Every morning at the start of the school day when I was a boy, we would stand next to our desks facing the flag with our hands over our hearts and say these words:
 

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all."   

Of course, I never questioned whether the republic to which I was pledging allegiance did provide "liberty and justice for all".  As an adult with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, I can clearly see now that it did not – certainly not then.  Not before the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960s, at a time when so-called Jim Crow laws in the South still deprived blacks of the right to vote.  When "working women" were teachers, nurses, or secretaries, full stop.

Then for one shining moment the ideal of "liberty and justice for all" appeared to take wing.  From voting rights to equal employment opportunity, the scent of social progress was in the air.  That was from mid-1960s to the late '70s and it was the stepchild of the Vietnam War, which traumatized and galvanized millions of hitherto apathetic Americans.  Think of it as a collective case of PTSD, a nation at once dazed, depressed, and outraged by the stupidity of fighting a war we couldn't win in a faraway place against a people who posed no threat to us.
 

Unfortunately, it was a fleeting moment.  The 1970s gave way to the Reagan era and ushered in the "greed is good" ethic that dominates our political culture, drives the supercharged K Street lobby machine, and stalks the halls of Congress. 

In his new book entitled Fairness and Freedom, David Hackett Fischer compares the history and political culture of New Zealand and the United States ...

Mitt Romney will be the Republican to face President Obama in the fall. Tuesday night was the clincher, as the former Massachusetts governor won in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington D.C. He may stumble on, but the Catholic zealot Rick Santorum is finished, wiped out by Romney's vast financial resources.

Eight years ago, Romney began his bid to win the Republican nomination, only to be crushed by John McCain. In that campaign, he was tagged as a crypto-liberal former governor of Massachusetts and author of a health plan derided by Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

Week after tedious week in his second bid, Romney has had to stab his own plan in the back, lashed by his Republican opponents as the true originator of "Obamacare," now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court. Whatever tincture of liberalism he might once have exhibited has long since vanished. His conservatism is of a harshness way beyond the positions of the last Republican challenger to a Democratic president, Bob Dole, who was thrashed by Bill Clinton in 1996.

Romney's opportunism in junking previous positions when under conservative pressure has been unremitting. Take the single biggest issue in American politics today, the minimum wage.

If you adjust for inflation, median personal income in America hasn't moved for almost half a century. Nearly a quarter of U.S. households have zero to negative net worth. It just takes one unlucky turn of the cards — an illness, an accident, and a brush with the law — to put them under.

In 2005, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott called on Congress to raise the minimum wage, since "our customers simply don't have the money to buy basic necessities between pay checks." The boss of the largest corporation on the planet, which employs 1.3 million Americans and has 850,000 customers in its stores at any given moment, was identifying what was then and is now America's No. 1 problem: A huge chunk ...

In a rule that could discourage reliance on coal for energy, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday proposed the first limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants.

The proposal would “move our nation into an era of American energy that is cleaner and cheaper,” EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said in a conference call with reporters.

Opponents say the rule would make it almost impossible to build new coal-fired power plants and could cause some plants to close. “Unfortunately, the EPA continues to ignore the real impact their rules will have on American families and businesses by driving up energy prices and destroying jobs,” the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity said in a statement.

The rule is the result of a long process that wound through the U.S. Supreme Court. Five years ago, the court decreed that the EPA had authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Two years later, the agency formally found that emissions of such gases contributed to climate change and threatened public health.

Currently there are no national limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and the proposal would affect only new power plants, exempting those already in existence.

This January, the EPA for the first time released data on emissions of greenhouse gases at specific facilities. Power plants were by far the largest source.

Jackson said the proposal is in line with what the industry is already doing — shifting toward cheap natural gas being produced domestically. A boom has driven down natural gas prices, but Jackson said the agency had taken into account what might happen if those prices eventually rise.  “The price of natural gas has to rise dramatically … for the economics of this rule — which are very, very good — to ...

Small wonder President Obama chose not to delay the U.S. Supreme Court case on his health care reforms until long after the election. His advisors are clearly in the lab transforming the president's signature legislation into a potent election issue — whether the justices leave it intact or rip it apart.

For starters, ignore the new CBS News poll showing that 47 percent of Americans give the Affordable Care Act a thumb down, while only 36 percent approve.  Older surveys suggest that many of the unhappy respondents actually wanted a larger role for government in health care (the public option, for example), not the smaller one conservatives demand.  The bottom-line question for discontented liberals is, do they want a flawed federal health care plan or no plan?  They can want the reform to happen without loving the final product.

Obamacare is head and shoulders above what we have today.  That is the worst of most worlds — growing health care insecurity paired with soaring health care costs.  The better course for reform would have been folding everyone into Medicare.  Under the health care plan for the elderly, government picks up most of the hospital bills, and enrollees may buy subsidized private coverage for doctor visits and such.  It's simple and cheap to administer.  Oh, but let's not go over this burnt ground again.

The key issue before the Supreme Court is whether the federal government can force the uninsured to buy health coverage.  Those seeking to strike down the law see it as an abuse of federal power.  Its backers counter that the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause says otherwise.

This much is obvious: If the ...

Tuesday is a big day for juvenile justice in this country. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments both challenging and defending the constitutionality of sentencing juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole for cases of homicide.

The high court will examine the cases of two men convicted of homicide for two separate killings, in Arkansas and Alabama. Both men were 14 years old at the time of the incidents, and they are represented by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala. The group represents indigent defendants, including juveniles, and defendants its lawyers feel have faced unjust treatment or racial bias.

The initiative is arguing that life without the possibility of parole for minors — or “death in prison” — amounts to the sort of “cruel and unusual” punishment outlawed by the Constitution.

Arguments challenging the constitutionality of such sentences will touch on questions of child development and brain science, and the ability of youths to transform and succeed in efforts at rehabilitation.

The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, based in Georgia, has posted an in-depth story that includes details about the killings the two youths committed with other youths, the arguments put forth by the Equal Justice Initiative and the various directions the court’s ruling could eventually take. Currently, the story notes, there are about 2,570 convicts serving life without parole sentences they received as minors. Seven states bar such sentences.

The story also notes that the National District Attorneys Association and the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers are filing briefs ...

Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Americans cannot prevent corporations from spending unlimited money to control elections, politicians, and policy. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court ignored the fact that corporations are creations of state law with government-derived advantages and labeled them, in the words of Justice Anthony Kennedy, “voices,” “speakers,” and yes, a “disadvantaged person or class.” In this Wonderland, corporations are people, corporate money is “speech,” and laws restricting corporate political spending violate the First Amendment.

Nearly 80 percent of the public opposes the holding in Citizens United and supports a constitutional amendment to reverse the decision, according to multiple polls. If Americans so clearly oppose the fabrication of “corporate people” who can use the Constitution to strike down the real people’s laws, how did the folly of Citizens United ever happen?

In fact, the case is the result of a well-funded and organized 30-year campaign to establish corporate constitutional rights as a means to trump democratic laws. Indeed, Citizens United is more like a victory parade for this campaign than a stumble or simple mistake of the Court.

The Effect of Citizens United

The Citizens United decision killed the federal Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (also known as the McCain-Feingold law). The Court reversed a century of law and overruled one of its own decisions from just six years earlier, which had affirmed our right to keep ...

Anonymous political speech. Foreign money in U.S. elections. The proliferation of super PACs. How grave a threat do any of things pose to American democracy? Not much, according to a panel of conservative attorneys, who gathered Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

The high-profile legal minds on the CPAC panel largely agreed that the changes to the campaign finance landscape are grounds for celebration.

Thanks to the Citizens United decision, we’ve seen “more voices, more competition, and more accountability,” said panelist Benjamin Barr, a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank.

“Without SpeechNow.org, the Republican nomination would have been sewed up ...

A federal appeals court is expected to decide Tuesday whether California's ban on same-sex marriage violates the federal Constitution, a ruling that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court next year.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced Monday that it would release its long-awaited decision by 10 a.m. PST.

The panel, which includes two Democratic appointees and one Republican, will decide whether Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban passed by voters in 2008, violates equal protection and due process guarantees of the U.S. Constitution.

Two same-sex couples challenged Proposition 8 just days before the California Supreme Court upheld it as a valid state constitutional amendment. The suit led to an historic federal trial that examined the nature of sexual orientation, the history of marriage, and discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Retired Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker presided over the trial and ruled against Proposition 8 in 2010, but the 9th Circuit issued a stay to put his ruling on hold pending appeals.

The stay could remain in place even if the panel rules against Proposition 8. If the panel lifts the stay, backers of Proposition 8 could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate it.

The losing party can appeal the ruling to a larger panel of the 9th Circuit, which would delay U.S. Supreme Court review for many months or longer, or go directly to the high court. The sponsors of Proposition 8, ProtectMarriage, have said they were eager to get to the high court as soon as possible.

"Either side that loses would want to read the opinion and look at the vote count before making an en banc decision," said University of California, Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

During oral arguments more than a year ago, the panel appeared to be leaning toward ruling against Proposition 8 but expressed concern about procedural matters.

The panel since ...

January 22 marks the 39^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States. That ruling has been called the most significant of the 20^th century. Certainly it was the most significant for women.

The case was argued by a 27-year old female lawyer from Texas — Sarah Weddington, in her first appearance before the Court. Female lawyers were so rare in those days that the Supreme Court lawyers lounge didn't even have a ladies room. There were no female Supreme Court justices. Weddington faced a wall of older white men.

Almost 40 years later, Sarah Weddington is still a tireless advocate for women. She now teaches leadership at the University of Texas at Austin, writes and speaks nationwide, and continues to educate young women and men on rights and responsibilities, and the fragile nature of progress without vigilance. I took a look back (and a look forward) with her last week on my radio show, Equal Time with Martha Burk. Here are some highlights:

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On December 7, following the US Supreme Court’s refusal to consider the Philadelphia District Attorney’s final avenue of appeal, current DA Seth Williams announced that he would no longer be seeking a death sentence for the world-renowned death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal--on death row following his conviction at a 1982 trial deemed unfair by Amnesty International, the European Parliament, the Japanese Diet, Nelson Mandela, and many others. Abu-Jamal’s sentence of execution was first “overturned” by a federal court in December, 2001, and during the next ten years, he was never transferred from death row at the level five supermax prison, SCI Greene, in rural western Pennsylvania.

Shortly after the DA’s announcement in early December, Mumia Abu-Jamal, now 57 years old, was transferred to SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, PA, 100 miles from Philadelphia. Once there, it was expected that he would be released from solitary confinement and transferred into general population where he would finally have contact visits and generally less onerous conditions. However, he was immediately placed in “Administrative Custody,” in SCI Mahanoy’s “Restrictive Housing Unit” where his conditions of isolation and repression are now in many ways more extreme than they were on death row.

Presently at SCI Mahanoy, Mumia Abu-Jamal is shackled around his ankles and wrists whenever he is outside his cell, even to the shower and during already restricted visits--where he is already behind Plexiglas; Before going to the yard he is subject to strip searches before and after ...

(The following piece has been adapted from a talk given at Alcatraz in January, 2012.)

I find it more than a bit serendipitous that we gather here today in the immediate wake of FOX’s inauguration of Alcatraz, the TV drama. The program --whose rights are owned by Warner Brothers, a company that paid not a single cent in federal corporate income tax from 2001-2003—further mystifies an already mysterious and misunderstood place.

Alcatraz’s plot revolves around one detective’s incorrigible quest to find a barbarous flock of killers that were said to have escaped from the facility in the 1960’s. Amidst the pursuit of merciless serial murderers audiences also discover that the U.S. government has been surreptitiously renovating “the Rock” since its closure in 1963 with plans of revival imminent. I’m convinced that were the late German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche alive today he might wish to describe FOX’s fictionalized rendering of Alcatraz as ideological. Nietzsche once famously wrote that “ideology is the lie we call truth.”  That is, peppering a mythical TV drama with dispatches from history smudges the ink and blunts the link between fact and fiction. Tethering a counterfeit tale to an actually existing historical site renders credible a story that does little to transgress our taken-for-granted assumptions about the relationship between retribution and justice, crime and punishment, and social symptoms and diseases.

As curators, educators, and interpreters of the U.S. carceral system we’re obligated to challenge our most deeply held beliefs about justice and criminality by acknowledging that what we once assumed to be nothing more than a neutral form of entertainment is anything but impartial on questions of ...

The Republican caucuses in Iowa, with their cliffhanger ending, confirmed two key political points and left a third virtually ignored. First, the Republicans are not enthusiastic about any of their candidates. Second, we have entered a new era in political campaigning in the United States post-Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that unleashed a torrent of unreported corporate money into our electoral process. And third, because President Barack Obama is running in this primary season unchallenged, scant attention has been paid to the growing discontent among the very people who put him in office in 2008. As a result, the 2012 presidential election promises to be long, contentious, extremely expensive and perhaps more negative than any in history.

Mitt Romney technically prevailed in the Iowa caucuses, squeaking out an eight-vote margin over late-surging Rick Santorum. Libertarian Ron Paul garnered an impressive 21 percent of the vote in the crowded field. Note that the Republican Party does not allow a recount of the handwritten, hand-counted ballots, and that the final Romney edge was first reported on right-wing Fox News Channel by none other than its paid commentator Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’s two controversial presidential election wins.

So, the prevailing wisdom is that while Willard Mitt Romney retains the veneer of “electability,” he cannot persuade more than 25 percent of Republicans to vote for him. Santorum’s surge was a late-breaking coalescence of ...

In November's elections, the national media gave extensive coverage to a proposed "personhood amendment" to Mississippi's state constitution. This extremist, anti-choice ballot initiative declared that a person's life begins not at birth, but at the very instant that a sperm meets the egg.

However, extending full personhood to two-cell zygotes was too far out even for many of Mississippi's anti-choice voters, so the proposition was voted down.

Meanwhile, the national media paid no attention to another "personhood" vote that took place on that same day. This was a referendum in Missoula, Montana on a concept even more bizarre than declaring zygotes to be persons with full citizenship rights.

It was a vote on overturning last year's democracy-killing decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the now-infamous Citizens United case. A narrow, five-man majority had decreed that — abracadabra — lifeless, soulless corporations are henceforth persons with human political rights.

Moreover, said the five justices, these tongueless entities must be allowed to "speak" by dumping unlimited sums of their corporate cash into our election campaigns, thus giving them a far bigger voice than us real-life persons.

Missoulians, of course, cannot single-handedly overrule the Supremes, but they can be at the forefront of a grassroots movement demanding a constitutional amendment to reverse the high Court's perverse ruling.

And that's just what Missoulians did, with a whopping 75 percent of voters calling on Congress to send such an amendment to the states for prompt ratification.

We can all be Missoulians. People in California, Colorado, Maine, Vermont, Wisconsin, and elsewhere are pushing such resolutions. For information on how to get your city and state to join in this call, visit this website ...

The campaign to "move your money" has gotten a groundswell of support. Having greater impact would be to "move our money" -- move our local government revenues out of Wall Street banks into our own publicly-owned banks.

Occupy Wall Street has been both criticized and applauded for not endorsing any official platform. But there are unofficial platforms, including one titled the 99% Declaration which calls for a "National General Assembly" to convene on July 4, 2012 in Philadelphia. The 99% Declaration seeks everything from reining in the corporate state to ending the Fed to eliminating censorship of the Internet. But none of these demands seems to go to the heart of what prompted Occupiers to camp out on Wall Street in the first place – a corrupt banking system that serves the 1% at the expense of the 99%. To redress that, we need a banking system that serves the 99%.

Occupy San Francisco has now endorsed a plan aimed at doing just that. In a December 1 Wall Street Journal article titled “Occupy Shocker: A Realistic, Actionable Idea,” David Weidner writes:

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The mood was both celebratory and angry among a 1000-plus overflow audience packed into the balcony space of the Constitution Center in Philadelphia on the evening of Dec. 9.

The crowd of supporters of Philadelphia journalist and black political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal had come to denounce the over 29 years that he has spent locked in solitary confinement on Pennsylvania’s grim death row since his conviction for the shooting of a white police officer, Daniel Faulkner. But they were also there to celebrate the surprise decision, announced two days earlier by Philadelphia DA Seth Williams, not to seek to reinstate Abu-Jamal’s death sentence, which had been permanently vacated by a recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Technically, the Supreme Court, last Oct. 11, had decided not to review a decision by a Third Circuit Court panel that had upheld a 2001 Federal Judge’s ruling declaring his 1982 death sentence to have been unconstitutional. The Federal Court and Appeals Court decisions had been appealed by the district attorney’s office for years, all the way to the Supreme Court.

The event at the Constitution Center had initially been planned to mark the 30th anniversary of the shooting incident that had led to Abu-Jamal’s arrest and to his trial and conviction. But only two days before, Williams, who had 180 days from the Supreme Court’s ...

In the Nov. 8 elections, the national media gave extensive coverage to a proposed "personhood amendment" to Mississippi's state constitution. This was an extremist anti-abortion ballot initiative to declare that a person's life begins not at birth, but at the very instant that a sperm meets the egg. However, extending full personhood to two-cell zygotes was too far out even for many of Mississippi's zealous antagonists against woman's right to control her own fertility, so the proposition was voted down.

Meanwhile, the national media paid practically zero attention to another "personhood" vote that took place on that same day over a thousand miles from Mississippi. This was a referendum in Missoula, Mont., on a concept even more bizarre than declaring zygotes to be persons with full citizenship rights.

It was a vote on overturning last year's democracy-killing decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the now-infamous Citizens United case. A narrow five-man majority had decreed that — abracadabra! — lifeless, soulless corporations are henceforth persons with human political rights. Moreover, said the five, these tongueless artificial entities must be allowed to "speak" by dumping unlimited sums of their corporate cash into our election campaigns, thus giving them a far bigger voice than us real-life persons.

Missoulians, of ...

At 3400 Market Street in Riverside, California rests the Riverside Marriott, a picturesque business-friendly hotel boasting an impressive list of amenities including a spa, state of the art exercise facilities, heated outdoor pools, and a mezzanine level four-star restaurant and lounge. The property offers 292 air-conditioned guestrooms each appointed with a refrigerator, coffee maker, an automated climate control system, high speed Wi-Fi, and a beverage service.  Rooms at the Riverside Marriott can be reserved for a rate of $109.00/day.

Less than one mile southeast at 4000 Orange Street stands the Robert Presley Detention Center, one of five jails in Riverside County operated by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. Each cell comes fully equipped with running water, a mattress, and a circumambulating correctional officer. Beginning early next year rooms here and in other county facilities can be reserved for a rate of $142.42/day.

On October 8^th the Riverside County Board of Supervisors approved a measure that authorizes the municipality to begin charging prisoners $142.42 per day of their prison stay in an effort to save the county up to $5 million dollars per annum.

The Board’s decision comes amidst a budgetary crisis of unprecedented proportions as the state of California attempts to “privatize” its way out of last year’s $9.6 billion deficit. Although California has had ubiquitous budget difficulties since the passage of Proposition 13-- a 1978 ballot initiative establishing that property is to be assessed at its acquisition value and that taxes levied thereon will not exceed 1% --, the most recent crisis of capitalism emerging in 2007 has only exacerbated an already barbed problem. The global economic meltdown has engendered a series of high cost, unprecedented policy measures ...

The protest movement that began in Tunisia in January, subsequently spreading to Egypt, and then to Spain, has now become global, with the protests engulfing Wall Street and cities across America. Globalization and modern technology now enables social movements to transcend borders as rapidly as ideas can. And social protest has found fertile ground everywhere: a sense that the “system” has failed, and the conviction that even in a democracy, the electoral process will not set things right – at least not without strong pressure from the street.

In May, I went to the site of the Tunisian protests; in July, I talked to Spain’s indignados; from there, I went to meet the young Egyptian revolutionaries in Cairo’s Tahrir Square; and, a few weeks ago, I talked with Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York. There is a common theme, expressed by the OWS movement in a simple phrase: “We are the 99%.”

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Three significant events relating to the death penalty occurred in the United States during September. The one that gained the most publicity was the execution in Georgia of Troy Davis, who had been convicted of the 1989 murder of Mark McPhail, an off-duty police officer.

Davis’s death sentence was carried out despite serious doubts about whether he was guilty of the crime for which he received it. Witnesses who had testified at his trial later said that prosecutors had coerced them. Even death-penalty supporters protested against his execution, saying that he should be given a new trial. But the courts denied his appeals. In his final words, he proclaimed his innocence.

The deliberate judicial killing of a man who might have been innocent is deeply disturbing. But the execution was consistent with something that happened just two weeks earlier, at one of the debates between Republican candidates for their party’s nomination to challenge President Barack Obama next year. Texas Governor Rick Perry was reminded that during his term of office, the death penalty has been carried out 234 times. No other governor in modern times has ...

“I am innocent,” said Troy Davis, moments before the the state of Georgia put him to death.

The state-sanctioned slaying, which former President Jammy Carter characterized as “a grave miscarriage of justice,” was completed at 11:08 pm EST.

Before the execution, the man whose case inspired an international outcry against not just the death penalty but a dysfunctional “justice” system told the witnesses at the Georgia Diagnostic Prison facility: “The incident that night was not my fault. I did not have a gun.”

Addressing the family of, Mark MacPhail, the off-duty Savannah police officer he was accused of killing, Davis said he was sorry for their loss. Then, he said: “I did not personally kill your son, father and brother. I am innocent.”

To those who battled to save his life, Davis urged continued investigation, inquiry and struggle for justice. "All I can ask... is that you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth," he said moments before the execution.

The killing of Davis took place