As in most corners of American life, crisis is the new normal in academia. Investment returns to university endowments have plummeted, state aid is being cut, and critical federal stimulus dollars are running out. Tuition is up, enrollment is being capped, positions are being eliminated, and universities are increasingly relying on part-time adjunct faculty that shuttle from campus to campus in an effort to cobble together a paycheck.

Parents, out-of-work and saddled with depleted savings and home values, are less able to afford tuition than ever. As these axes fall, conservatives are pushing to remake universities in the image of private corporations: budgets dependent on the generosity of rich people, professors instructed to prove their market fitness or pack their bags, and cuts to the humanities in favor of more ‘practical

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The journal Energy Policy has produced a study claiming that by 2030 the entire world could be operating on a combination of wind, solar, geothermal, and wave power. While achieving this would require a massive retooling of the world’s energy infrastructure, it is all doable with current technology and at a affordable cost. The study’s authors, Mark Delucchi and Mark Jacobson note that all that would be required is the political will to make this happen.

The plan calls for building of about four million 5 MW wind turbines, 1.7 billion 3 kW roof-mounted solar photovoltaic systems, and around 90,000 300 MW solar power plants. These would be backed by geothermal and wave generation devices whose power output fluctuates less over the course of the days or seasons. All the assumptions are based on using technology already in place at this scale somewhere today.

The execution of such a plan over the next two decades would require an ‘Apollo-level’ commitment by successive administrations in the U.S. alone. China and several European countries are already committed to massive green energy programs. The global implications of such a shift in energy technology would benefit the climate as well […]

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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) on Sunday threw a measure of support behind a key Republican lawmaker’s plan to dramatically cut Social Security and Medicare.

The plan, called ‘A Roadmap for America’s Future,’ was created by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the new chairman of the budget committee, who promoted it last year as a means to cut the national debt.

‘The direction the roadmap goes is something we need to embrace,’ Cantor said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ praising the plan’s capacity for deficit reduction.

The roadmap would partially privatize Social Security benefits and turn Medicare into a voucher program, effectively ending two monumental welfare programs in the United States.

Cantor’s remarks earned an immediate rebuke from Democrats.

‘House Republican Leader Eric Cantor and House Republicans are now ‘full speed ahead’ on a devastating plan that would privatize Social Security and eliminate Medicare that American seniors earned,’ said Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. ‘House Republicans are doubling down on plans to gamble Social Security in the stock market and eliminating Medicare.’

In the run-up to the November midterm elections, Republican leaders declined to champion the specifics of the plan, treading carefully around the issue of slashing cherished entitlement programs.

But Cantor’s […]

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Keith Olbermann’s abrupt departure from MSNBC should be another wake-up call to American progressives about the fragile foothold that liberal-oriented fare now has for only a few hours on one corporate cable network.

Though Olbermann hosted MSNBC’s top-rated news show, ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann,’ he disappeared from the network with only the briefest of good-byes. Certainly, the callous treatment of Olbermann by the MSNBC brass would never be replicated by Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing Fox News toward its media stars.

At Fox News, the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have far greater leeway to pitch right-wing ideas and even to organize pro-Republican political events. Last November, Olbermann was suspended for two days for making donations to three Democratic candidates, including Arizona’s Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was wounded in the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson.

Now, with Olbermann’s permanent departure on Friday, the remainder of MSNBC’s liberal evening line-up, which also includes Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell (who will fill Olbermann’s 8 p.m. slot), must face the reality that any sustained friction with management could mean the bum’s rush for them, too.

The liberal hosts also must remember that MSNBC experimented with liberal-oriented programming only after all other programming […]

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WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife’s income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday.

Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation’s IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled ‘none’ where ‘spousal noninvestment income’ would be disclosed.

A Supreme Court spokesperson could not be reached for comment late Friday. But Virginia Thomas’ employment by the Heritage Foundation was well known at the time.

Virginia Thomas also has been active in the group Liberty Central, an organization she founded to restore the ‘founding principles’ of limited government and individual liberty.

In his 2009 disclosure, Justice Thomas also reported spousal income as ‘none.’ Common Cause contends that Liberty Central paid Virginia Thomas an unknown salary that year.

Federal judges are bound by law to disclose the source of spousal income, according to Stephen Gillers, a professor at NYU School of Law. Thomas’ omission - which could be interpreted as a violation of that law […]

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