GOP Foreign Policy Experts Warn A Trump Presidency Would Endanger America

WASHINGTON -- Sixty Republican national security heavyweights vow in an open letter released late Wednesday to work “energetically” to prevent GOP front-runner Donald Trump from winning the party's nomination.

The experts, who represent vastly divergent GOP ideologies, describe Trump's vision of American influence as “wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle.” They warned that a Trump presidency would “make America less safe” and “diminish our standing in the world.”

Donald Trump Loves the Great Wall of China. Too Bad It Was a Complete Disaster.

Someone should tell Donald Trump that the Great Wall of China was a staggeringly expensive and deadly failure.

I've climbed the Great Wall a few times. It is, I can confirm, totally big and beautiful—to borrow words from our future wall-builder-in-chief. Begun around 220 BC as a military defense system in Northern China, the wall is now a UNESCO World Heritage site and has become the country's preeminent national symbol.

Farmworkers Forced To Go Back To Work After Being Exposed To Pesticide

Aurelio Landa, a farmworker working in California, was pruning a peach orchard last week when a neighboring orchard was sprayed with pesticides. One crewmember signaled to the sprayer to stop, but the request was ignored. Landa and some of his coworkers felt nauseous, dizzy, and teary-eyed. Three hours later, they were taken to an office where a doctor checked Landa’s eyes, mouth, and pulse.

“I told him that my head hurt, my eyes burned and I felt nauseous,” Landa said, according to a United Farm Workers union petition. “Soon after [the doctor] told me that everything was fine since the pesticide that was sprayed was organic and that it wasn’t dangerous.”

Israel’s Right Wing Is Trying To Squash Progressive Speech

Progressives in Israel are facing attacks on their free speech from the country’s right wing, in what activists say is a concerted effort by right wing NGOs and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

The Israeli government has long maintained that it believes in a two-state solution. But under the right wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, such an outcome looks less feasible than at any other time in recent history. The situation for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories has long been dire, but now activists and human rights workers say the country’s right wing has Israeli progressives in their crosshairs.

Mississippi Refuses To Use Money That Would Give Poor Families Child Care

Christi Foster grew up in Georgia. While the state doesn’t spend a lot on its safety net for the poor, she says that enrolling in benefits wasn’t too complicated. “You go and apply for something and you find out that day or within a week’s time,” she said.

But since the single mother of three children moved to Mississippi, things have been a whole lot different. “Everything down here is so hard,” she said. “Daycare assistance, with Mississippi, it’s hard to get in… it’s always a waiting list.”

The 401(k) Boom Has Been Disastrous For People Of Color

It used to be that most American workers could expect guaranteed checks in retirement thanks to a pension, or what economists call a defined-benefit plan. But in the 1980s, the country went through a major shift, with employers ditching pensions in favor of 401(k) accounts. Those accounts, known as defined-contribution plans, don’t guarantee payouts, leaving it up to the employees to enroll, contribute, and make smart investment decisions to ensure they’ll get enough money in old age.

A Kentucky Lawmaker’s Hilariously Stupid Attack On Marriage Equality

The U.S. Supreme Court ended the debate on whether same-sex couples can marry, but one Kentucky lawmaker has a new plan to circumvent this decision. State Rep. Joseph M. Fischer (R) is happy to let same-sex couples marry, but only different-sex couples will be able to enter “matrimony.”

Fischer has introduced HB 572, the “Matrimonial Freedom Act” — an epic 454-page bill that creates the new status of “matrimony.” Declaring that the Supreme Court has established an “absolute Tyranny over these States,” the bill asserts, “we have full power to define marriage and to establish a new institution of matrimony in this Commonwealth,” adding, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

GOP’s First Hearing On ‘Baby Parts’ Quickly Goes Off The Rails

On Wednesday morning, Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments in a case that could severely restrict a woman’s access to a safe abortion — an issue that brought hundreds of pro-choice protesters to Washington, D.C. But that wasn’t the only discussion about abortion rights taking place on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

Behind the closed doors of the Capitol, members of the House held the first congressional hearing on Planned Parenthood’s involvement with the sale of fetal tissue. This hearing, dubbed the “Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives” by the conservative representatives behind it, was a wide-ranging discussion of the morality of abortion that Democratic lawmakers protested was more like a witch hunt than an objective discussion.

Foreign-Owned Fish Farms Are Devastating B.C.'s Wild Salmon

The salmon farming industry has long been banned in Alaska, where it's believed to be a threat to the state's healthy wild salmon populations.

But that's not the case in Canada, where Norwegian-owned aquaculture multinationals have done a terrific job of winning over the federal government.

A Top Republican Makes Absurdly Contradictory Argument About Supreme Court

WASHINGTON -- Republicans who have decided to block any Supreme Court nomination so voters can have a say accused Democrats Wednesday of politicizing the high court.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared almost immediately after news of Justice Antonin Scalia's death that he would not allow a replacement to be seated in President Barack Obama's final year, saying, "The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice."