Via Alternet Jim Hightower offers a simplified look at the possible consequences of this trade deal: Twenty years later, the gang that gave us NAFTA is back with the TPP, a “trade deal” that mostly does not deal with trade. Of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters! The other […]

And some vigilant independent watchdogs are tracking the negotiations with sources they trust, including Dean Baker and Yves Smith, who join Moyers & Company this week. Both have written extensively about the TPP and tell Bill the pact actually has very little to do with free trade. Instead, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center […]

by Linda Beale Religious rights, taxes, and corporatism–whose rights are they? Part I The United States has a tradition of separation of church and state that goes back to the founding discussions that concluded that it would be inappropriate to establish a state religion because individuals should be at liberty to believe or not believe.  […]

Reader Dan Hirschman, a U-Mich. undergraduate alum and currently a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology there, wrote the following comment to my post here yesterday titled “What I agree with Richard Kahlenberg about on Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action.  And what I don’t.”: Dear Beverly, Thank you for the fantastic analysis of this case […]

Wow.  It looks, from SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston’s report on the argument this afternoon in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, that I was, um … right in saying yesterday and again earlier today that this case is not, at heart, an affirmative action case.  The case is really about when a voter referendum can […]

As Dan Crawford posted below, SCOTUSblog linked in its daily Round-up feature this morning to my AB post yesterday about Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, which is being argued at the Supreme Court this afternoon. Dan posted the Round-up paragraph in which the reference appears.  It says: Commentary on Schuette comes from Richard […]

Scotusblog Round up quote: Commentary on Schuette comes from Richard Kahlenberg, who in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal argues that “[a] ruling in Schuette that promotes race-neutral strategies to boost minority admissions would reinforce the message the court tried to deliver last term in Fisher v. University of Texas but has largely fallen […]

  The Way to Stop Discrimination on the Basis of Race Is To Stop Discriminating on the Basis of Race. — Chief Justice John Roberts, Jun. 28, 2007, writing for a four-justice plurality in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. Given that statement of his own belief, and his concomitant […]

In the News York Times comes this notice: The Supreme Court begins a new term on Monday, even as the landmark rulings of last term continue to reverberate. The court has agreed to hear more than 50 cases so far on disputes both familiar and fresh: from affirmative action and freedom of speech, to campaign […]

In response to my e-mail on an Oct. 8th  decision on McCutchen vs Federal Election Commission by the Supreme Court that could expand the role of money in elections, Beverly Mann writes:   … the argument in McCutchen is that it makes no sense to have this artificial divide between “issue” advocacy and candidate advocacy—that is, to […]