Illinois
Is Obama's Coal-Country Nemesis Hiring Again?
In the middle of last summer, as the presidential race was heading into its home stretch, there was a flurry of news about layoffs at Ohio coal mines owned by Murray Energy, whose more than 3,000 employees make it the largest privately-headed coal-mining concern in the country. Murray announced that it was going to shut down one mine entirely in September or October -- the Red Bird West mine, a surface-mining operation in Brilliant, Ohio that employed 56 people under the subsidiary name OhioAmerican Energy. READ MORE >>
The Man Who Could Have Saved Organized Labor
Gun Control Can Survive the Supreme Court
It’s a sign of the legalization of American politics that activists worry about being thwarted by the Supreme Court even before they’ve managed to pass anything: Although they haven’t yet squeezed any new regulations through Congress or the state legislatures, gun-control advocates already fear that the Supreme Court will invalidate whatever progress they achieve. READ MORE >>
Lincoln in Hollywood, from Griffith to Spielberg
I. READ MORE >>
Torture, America, and the Laws of War
Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American HistoryBy John Fabian Witt (Free Press, 498 pp., $32) READ MORE >>
How Human Rights Became our Ideology
The International Human Rights Movement: A History By Aryeh Neier (Princeton University Press, 379 pp., $35) I. READ MORE >>
What Was Romney Doing In Coal Country?
Meet the Journalist Who (Possibly) Invented the Phrase ‘Fiscal Cliff’
In the summer of 1989, the Illinois legislature approved a 20 percent hike on the state income tax for the sole purpose of generating an additional $251 million for public colleges and universities. The move, which guaranteed a tuition freeze and increased teaching salaries, was widely popular with the public. But education officials were unhappy—or worried, at least—because the tax increase had an expiration date of two years. READ MORE >>
FreedomWorks Loses the Senate
California Voters Get a New Reason to Abolish the Death Penalty
When California voters check off their ballots next month, they’ll have the opportunity to make their state the eighteenth in the nation to abolish the death penalty. So far, proponents of the abolition ballot measure, Proposition 34, have stressed the $130 million the state could save each year by changing the maximum sentence to life without parole as well as the $100 million that would be set aside for law enforcement to work on unsolved crimes. READ MORE >>
