Perspectives
The impacts of privatizing the turnpike
"We are privatizing ourselves into one disaster after another,” veteran journalist Ted Koppel said recently on NPR. “We’ve privatized a lot of what our military is doing. We’ve privatized a lot of what our intelligence agencies are doing. We’ve privatized our very ...
The silent jobless
Jobs are slowly coming back, but that’s small comfort to more than 13 million Americans who remain unemployed. For every current job opening, four people are still looking for a job. Many others have given up even trying to find work...
The consequences of a wildlife comeback
Amidst the horrors of fracking and climate change, America has a mostly unnoticed environmental success story. In his fascinating new book Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds, Jim Sterba — veteran reporter ...
Seeger’s true politics
Folk singer Pete Seeger, who died at age 94 last month, provided a soundtrack for every progressive crusade of our time, from labor unions to civil rights, from world peace to environmentalism. He wrote, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “If I Had A Hammer” and “...
Domestic violence: A private matter?
Perhaps it’s time to retire the term “domestic violence.” It seems that some folks still believe it’s somehow different than regular, ordinary old violence...
A fracking threat to children
We’ve all seen (or at least heard of) the movie Erin Brockovich, in which a bold and fiercely determined mom takes on a chemical company for exposing a small town and the families and children that live there to toxic chemicals that have been linked to cancer. It’s ...
The Democratic Party’s two faces
"The real struggle within the Democratic Party is where you stand on income inequality and whether the government needs to be a part of fixing that problem. The demographics that the Democratic Party must attract are the people who need responsive government.” —Rep. ...
The Zinn witch hunt continues
In 2010, after historian Howard Zinn died, then-Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels sat down at his computer and started a quiet witch hunt with a flurry of emails to top state education officials. This only became public this summer after the Associated Press obtained copies...
‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ should end now
On Tuesday, the Defense Department unveiled its...
Colorado’s Amendment 64: How the amendment affects the state’s budget
Editor's Note: See Boulder Weekly's official endorsement of Amendment 64 here...
The death penalty: Are we getting it right?
The idea of Georgia inmate Troy Davis lying on a gurney in an agonizing wait for nine justices hundreds of miles away to resolve in a single-sentence statement that he should in fact die — even if innocent — should be enough to give pause to the most ardent ...