The Right to Vote
Jesse Jackson Jr. : Approve a Voting Rights Amendment to the Constitution, granting all the right to vote; craft a unitary voting system for federal, state and local elections, guaranteeing an honest and efficient count.
Patricia Williams challenges President Bush's unchecked impulses, David Oshinsky reviews three new books on race and Sharon Lerner explores the impact on women of Samuel Alito's future Supreme Court rulings.
Jesse Jackson Jr. : Approve a Voting Rights Amendment to the Constitution, granting all the right to vote; craft a unitary voting system for federal, state and local elections, guaranteeing an honest and efficient count.
Jim McDermott : Win the global war against disease--AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and pandemics. America must deliver more food, medicine and development aid to poorer nations.
Jan Schakowsky : Pass new laws that reward companies that care about America, its workers and its communities.
Pete Stark : Create a stable healthcare system. Start by expanding the current Medicare system to cover more children and vulnerable adults.
Bernie Sanders : Preserve our nation's core democratic principles by introducing significant reforms to the Patriot Act.
Maurice Hinchey : Stop the dumbing down of America: Enact real reform to prevent the shrinking market of ideas caused by concentration of media properties in the hands of the few.
George Miller : Pass the Employee Free Choice Act to create more unions, keep workers safe from labor-law violations, preserve middle-class jobs and stabilize the economy.
John Tierney : Rein in the Bush Administration's culture of official secrecy and restore Congressional oversight of intelligence operations.
Bob Filner : Pass new legislation to insure the best healthcare for America's military personnel and make the Veterans Administration a model healthcare system.
Sheila Jackson Lee : Insure that the federal purse supports a progressive vision of economic progress that benefits all Americans.
Lynn Woolsey & Barbara Lee : Elect Congressional candidates who promise to end the occupation of Iraq and bring our soldiers home.
John Conyers : We need a unified security budget to coherently allocate dollars to the military, homeland security and peacemaking efforts abroad.
Raul Grijalva : Rein in political and business interests that degrade the environment; pass the Apollo Energy Act to provide incentives for clean technology.
Marcy Kaptur : Give small farmers and ranchers help to compete with global agricultural giants; enact farmer-friendly solutions to existing destructive trade policies.
Major Owens : Establish a first-rate education system to draw on our greatest untapped human resource: the children of our inner cities.
Henry Waxman : Elect a Democratic Congress in 2006; restore ethics to Congress; block the appointment of cronies to key posts; stop the politicization of science.
Diane Watson : Insure funding for programs with proven success rehabilitating violent youths and avoid the failures of the prison system.
Hilda Solis : Grant legal status to hard-working, tax-paying immigrants; give up the illusion that law enforcement alone will solve immigration problems.
Dennis Kucinich : Repair America's infrastructure, starting with New Orleans; resettle displaced people in the city, give them construction jobs and pay all a fair wage.
: The time is ripe for progressives to revitalize the state of our union: Americans are ready to undo the damage of the Bush era and turn to a just and peaceful future.
Ari Berman
:
The House Ethics Committee has been defunct for a year: If now is not
the time for both parties to get serious on Congressional ethics, when
will it be?
Bruce Shapiro : As Samuel Alito cruises toward confirmation, the process of vetting him demonstrates the price we pay for one-party government.
Sharon Lerner
:
What's at stake for women if Samuel Alito is confirmed to the US
Supreme Court? Reproductive rights are only the tip of the iceberg.
Augustus Richard Norton : Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilization criticizes a self-righteous US foreign policy oblivious to the power of retributive justice in the Middle East.
David Oshinsky
:
Three books examine American history through the scope of
racism and racial identity.
Arthur C. Danto : Fra Angelico's genius for depicting the interior life--states of love, spirituality or anguish--is stirring the interest of contemporary artists.
Calvin Trillin
:
Using special "signing" language, the torturer-in-chief shows the world
who's boss.
Patricia J. Williams
:
If we are suspending the law in deference to Bush's unchecked impulses,
let's call it by its proper name: Benign lawlessness? Gitmo Governance?
Fear Factor?
Eric Alterman : Coverage of the Alito hearings revealed once again that there is no liberal bias in mainstream media.
Gore Vidal : As his State of the Union message approaches, we deserve a rest from the fundamentalist presidency of G.W. Bush, whose guiding principles are antithetical to democracy and will only accelerate our decline.
Robert Scheer : Obsessed voyeurs in the Bush Administration are poking their noses into everyone's business, with the help of Internet giants like Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo.
Medea Benjamin : Polls show large numbers of American women have grave doubts about the Iraq War: But where are they? A new campaign aims to mobilize American women for global protests March 8.
Nicholas von Hoffman : The toxic food industry is fueling a preventable epidemic of diabetes. Most vulnerable are poor children, barraged with ads urging them to eat the sugar and grease-laden food that will eventually kill them.
Dave Zirin : On the eve of the Super Bowl, former cornerback Anthony Prior raises hot-button allegations of racism in the National Football League.
Elizabeth de la Vega : OK, everyone who has studied the unitary executive theory of the presidency, raise your hand. Anyone? A former prosecutor examines what's behind Bush's legal fig leaf.
Cover by Gene Case & Stephen Kling/Avenging Angels