In the Public Interest

In a recent column I wrote about police interrogation tactics that lead a surprising number of people to confess to crimes they didn’t commit. It turns out that corporate America has followed suit. Many large corporations take a “loss prevention” approach that utilizes training manuals modeled after the leading police manuals — using the very…

Al Lord is thinking about building his own private golf course. Not bad for an ex-corporate socialist. The former CEO of Sallie Mae is worth about a quarter of a billion dollars, running a company that Uncle Sam virtually guarantees against any losses while it makes enormous profits in the college student loan business. In…

There are enough injustices in our society without innocent people being convicted of heinous crimes. Yet, it turns out that happens with far greater frequency than we ever imagined. DNA testing, a relatively new phenomenon, has already exonerated 175 people convicted of crimes. Then the more amazing part: one fifth of them had confessed to…

What a week it has been for the giant oil companies! Billions in record quarterly profits rushing into their coffers. An even bigger round of quarterly profits coming up. Gargantuan executive pay bonanzas. And a pile of “forces beyond our control” excuses to publicize in response to the empty outrage of Washington politicians and the…

Newt Gingrich has been called a “futurist”, a “policy wonk”, an advocate of adapting technology to human efficiencies, among other less flattering descriptions. So what did he do the year he took over the House of Representatives from the Democrats in 1995 — the so-called Gingrich Revolution? He terminated the technical-scientific brains of the Congress…

One of his Yale students, famed cartoonist Garry Trudeau, said of Yale University Chaplain, William Sloane Coffin, during those heady years in the Sixties; “Without him, the very air would have lost its charge. With him, we were changed forever.” Who was this former Army Captain, ex-C.I.A. agent, talented musician, linguist and motorcycle rider? How…

Mr. Tillerson: You have to be feeling pretty good about your new position heading the world’s largest oil and gas company.  You stand astride the globe where, with few exceptions, the Congress is like putty in your hands, the White House is your House and the consuming public is powerless.  Governments in the Third World…

Attention please, good people! Adjust your routines and come to the aid of your country, and your children with your thoughtful patriotism. Don’t just hope for impeachment, demand the resignation now of the mad hatters in the White House — George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. Already, a large majority of you do not consider…

I just received a letter from Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, describing me as a “Democratic Leader” and “an active and engaged member of our Party in your community.” He asks for my “opinions” which “will help shape the future direction of the Democratic Party and make us more effective in building…

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, two top outlaws smashing our country’s rule of law and democratic liberties, are testing the American people’s resistance. Every day they are testing. Every day they think by flaunting the words, “war on terror”, they can get Americans to concede more and more of what makes the United States…