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| Wall Street Vampires ; Paul Krugman - NYTimes
Wall Street favors the G.O.P. And the Republicans who came to power this year are returning the favor by trying to kill Dodd-Frank, the financial reform enacted in 2010....Because it's working.... the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is, by all accounts, having a major chilling effect on abusive lending practices. And early indications are that enhanced regulation of financial derivatives -- which played a major role in the 2008 crisis -- is having similar effects, increasing transparency and reducing the profits of middlemen. As for 'too big to fail: What was really lethal was the interaction between size and complexity. Financial institutions had become chimeras: part bank, part hedge fund, part insurance company....This complexity let them evade regulation, yet be rescued from the consequences when their bets went bad...Dodd-Frank addressed this problem..
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 | Bernie Sanders Says He Can Beat Hillary Clinton
Presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is confident that he can beat Hillary Clinton and become the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate. While Sanders voiced his respect and admiration for Clinton, he noted that she voted in favor of the 2003 Iraq War and has avoided taking a stance on the Keystone XL pipeline. Sanders, who opposed both, has also led the fight against a bill that would grant the president fast-track authority on trade agreements.
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| McConnell defends support of Patriot Act, NSA program
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday defended his support for a measure in the USA Patriot Act that has anchored a National Security Agency program to collect Americans' phone data. Speaking at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston, McConnell called the measure "an important tool to prevent the next terrorist attack," and pledged to continue fighting for it against recent challenges. The Patriot Act's counter-terrorism measure, Section 215, is set to expire on June 1, and McConnell is seeking to extend it through 2020. The act is at the center of a bitter controversy, with a federal appeals court ruling this month that Section 215 does not allow the NSA to collect Americans' phone data in bulk.
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 | A Day- and Night-mare
By Uri Avnery
Right after the election Netanyahu decreed that the next government would be a narrow coalition of orthodox and rightist parties, which would be able at long last to do the things he really wants to do: put an end to this two-state nonsense, castrate the Supreme Court, muzzle the media and much more.
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| Saudi Arabia Says King Won't Attend Meetings in U.S.
Saudi Arabia announced on Sunday that its new monarch, King Salman, would not be attending meetings at the White House with President Obama or a summit gathering at Camp David this week, in an apparent signal of its continued displeasure with the administration over United States' relations with Iran, its rising regional adversary. Arab officials said they viewed the king's failure to attend the meeting as a sign of disappointment with what the White House was willing to give as reassurance that the United States would back its Arab allies against a rising Iran.
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 | "I'm From that Hell Called Gaza"
By James Wall
The injustice in Gaza and the West Bank is, indeed, a curse. It is a curse President Carter knows all too well. He grew up in the segregated state of Georgia, the same state that Martin Luther King, Jr., called home. Dr. King lived and died confronting the curse of segregation in the American South.
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 | Fire at nuclear power plant 35 miles from New York City
A transformer exploded at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in suburban New York - only 35 miles away from midtown Manhattan - on Saturday, sending black smoke billowing into the sky. The blaze, which sparked an oil leakage, forced the automatic shutdown of the facility's Unit 3 reactor, which sits near the Hudson River and supplies five per cent of the power to the state. It was initially extinguished by a sprinkler system and on-site personnel, officials said. It then started up again, but has since been put out. Police and firefighters were at the site as a "precaution."
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| Chinese Soldiers March in Red Square Parade
While the Western press gloats over its masters' absence from the 70th anniversary parade marking the defeat of Hitler, it fails to report that not only China's and India's leaders were in the grandstands next to the Russian president, for the first time, as The Saker reports, Chinese troops marched in Red Square, giving pause to Western leaders still hoping to implement World War II plans to turn on the Soviet Union with German troops.
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| Get Ready to Debate the Pope's Encyclical About the Environment
By Thomas Farrell
Pope Francis is preparing an encyclical about the environment. Even though it has not yet been released, certain conservatives have already published pre-emptive criticisms of the idea of the pope speaking about the environment. So progressives and liberals who are interested in the environment might want to get ready for the debate about the pope's encyclical when it comes out. I offer some food for thought about the topic.
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| The Countdown in Syria
By Deena Stryker
Here is a first hand account of the military situation in Syria and what it means for those who cannot - or will not - leave their homeland, whether Muslims, Christians or Kurds. The role being played by Turkey is brushed ove rlightly in the mainstream press.
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