BY FROMA HARROP The popular TV series Weeds is about a widowed suburban mother who deals pot to preserve her family’s cushy California dream. Not a few Californians would like to see the theme writ large for their state. California has legalized medical marijuana, its cannabis crop is valued at $17 billion a year, and […]

BY SUSAN ESTRICH I got my first job when I was 15. Before that, I baby-sat, did piece work for a leather company that didn’t care how old you were and worked at a dusty day camp. The Pewter Pot Muffin Shop in Salem, MA, was a major step up: 99 cents an hour plus […]

BY FROMA HARROP It’s high noon on health care reform. Time to identify the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Let’s start with the Bad: Obama’s passive leadership. The president didn’t want to come down from the mount with stone tablets detailing what reform would look like. That’s what Hillary Clinton did 16 years ago […]

BY JOE CONASON “Fiscal conservative” is one of those terms used by politicians of all sorts to describe themselves, without any real justification. Parroted mindlessly from one news cycle to the next by major media outlets, that phrase is often used to mislead the public about the priorities and policies favored by those who claim […]

BY JIM HIGHTOWER Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama is all for the congressional effort to produce health-care reform – as long as the legislation we end up with doesn’t contain any actual reform. Indeed, the senator gets fainting spells at the mere mention of Barack Obama’s proposed reforms, gasping that they add up to socialized […]