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The Nation

Senate to Investigate Texas Plant Explosion


Firefighters conduct search and rescue at the scene of the fertilizer plan explosion in West, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero.)

A torrent of troubling information about the massive explosion in West, Texas has emerged since April 19—it’s becoming increasingly clear that the federal regulatory structure failed on multiple fronts when it came to the West Fertilizer Company plant.

Banks on the Run (Continued)


A home mortgage office in Springfield, Illinois. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

You can’t talk about poverty without talking about the practices of the big banks, including their continuing refusal to stem the foreclosure crisis through mortgage principal reductions.

The Bangladeshi Blood on America's Hands


Relatives show pictures of garment workers who are missing, during a protest to demand punishment for those responsible for the collapse of the Rana Plaza building, in Savar, outside Dhaka April 29, 2013. Reuters/Andrew Biraj

They are still digging up victims from the collapsed garment factory in Bangladesh—381 corpses and counting—while international media report the sickening details of crushed skulls and severed limbs and describe with sympathy the wildly distraught mourners searching the rubble for dead daughters. The Daka authorities arrested the greedy factory owner to save him from the mob. Sohel Rama, owner of the collapsed factory, blamed the pressures of global competition. He had no choice, he explained. Keep the sewing machines humming or else lose the contract.

Crossing the Mexican Border—in a Theater


A shot from inside La Ruta. (Credit: Lia Chang)

I got lost outside of New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine this past weekend, eager to attend The Working Theater’s La Ruta—a play created in collaboration with the Magnum Foundation that dramatizes the plight of border crossers and their smugglers on a cargo truck headed from Mexico to the United States. Laminated signs outside the church pointed to a dimly lit driveway, where a woman pointed a flashlight on me, making it impossible for me to see ahead. Audience members were crammed into a tent where Raula, a smuggler played by Sheila Tapia, quickly unsettles whatever comfort you might find. Raula previews some of the potential dangers as the audience learns that we, too, are migrants on this road—but reminds us that everything on this trip happens on a need to know basis.

Does Guantanamo Exist?

For more helpful reminders, check out Tom Tomorrow's recent posts.

Jason Collins: The Substance of Change


Jason Collins on the cover of Sports Illustrated. (Credit: SI.com)

Hearing the news made me feel like I’d accidentally walked into a wind tunnel. For as long as I had written about this issue and as many times as I had said in recent years that “this will happen in a matter of months if not weeks,” it still hit me like a triple-shot of espresso cut with a teaspoon of Adderall. Thanks to the courage of 34-year-old NBA veteran Jason Collins, we can no longer repeat endlessly that no active male athlete in North America has ever come out of the closet. Instead we’re now able to say that we were there when our most influential cultural citadel of homophobia—the men’s locker room—was forever breached and finally received a rainbow makeover on its unforgiving grey walls. But we didn’t only get the act of coming out. We also got, courtesy of Mr. Collins and Sports Illustrated writer Franz Lidz, about as beautiful a coming-out statement as has ever been put to paper.

Dave Zirin: Why Did Steubenville Renew the Football Coach's Contract?

Despite sexism in the ranks of the Steubenville, Ohio, football team—and the rape committed by two of its players—the school signed Coach Reno Saccoccia to a new two-year contract. “What we know in terms of what players said about, oh, Coach Sac thinks it’s a big joke…. the fact that he was caught on camera threatening a female reporter,” Nation sports editor Dave Zirin says, “Things like that make you think, this is the person who’s going to mold the minds of young children?” Zirin joins a panel on The Melissa Harris-Perry Show to discuss the aftermath of Steubenville and the crisis young women face in schools across the country.

James Cersonsky

How Voter Backlash Against Voter Suppression Is Changing Our Politics


Early voting in Ohio, November 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)

As the 2012 election approached, Republican governors and legislators in battleground states across the country rushed to enact restrictive Voter ID laws, to eliminate election-day registration and to limit early voting. Those were just some of the initiatives that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People identified as “an onslaught of restrictive measures across the country designed to stem electoral strength among communities of color.”

House GOP Plans Even Deeper Food Stamp Cuts


Volunteers fill bags for a school lunch program at the Cleveland Foodbank. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta.)

Lost in the shuffle of last year’s big fiscal cliff deal was the deal that didn’t happen on a new farm bill.