Media

During a long discussion of energy in last night's presidential debates, never once did either Mitt Romney or President Obama say anything about climate change. Instead, the energy discussion seemed to revolve around who would drill more for oil and gas and who could promote coal the most.

It's hard to know what audience members will ask the candidates in tonight's debate, but here's a prediction: Issues like gay marriage, abortion, crime, and affirmative action will barely come up, if at all.

If I had one question to insert into tonight’s presidential debate, I would ask the candidates what they propose to do about child poverty.

In a single sentence order the Supreme Court today rebuffed a plea by Ohio state officials to close early voting in the final three days before the election. 

This is a big win for democracy in Ohio. Like we've seen around the country, it's been the courts, and for the first time the Supreme Court, that have halted efforts to restrict the vote. 

Nearly every politician says they want tax reform, but it's hard to imagine many having an appetite for curtailing today's biggest tax expenditures -- particularly the home mortgage interest deduction.

Or maybe that's wrong.

The FBI is reported to be looking into phone calls and theactions of four employees in its investigation into events surrounding the infamous “London Whale” trades that lost JP Morgan Chase upwards of $6 billion earlier this year. It has also been reported that the SEC is on the case.

As we celebrate the anniversary of the Clean Water Act, we should also focus on how to increase the number of waterways that are clean enough for fishing or swimming. As we wrote earlier this week, the CWA doesn’t cover nonpoint sources of pollution, which is caused by rain or snowmelt runoff that carries wastes into bodies of water.

The students assembled outside Borough of Manhattan Community College yesterday morning were indignant.

The Pew Research Center issued a deeply troubling study last year which found that black and hispanic households had suffered a much bigger decline in their net worth as a result of the Great Recession than white households. The net worth of hispanics went down by 66 percent between 2005 and 2009, blacks by 53 percent, and whites by just 16 percent.