The year is 2024. Congressional maps in the political battleground states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania have been invalidated, and legal fights are ongoing to determine what maps will take their place. State high courts are hesitant to act because their normal powers of judicial review have been curtailed. Entire bodies of election rules, developed [...]
Last Sunday was Transgender Remembrance Day, the day the LGBTQ community and its allies mourn trans people lost to violence and vow to erase transphobic hate. In the runup to Sunday, people were talking about how Transgender Remembrance Day was particularly important this year, given the push for anti-trans legislation in many states. Tragically, another [...]
We the peoples… …reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, …establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained [...]
This commentary proposes that a high-profile political leader, such as former prime minister Imran Khan, who recently suffered an assassination attempt at a public rally, should be declared a “permanent protectee” of Pakistan’s State Security. The notion of the permanent protectee, borrowed from U.S. security laws, empowers secret security services to seize and whisk away [...]
The fall of Afghanistan was a sad end to the longest armed conflict in American history. It resulted in the destruction of a nation-state, over 6 million displaced the world over, and one of the worst refugee crises currently ongoing. For the millions of refugees from the crisis, their trials are far from over. And [...]
The US Supreme Court last week denied a petition from Pennsylvania Republicans to invalidate the state legislative maps adopted by the 2021 Pennsylvania Legislative Redistricting Commission. This leaves in place a ruling from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that okayed the maps, a win for fair district advocates in the run-up to the November 8 midterms. [...]
“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the entire Torah; the rest is commentary…: Rabbi Hillel, Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a Israel’s continuous support for Donald J. Trump represents a grim irony of Jewish history. Even before the latest revelations concerning this former president’s anti-Semitic outbursts (that is, his [...]
It is my belief that the protest movement that has swept Iran since Sep. 16 is a feminist uprising. It all started with the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who was detained for wearing what was termed “improper hijab” — i.e., failure to adequately comply with Iran’s mandatory head-covering requirement for women. [...]
On September 16, 2022, Iran’s Basij Resistance Force, a volunteer paramilitary organization that operates under the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, arrested Mahsa Amini for her refusal to comply with the country’s headscarf requirement, an alleged breach of its public morality code. Reports surfaced that the Basij severely beat Amini for resisting an officer’s insults, after which Amini [...]
“Defenseless under the night, our world in stupor lies….” — W H Auden Background of the Current Nuclear War Threat Since August 6, 1945, the “official” start of the Nuclear Age, humankind has been acquainting itself with new meanings of catastrophic conflict. Still, until now, until current Russian aggressions against Ukraine, tangible portents of any [...]
