BY JIM HIGHTOWER In the good-and-good-for-you department, food scientists are now touting the health benefits of enjoying a handful of nuts every day. I, for one, am glad, because I love nuts – pecans, hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds, you-name-’em. But my favorite nuts, by far, are the homegrown natives that have taken root in one particularly […]

BY JOE CONASON Demagogues often prosper under the rules of democracy, intimidating the moderate and preying on the weak-minded. But in a healthy society, such figures cannot cross a final threshold of decency without jeopardizing their own status – and today’s right-wing nihilists seem to be on the verge of doing just that. When Elizabeth […]

BY FROMA HARROP What part of “immigration reform” don’t you understand – or, rather, don’t want to understand? The send-’em-home crowd doesn’t “get it” that a new enforcement regime must be paired with an amnesty for millions, even though they broke the law by working here illegally. And an alliance of cheap-labor types and ethnic […]

BY SUSAN ESTRICH The nuns are right. The bishops are wrong. I know what you’re thinking: Who am I, a nice Jewish girl from Lynn, to be telling bishops and nuns who is right? If this were a theological question, I’d agree; I wouldn’t go near it. But the current war raging inside the Catholic […]

BY FROMA HARROP Go visit potato country at the tippy-top of Maine. There, struggling farmers can look across the St. John River at equally hard-pressed potato growers in New Brunswick, Canada. The big difference between them is that if one of the Mainers falls grievously ill, the family may have to sell the farm to […]