In legal battle against drone strikes, she’s on the front lines: A law professor at Notre Dame leads a lonely campaign to stop the targeted killings in Pakistan and elsewhere, insisting they violate international law.
Photo: Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell is a leading critic of the U.S. targeted-killing program against Al Qaeda militants. Credit: Ken Dilanian / Los Angeles Times
— Pamela Karlan, “Empty Benches” (Boston Review, September/October 2012)
(Source: bostonreview)
The cuts, which are part of a broader farm bill, would reduce spending in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, by $16 billion over 10 years. The reduction is deeper than proposed SNAP cuts in a version of the farm bill that passed the Senate last month with bipartisan support.
Watching politicians fight over SNAP can be aggravating for people who rely on the program. Tanya Wells, 32, said her family of four receives the maximum monthly allotment of $668.
“We would love to not have to rely on the government for something as important as food, but we simply can not,” she said. “We do hope to be off of the system soon, because it causes a lot of extra stress to see your only food source constantly on the line because of political battles.”
Wells said she and her husband both lost their jobs near the end of 2007. She had worked as a logistics coordinator for an oil company while he had been a sheet metal mechanic — and they made a decent living.
“We were comfortable middle class and all of the sudden the rug got pulled out from under us,” Wells said.
(Source: huffingtonpost)
— Andrew Cohen, on the enormous price we pay by ignoring mentally ill prisoners. (via theatlantic)
(via theatlantic)
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(via tpmmedia)
