Portside

The current Israeli government is unlikely to permit advances in religious freedom such as civil marriage, equal funding of non-Orthodox institutions and reducing the power of the ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbinate...an alternative to the rigid and insular Judaism that permeates Israeli public life must remind the Israeli state about the power and wisdom of a pluralistic approach to Jewish life, said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, of the Union for Reform Judaism.

America's leading Sunni ally is proving how easily hubris, delusion, and old-fashioned ineptitude can trump even bottomless wealth. The price of oil dropped from $115 a barrel in June 2014 to around $44 today. While it costs less than $10 to produce a barrel of Saudi oil, the Saudis need a price between $95 and $105 to balance their budget. The country's leaders are now burning through their foreign reserves to make up the difference.

Fifty years ago, young people inspired and moved our whole country away from Jim Crow, war and McCarthyism in the 60s. Today a new generation of young activists are inspiring and moving our country. Today's youth are active for justice, jobs, immigrant rights, against police murder and racism, peace, and are revitalizing the labor movement. Just this week, from Missouri to the Fight for $15 actions, young people are again inspiring a generation and the whole country.

Football has never been more popular. And it has never felt less like a game.

To secure a guilty plea and avoid having to go to trial, prosecutors can use the threat of a harsh mandatory minimum sentence by informing the defendant that if the case goes to trial, the judge will have no choice but to impose the lengthy sentence.

Bringing home 6,000 federal prisoners a few months early and delaying disclosure of criminal records for federal job applicants are both better steps to take than no action at all. It no doubt will have a trickle-down effect to state prisons and state laws where the vast majority of people are suffering unjustly. But is a “trickle-down” effect enough?

Take a look at Monday’s headlines. The Mizzou protest was the nation’s top story, but it was closely followed by a series of university-related controversies. It was as if American colleges had become the front line of the culture war: a battleground for civil rights akin to the occupied campuses of the 1960s.

Elizabeth Warren is proposing to fund a one-time Social Security boost for seniors by ending the taxpayer subsidy for CEO bonuses. Otherwise, seniors will get no increase in Social Security this year. So far, Hillary Clinton as has not taken a position on this or several other measures to improve benefits and assure the solvency of the program. Clinton will have another opportunity at Saturday’s Democratic debate to be clear about where she stands.

This new book traces the antiwar work of visual artists in the United States over the last eighty years. Paul Buhle offers some useful context for understanding this widely varied scope of creative activity as it ranged from antifascist paintings and murals to the poster art of the Vietnam War years to the politically engaged art of the current era.

'This Changes Everything', which re-imagines the vast challenge of climate change, is directed by filmmaker Avi Lewis and inspired by journalist Naomi Klein’s international best-selling book by the same name. Over the course of four years, the pair traveled to nine countries on five continents to profile communities on the front lines of the climate justice movement.