GUEST WORDS - Our society has coined expressions like “philanthropist” to encourage and hail people’s charitable spirit.

STATE OF OUR UNION - Can America be a democracy if a minority writes the rules to entrench minority rule?

AN ANALYSIS - This year, the Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, an agency of the Arkansas Department of Education, has invited an un-reconstructed Southern Baptist preacher, right wing politician, and Fox News pundit named Mike Huckabee to deliver a “keynote address” during what it terms an “inter-faith prayer breakfast” on the King holiday (January 17). Attendance will be by invitation only.

MEDIA WATCH - Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) is continuing to taunt out MSNBC host Rachel Maddow over an email her producer accidentally sent to his office.

RACIAL RECKONINGS - 2022 has begun with melancholy, as our country sees the pandemic reach new heights.

GUEST WORDS - I recently watched with great sadness the press conference held by attorney Ben Crump who is now representing the family of Valentina Orellana-Peralta, a fourteen-year-old girl tragically killed by an LAPD officer responding to what he believed was an active shooter call at the Burlington Coat Factory in North Hollywood, on 12/23/2021.

COMMENTARY - January 6, 2021 will be remembered as one of the darkest days for democracy in modern U.S. history, and the attack's anniversary coincides with the kickoff of an election year.

COUNTERTERRORISM - It began more than two decades ago. On September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush declared a “war on terror” and told a joint session of Congress (and the American people) that “the course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain.”

MARC's ANGLE - The articles released left and right about the passing of Harry Reid have induced head scratching moments and many times, cringe.

WATCHING POLITICS - Demographic transitions present political opportunities, but do not protect politicians from their own folly.

COMMENTARY - What’s your story?  We tell stories, which evolve into myths — and myths are what hold us together. They create the collective entity known as the human race.  And myths evolve.

COMMENTARY - Dear Senator Manchin, This single Black mom has a bone to pick with you.

YEAR IN REVIEW - It would be easy to survey the end of 2021 and see another year in wreckage. There’s the pandemic that won’t end. Rising inflation. Climate disasters. A democracy that looks creakier by the day.

COMMENTARY - Let us name Julian Assange’s executioners.

POLITICAL HERITAGE UNDER FIRE - If ignorance is bliss, the Western world should be ecstatic.

SENATE UN-CIVILITIES - Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is resorting to obscenities to attack her Congressional colleagues, referring to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as a “bitch.”

COURT EXPANSION -  as Chief Justice in 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court has handed down a spate of transformational ultra-right decisions on a dizzying array of subjects, including voting rights, gerrymandering, union organizing, the death penalty, qualified immunity for police, gun control, campaign finance, and most recently, abortion.

NATION WATCH - Where are you going to get the money?  That question haunts congressional proposals to help the poor, the unhoused, and those struggling to pay the mortgage or rent or medical bills, among so many other critical domestic matters.

GUEST WORDS - Six years ago, at a press conference on the court house steps, I got into a pushing match with an Ohio attorney who I called out for a sweet heart settlement in the LA DWP billing error case that yielded his firm $13 million for a few weeks work.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE - For much of my life I have been in conversation with a man who died 86 years ago. 

MARKET EXPLAINED--Between opening an account, studying an investment, and putting a transaction together, purchasing those first shares may feel tricky.