Skip to main content

Feeling Sleepy? You Might Be at Risk of Falsely Confessing

S. Berkowitz, E. Loftus, K., S. Frenda The Conversation
Researchers have been hard at work studying how it is that innocent people sometimes go to prison for crimes they did not commit. A recent report documented that in 2015 there were a record number of exonerations in the United States, as many as one in four involving false confessions. Here are three pathways to a false confession.

Walking Free After 42 Years in Solitary

Aviva Shen Thing Progress
Albert Woodfox’s conviction for the 1972 murder of a prison guard, Brent Miller, has been overturned several times, yet he has remained in prison. The state had planned to mount a third trial against him, even though all of the witnesses to the murder have since died. Wallace will now go free Friday because of a plea deal with the state.

Friday Nite Videos -- February 19, 2016

Portside
A Face In The Crowd - Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal. Samantha Bee: Oh God, Don't Make Me Agree With Donald Trump. John Oliver: Voting. Buddy Guy - First Time I Met The Blues. Network Earth.

The Radicalism of Shelley

Matthew Cookson rs21 - revolutionary socialism in the 21st century
Portraying her subject as a radical voice of the dispossessed, author Jacqueline Mulhallen presents the poet Shelley less as a romantic and more as a traitor to his own class for his revolutionary politics. Here is the Shelley who, though writing when the British working class was in its infancy, grasped and wanted to overturn the oppression under which they lived. It's that red Shelley who inspired among others Karl Marx, even as his poetry became part of the canon.

Tidbits - February 18, 2016 - Reader Comments: Protest Music; How Social Change Happens; Bernie, Hillary, Kissinger and Scalia; Announcements and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: How Social Change Happens; Bernie, Hillary, Kissinger and Scalia; AFL-CIO Election Survey; DNC Lets Lobbyists Back In; Bernie as the Peace Candidate and Remembering 1972; Teaching - With Protest Music; Obama's Military Aid to Israel; Announcements - 50 Years After the Mississippi Summer Project; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; Labor for Bernie and Beyond - National Meeting;

New York Times Invents Left-Leaning Economists to Attack Bernie Sanders

Dean Baker; Doug Henwood
All the news that's fit...well, it seems the NYT news story has been tailored to fit the editorial views of the paper. There are undoubtedly many left of center economists who have serious objections to the proposals Sanders has put forward, there are also many who have publicly indicated support for them. He has not given a fully worked out proposal for many of his ideas, nor is it reasonable to expect a fully worked out proposal from a candidate for the presidency.

Lessons from the Crisis: Ending Too Big to Fail - Minneapolis Federal Reserve President

Neel Kashkari, Pres. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
The Federal Reserve's newest bank president, a Republican who served as a top Treasury Department official during the financial crisis, called for policy makers to consider breaking up big banks to prevent future government bailouts. His proposals also include: Turning large banks into public utilities; and taxing leverage throughout the financial system. Seven years after the crisis, it is now time to move forward and end TBTF.

World's Most Famous Economist Says Bernie Sanders Could "Change the Face of the Country"

Zeeshan Aleem Policy.Mic
The Vermont senator's success so far demonstrates the end of the politico-ideological cycle opened by the victory of Ronald Reagan at the 1980 elections. Piketty's doesn't see Sanders as following in the footsteps of Europe's social democratic models, but rather leading the United States toward a possible return to the nation's pioneering 20th century experiments with extremely progressive taxation and social spending.

Why America Is Moving Left

Peter Beinart The Atlantic, Jan - Feb 2016 issue
Republicans may have a lock on Congress and the nation's statehouses - and could well win the presidency - but the liberal era ushered in by Barack Obama is only just beginning. The need to win the votes of Millennials and minorities, who lean left not just on cultural issues but on economic ones, will shape how whoever wins in the general election, and governs once in office.