A majority of New Yorkers may object to the proposed cultural center and mosque, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.

Carl Paladino, Buffalo real estate developer and Republican candidate for New York State governor, wants to turn New York State prisons into housing for welfare recipients.

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

President Barack H. Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest
Washington, DC  20500

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Wendy and I am a daughter, a friend, a student, and, most importantly, a dreamer. I came to this country in 1999 from Peru when I was seven years old, accompanied by my mother, father, and sister. Getting on the plane, I did not know that words like “undocumented” and “dreams” would play such a major role in my young adult life. Growing up in New York, I began to embrace the United States and the feeling of being an American; I learned to balance this country’s traditions with my own without difficulty. I came to notice that the people around me, regardless of their different ethnic backgrounds and customs, were not so different from me after all.

The (New York) Legislature passed a bill on Monday that will give the state the highest cigarette taxes in the country. Is such a tax fair to low income citizens?

BP oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two months, and while attention has focused there, deepwater oil drilling is just one of many risky methods of energy extraction that industry is pursuing. Gasland, Josh Fox’s documentary about the effects of hydrofracking, a new technique for extracting natural gas, was broadcast this week on HBO. In the film, Fox travels across the country visiting families whose water has turned toxic since gas companies began drilling in their area.

On May 15th, the Green Party of New York nominated peace/labor/environmental activist Howie Hawkins for Governor, civil rights activist Colia Clark and environmental health advocate Cecile Lawrence for US Senate, as well as Gloria Mattera for Lt. Governor and Julia Willebrand for Comptroller.

Howie Hawkins of Syracuse, an organizer in movements for peace, justice, labor, the environment, and independent politics since the late 1960s, announced his campaign for Governor of New York as a Green Party candidate in an Albany press conference on May 4th.

Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee today urged Attorney General Eric Holder to stick to his initial determination that the alleged 9/11 plotters should be tried in civilian court, and not bow to partisan politics on what should be a legal determination.

Apparently inspired by certain Democrats voting against the health insurance reform, the Service Employees International Union – a union representing over 2 million workers – is surprisingly planning to work against Democrats this election season.

Perhaps the strongest challenge to Democrats, if not the Democratic establishment itself, will be in North Carolina. The national SEIU is working with the State Employees Association of North Carolina, its state affiliate, to form the North Carolina First Party.

The danger in a blip of good news is that it’s simply that: a blip. It is certainly a good thing that the data shows that 162,000 jobs were added in March. But, the truth is that this is not much to celebrate. And it actually should be a siren to move dramatically to embrace a much more ambitious jobs program on the order of $1 trillion.