Focal Point

Business reporter Spencer Soper of The Morning Call has won the October Sidney Award from the Sidney Hillman foundation for his expose of Dickensian conditions in Amazon.com's warehouse in Pennsylvania. Temperatures inside the "fulfillment center" soared to over 100 degrees over the summer and ... Read More

Hey, Michele Bachmann, you know who was really, really pro-vaccination? The Founding Fathers. Read all about it in my new article at The Nation. George Washington argued for mandatory inoculation of citizens against smallpox and mandated the inoculation of the Continental Army, under the ... Read More

Neuroscientist James Fallon is fascinated by the brains of murderers, especially in light of his own family history. His father's side of the family was full of notorious murderers. So, he compared his family's PET scans to those of known psychopathic killers: "And I took a look at my own PET ... Read More

The Center for Media and Democracy and The Nation magazine have won this month's Sidney Award for excellence in socially conscious journalism, the Sidney Hillman Foundation announced Tuesday. The winning project, "ALEC:Exposed" is a groundbreaking print and multimedia expose of the American ... Read More

Presidential hopeful Rick Perry told a little kid that if he were a superhero, he'd be Superman, a great American. Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine thinks that's a great idea. Watch. [Photo credit: Dunechaser, Creative Commons.] Read More

My new blog, Duly Noted, is live at In These Times. Check it out. Read More

Labor Day is about two things: freedom and respect. So, in that spirit, I thought I'd weigh into the discussion of romantic dealbreakers. Here are mine: 1. Picky eaters and the food-indifferent. I'm a good cook. You've got to eat what's put in front of you and like it. 2. Beards. Unless you're a ... Read More

Now here's a backhanded way to normalize a mayor covering up his deputy's arrest for domestic violence: "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s management style has its hallmarks: unwavering loyalty to aides and a deep distaste for exposing private lives to public scrutiny." That's Michael Barbaro's ... Read More

Amanda Marcotte, Matt Yglesias, and Atrios are debating the concept of "guilty pleasures" in pop culture. Here's my theory of what guilty pleasures are. For people my age, taste is a personal aesthetic code. Good taste can be idiosyncratic, in fact, it's expected to be. You're supposed to like what ... Read More

Interesting fact about Alan Krueger, Obama's pick to head the Council of Economic Advisers, Alan B. Krueger. His research showed that raising the minimum wage doesn't destroy minimum wage jobs, it helps fill job vacancies: Mr. Krueger is best known for his studies testing widely held economic ... Read More

Jean Casella and James Ridgeway report in Mother Jones that New York City has no plans to evacuate an estimated 12,000 inmates and their correctional officers on low-lying Rikers Island ahead of Hurricane Irene: "We are not evacuating Rikers Island," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a news ... Read More

Unsure if you should care about the Keystone XL pipeline controversy? In his latest essay for Dissent, my friend Mark Engler neatly encapsulates the issues at stake. It's not just another land use battle to preserve pristine wilderness, it's the front line in the fight against climate change itself ... Read More

No hurricane evacuation order has been issued for New York City, but City officials haven't ruled out the possibility. Meanwhile, you can plug your address into this useful official City database to find out whether you live in an evacuation zone. [Photo credit: Kyle McCluer, Creative Commons.] Read More

Black market cosmeticians are preying on transwomen in New York, injecting them with huge quantities of liquid silicone to create a more feminine silhouette, sometimes with life threatening consequences, Laura Rena Murray reports in the New York Times . A young transwoman died in a Queens hospital ... Read More

The conceptual art project known as PETA says it's planning to launch its own porn site. PETA has gotten a lot of attention for degrading women in order to stress that you shouldn't degrade animals. So, it's a natural progression for the organization, even though porn is less reliably degrading to ... Read More