Portside

Democrats have reached a watershed. After two decades in which the party has moved leftward on social issues but has largely accepted the financial sector's economic preferences - the abject failures of the market economy are pushing the party leftward. The revolt against Summers was less about his positions on today's economic issues but his opposition to regulating derivatives. In Congress, in New York City and Chicago, Democrats are feeling the heat of the people.

There are few things more bizarre than watching people advocate that another country be bombed even while acknowledging that it will achieve no good outcomes other than safeguarding the "credibility" of those doing the bombing. Relatedly, it's hard to imagine a more potent sign of a weak, declining empire than having one's national "credibility" depend upon periodically bombing other countries.

Momentum builds against rush to war against Syria and further escalation in the Mideast. 162 members of Congress send letter to Obama demanding that Congress be called back into session, for full debate and congressional vote before any new war is launched. Western intervention will only spread the killing, which is gravest threat to the people of Iraq. New evidence that U.S. derailed UN probe.

Climate-change policy directly affects Koch Industries’s bottom line. Koch Industries, according to Environmental Protection Agency statistics cited in the study, is a major source of carbon-dioxide emissions, the kind of pollution that most scientists believe causes global warming.

Conservative Republicans in our nation’s capital have managed to accomplish something they only dreamed of when Tea Partiers streamed into Congress at the start of 2011: They’ve basically shut Congress down. Meanwhile, the nation's political work has shifted to the states, and the political division among them is widening.