Less than four months after Barack Obama's inauguration, the right-wing propaganda machine is already promoting the only imaginable conclusion to a Democratic administration that dares to achieve a second term: impeachment. Once confined to the ranks of the birthers, the fantasy of removing President Obama from office is ...

You know a corner’s been turned when someone in a legion of foreign sweatshop workers is given a face. That’s happened in Bangladesh, home of hideous factory conditions — as seen in the ruins of Rana Plaza, a former eight-story work warren. Death toll: over 600.

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The uncle of the accused Boston Marathon bombers got the boys right. They were unable to settle into American life, Ruslan Tsarni told reporters from his home in Maryland, "and thereby just hating everyone who did." He called the two brothers "losers." I prefer the term "weaklings."

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Erik Rush and others who hastened to scapegoat Muslims for the Boston Marathon bombing are ignorant of the religion.  I can’t understand why people who have never so much as read a book about a subject appoint themselves experts on it.  (Try this book, e.g.).  We don’t yet know who carried out the attack, but we know they either ...

Monday was Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts, celebrating the day the American Revolutionary War began in 1775, at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. It is also the day of the annual Boston Marathon, which will now, sadly, go down in history as yet another episode of senseless mass violence.

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Earth Day cometh — the 43rd year of this national focus on the state of our globe. So, how is Earth doing? Should we be weeping ... or cheering?

Both.

The first step to ...

In honoring Margaret Thatcher, some of her greatest fans complain, "They don't make conservatives like that any more."

But they do. Problem is, the Republican ...

We’re not done with the Yahoo story yet. Much has been said about whether workers produce more at home and whether CEO Marissa Mayer had slowed women's progress by denying working mothers the opportunity to telecommute. That is not today’s topic.

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If you drove to work today, did you worry about too few cars on the road? Do you wish more people were waiting in line at the public tennis courts? Are you eager to see new housing developments replace your favorite truck farm?

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Default on the public debt, nationalization of the banks, and a citizen dividend could actually save the Italian economy.

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On Tuesday, a hot air balloon flying over the ancient city of Luxor, Egypt, exploded and plunged 19 foreign passengers to their deaths, an event that will further harm the country’s limping tourist industry. The tragic balloon fail is an apt metaphor for the political process in Egypt, which has been marked by highhanded and arbitrary decisions on the part of ...

The latest dispatch from the food wars: For those at high risk of heart disease, following the Mediterranean diet results in 30 percent fewer heart attacks and strokes. Focused on nuts, beans, fatty fish, fruits and vegetables — all washed down with olive oil and wine (separate glasses, please) — the diet is said to ...

I was in the Swiss village of Begnins outside Geneva shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. I spent three days there with Axel von dem Bussche, a former Wehrmacht major, holder of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross for extreme battlefield bravery, three times wounded in World War II, and the last surviving member of the inner ...

The Academy Awards ceremony will make history this year with the first-ever nomination of a feature documentary made by a Palestinian. “5 Broken Cameras” was filmed and directed by Emad Burnat, a resident of the occupied Palestinian West Bank town of Bil’in, along with his Israeli filmmaking partner Guy Davidi. What does a Palestinian farmer wear on ...

You could, of course, sit there, slack-jawed, thinking about how mindlessly repetitive American foreign and military policy is these days. Or you could wield all sorts of fancy analytic words to explain it.  Or you could just settle for a few simple, all-American ones.  Like dumb. ...

The following is a crashing generalization, but here goes: When it comes to how we dress, there are serious gender inequities — in standards of comfort and in body exposure. Valentine's Day underscores a third that rankles just as much: inequality of effort.

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[This piece is adapted from “Uprisings,” a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire, Noam Chomsky’s new interview book with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher, Metropolitan Books).  The questions are Barsamian’s, the answers Chomsky’s.]

Does the United States still have the same level ...

As President Obama made clear in his inaugural address Monday, failing to confront the threat of climate change in his second term would be a betrayal of future generations. “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science,” Obama said, “but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought and more powerful storms.” Actually, there are some who can avoid fires, drought and storms, but most of them voted for Mitt ...

Clive Hamilton in his “Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change” describes a dark relief that comes from accepting that “catastrophic climate change is virtually certain.” This obliteration of “false hopes,” he says, requires an intellectual knowledge and an emotional knowledge. The first is ...

When Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned on national television over the weekend that Chuck Hagel "would be the most antagonistic secretary of defense toward the state of Israel in our nation's history," either his memory served him very poorly — or he was simply lying to smear his ...