No question, FDR was our greatest Democratic president. Though we have, at least for the moment, gone beyond the recession of 2008, perhaps we’ve merely swept the problem under the rug, along with opportunities for real economic security. On this

In the Christmas Truce at the beginning of what was then The Great War, and other lesser know fraternizing between “enemies,” it took courage to question the madness. Still today, Christmas is the one day of peace, while we feel

The ice princess, the black widow. Since the circus of a trial on 1990, Pam Smart has remained in jail with a sentence worse than for Charles Manson. It was a made-for-the-movies spectacle in which the judge said he wanted

When the combined power of the Troika–European Central Bank, European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund–puts the squeeze of austerity on places like Spain and Portugal, a lot of people feel severe economic pain. But in the Iberian countries, they

Chuck Collins, founder of Wealth for the Common Good and senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies talks about the new report on the top .01 percent and the impact on our democracy. They are not job creators as

Of course President Roosevelt knew the Japanese would do something, their oil had been cut off, yet we can conclude he did not know about the specific attack. What no one expected was the transformation of America from a nation

Is there a worse crime than child abuse? Is the complicity by knowing adults just as bad? Is there something about the very nature of authoritarianism in schools? Guest on this show lived through an atmosphere of abuse in a

For decades police have gotten away with murder. Thanks to cell phones, today they’re getting caught. And they are fighting back, actually threatening such people as Quentin Tarantino. On the first half, guest Travis Morales of Rise Up October and

Of course America is a mosaic of cultures, and all citizens are equally American. But since 9/11, South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Americans have been routinely harassed and often bullied and terrorized, often by actual government policies. People are

In their chilling and intense new novel Broken! , authors Michael Kearns (who taught “enhanced interrogation”) and Ronald Solomon, former TV producer and creator, paint a vivid picture of a world only slightly different from today, filled with swarms of

While the left has had very few actual electoral victories, author Michael Kazin argues it has very effectively changed the nation. The author of “A Godly Hero: William Jennings Bryan,” talks about his new book “American Dreamers.” What’s gone right

Perpetual war is now widely accepted. Henry Kissinger’s unique apparently amoral approach to assertion of his and America’s power still casts a shadow on America, both domestically and across the world. This new book: Kissinger’s Shadow, The Long Reach of

You may have thought our schools, at least the better ones, successfully tackled the problem of institutional racism. But in this surprising new study, well-established assumptions based on style of clothes, culture, and, really, skin color serve to keep down

There are a lot of similarities and differences: They are both men over 65 but England’s Jeremy Corbyn is a traditional Labourite leftist while Bernie Sanders is an all-American left-leaning Democratic populist. But both campaigns earned their descriptions as political

The Tea Party these days looks with fondness to the 19th century as a time of rugged individualism and unemcumbered free markets. As with so many mythic images, reality is exceedingly different. Like corporate personhood? Thank the railroads. Ever notice

American Exceptionalism: it’s beyond mere national pride, it is an insistence that we are above the normal rules and that we are God’s gift to the world. Of course if we know someone who feels this way about him or

Started under Reagan in 1983, the drive to put public education in the hands of for-profit interests has greatly weakened education, done real harm to thousands of kids, and weakened our real national security. Today’s guest is John Kuhn who

We’re all familiar with 1776. But before the actual separation from England, there was revolution across the land. The spirit of 1774 was focused on class-blind democracy and a lot of what happened then, with powerful actions from the grassroots

We’ve all seen the images: refugees crammed in rubber rafts, mobbed trains, young children drowned in the seas. Hundreds of thousands are leaving war zones in hopes of a better life. But in Europe there are those who want to

What was the actual intent of America’s founders? The far right has too often gotten away with claiming the mantle of the values of America’s founders. Even Glenn Beck has stolen the title of Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet Common Sense

Ferguson. Staten Island. Even small town cops are armed like soldiers. The list of disturbing and excessive police violence is lengthy. How did we get here? How is it that the militarization of police has become so widespread across America?

Just three days after Malaysian flight MH-17 was shot down near the Ukraine Russian border, Secretary of State Kerry had all the answers. Renowned former CIA analyst Ray McGovern is convinced the secretary of state did not so much inform

We’ve all seen the results of economics imposed from the top down. Sometimes it works well, other times we’ve seen communities devastated as a result of this process. But in Cincinnati, there’s an idea taken largely from success in the

Uniting traditional left and right, legislators from all 50 states endorsed a message to the federal government: let us make our own laws on marijuana. Sponsor of the NCSL resolution NH Rep Renny Cushing talks about how and why states

Most of the world seems to think that the State of Israel and Judaism are one and the same. They are not. Where Judaism is thousands of years old and lived for peace with Muslims and Christians in what Rabbi

As he embarked on a book tour in 2011, Henry Kissinger was met with protests. And you know the tour did not include  Spain or France, where there are warrants out for his arrest. Guests on this show are Joyce Horman, who blames the murder of her h…