In These Times

THE ARREST OF seven men in Miami last month on specious terrorism charges smells strongly like a case of governmental entrapment. The men, six of whom are of Haitian descent, allegedly planned to blow up various targets-including government buildings...

ON JULY 13, the Pensacola, Fla.-based law firm of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed a "qui tam" lawsuit in U.S. District Court, alleging that Diebold and other electronic voting machine (EVM) companies fraudulently represented to state election boards and...

C'mon, Get HappyBOOKSTOWARD THE END of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up," an essay about his personal decline during the Great Depression, he wrote, "The natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness." Glancing at the headlines today,...

To thwart legislation that put caps on payday lending rates, Republican lawmakers in Oregon had to pass itWHEN OREGON VOTERS HEAD to the polls this fall they'll have 13 ballot initiatives to consider, everything from parental notification for teenage...

PATRIOTISM IS THE last refuge of a scoundrel," opined 17th century writer and critic Samuel Johnson.Scoundrels abound in the perennial campaign for a constitutional amendment to outlaw the desecration of the American flag. The latest salvo, which failed...

PERHAPS YOU HAVE thought, "If the voters knew how venal a GOP member of Congress was, they could never get reelected."MoveOn is testing that proposition with a public service ad campaign that targets four Republican candidates whose votes in Congress...

Jane Jacobs, ReconsideredBOOKSWHEN JANE JACOBS died this past spring, the flood of obituaries carried with them a litany of praise. Jacobs, they said, had faced down the great, infamous builder Robert Moses, ended neighborhood-killing urban renewal policies,...

SAN SIMÓN, MEXICO-"WE'RE going to win," said Alfredo Gonzalez from underneath a shad tree at this town's only polling place on July 2, election day. Like many pulling for a leftist candidate to win Mexico's presidency, he'd been waiting a long time for...

An NLRB ruling will undercut workers' rightsWHEN AN ORGANIZER FIRST talked to Kathy Haff three summers ago about joining a union, the veteran cardiac nurse at Chicago's Our Lady of Resurrection Hospital wanted to sign up immediately. "I wanted to improve...

The Bush administration has finally been rebuked for its repeated efforts to evade judicial reviewTHE U.S. SUPREME COURT'S June 29 ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld-that the Bush administration's military tribunals violated federal law and the Geneva Conventions-resoundingly...

The Designated Supplier Program targets college clothing companiesCLAUDIA EBEL IS TRAVELING across Thailand this summer, but her itinerary is no vacation. The University of Colorado at Boulder sophomore is meeting with sweatshop workers, promoting a...

FEELING GRATEFUL TO the Bush administration is a rare experience. But sometimes the White House can do something right, even if for the wrong reasons.The administration's gift to the nation was to openly attack journalists. "[M]ore than any other White...