Portside

Fiorello La Guardia also took office in a time of crisis—and he was open to new ideas and bold reforms.

... To our friends near and far, if you believe that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, join us for the Moral March on Raleigh.

Also -- Not a single living person of color got into the Rock Hall this year. Among the Class of 2014, only the late Clarence Clemons—inducted as a sideman with the E Street Band—is black. (For the record, this has happened only once before in the Hall’s 28-year history: In 2003, the only black inductee was deceased sideman Benny Benjamin.)

An interview with Eric Foner, Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.

America's most important Israel argument is happening on campuses. How Hillel conducts itself has a great deal of influence on how American Jews debate their country's policy toward Israel. The rift within Hillel also bears on what it means to be Jewish, suggesting a growing rift among younger Jews over American policy toward Israel that anticipates divisions just appearing among Jewish adults. It touches on the question of what it means to be Jewish in America.

I always find it amazing that whether it be in the bedroom or the den, “conservatives” like Brooks so often want to use the law to enforce their own perception of what is morally correct, what are “satisfying pleasures” and what they deem “lesser pleasures.”

The other NRA, with its campaign to keep wages down, defies both democracy and common decency

Well, the interesting thing, it seems to me, about him is that he was constantly pushing the edges of what—of political thought, in the African-American as well as the mainstream community