignation of Shai Masot, the Israeli embassy’s senior political officer, is the latest fallout from Al Jazeera’s six-month investigation of Israel’s plot to influence UK politicians, which included a political “hit list” and “taking down” a British cabinet minister who criticized Israeli settlement policy. A former CIA station chief warns of such “insidious threats” and the “shame” of those who passively allow their institutions to be suborned by a foreign power.

Still, it’s worth emphasizing that these findings may not be exclusive to Chicago. Whether it’s Baltimore, Cleveland, New Orleans, or Ferguson, Missouri, the Justice Department has found horrific constitutional violations in how police use force, how they target minority residents, how they stop and ticket people, and virtually every other aspect of policing. These issues come up time and time again, no matter the city that federal investigators look at.

True, the Republicans played hardball and blocked many of his initiatives, but Obama did little to fight back in kind. If he was a community organizer, he was from the most timid in that genre. He kept extending a hand to the Republican dog that kept biting it at every overture.