Spending cuts have been applied by Congress to both military and non-military spending.

In my view, the military cuts are much too small and the non-military cuts should not exist at all. In the view of most liberal organizations, the military cuts -- like the military spending and the military itself -- are to be ignored, while the non-military cuts are to be opposed by opposing all cuts in general.

But, guess what?

The spending limits on the military are being blatantly violated. Both houses of Congress have now passed military budgets larger than last year and larger than is allowed under the sequester.

Meanwhile the sequester is being used to cut away at all that is good and decent in public policy.

In fact, the House Appropriations Committee proposes to make up for its violation of the law on military spending levels by imposing yet bigger cuts to non-military spending. And what's the harm in that if all cuts are equally bad?

Throughout the past weeks of revelations regarding the NSA and other agencies spying on millions of Americans, a bipartisan clique of hawks in both the Obama administration and Congress have repeatedly stated that the secret survellance practices are legal. The NSA director, General Keith Alexander, has already lied to Congress once that can be proven, without even a threat of sanction. The UK Guardian has released new documents today that show the legal justification for these survellance was so secret the former NSA director may have never actually read them.

The Guardian released the NSA Inspector General's report on the legalities of certain ongoing wiretap programs. It reveals without a doubt that as time progressed, intelligence gathering on people around the world increased, restrictions relaxed, and successive secret legal opinions normalized and regularized what was originally a secret temporary emergency measure. Federal judges and the vast majority congressional Democrats enthusiastically approved the measures without ever actually examining the legal underpinnings due to the reported success of the programs.

With the Defense of Marriage Act’s evaporation, the U.S. Supreme Court has removed a titanic obstacle in the gay rights movement. For those of us who are dedicated to the causes of equality, tolerance, and fairness under the law, this decision has cleared the path for federal legislation to legalize same-sex marriage. A minority denied access to marriage for prejudicial reasons dealing with their very nature, homosexuals in particular and the gay rights movement at large still has much to accomplish. Meanwhile, since the century’s turn, several countries around the world have already taken action to cement equality into law.**

Netherlands (2000)

In December 2000, the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage. The Dutch parliament arguably passed the most progressive legislation in the world at the time, and primarily faced opposition from the Christian Democratic Party. More than 2,000 same-sex couples married within a mere nine months of the law’s passage. However, between 2001 and 2011, only 20% of the 55,000 same-sex couples in the Netherlands have actually married.

Belgium (2003)

America, America . . .

Certainly Edward Snowden’s crime is one of public relations. In this day and age, power ain’t just jackboots, tanks and missiles. What he did by outing the NSA and its gargantuan surveillance operation was mess hugely with the American image — the American brand — with its irresistible combination of might and right.

That’s the nature of his “treason.” The secret he gave away was pretty much the same one the little boy blurted out in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale: “The emperor has no clothes!” That is, the government’s security industry isn’t devoted, with benevolent righteousness, to protecting the American public. Instead, it’s obsessively irrational, bent on accumulating data on every phone call we make. It’s a berserk spy machine, seemingly to no sane end. How awkward.

The state of Ohio is taking centre stage in a radical and innovative response to the global financial crash of 2008, a growing national movement described by distinguished professors as "the prehistory of the next American revolution."

Cooperatives as an alternative to traditional capitalist hierarchies have a long history that dates back to the 19th century. But five years after the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the fragile seeds of economic change are beginning to take root across the country. The events following the collapse of Lehman Brothers exposed the deeply dangerous nature of finance-driven capitalism, while the government stimulus failed to 'trickle down' as expected; a new answer was needed, something that helped move away from the inherent flaws of both unfettered markets and government intervention.