Today's Liberal News

Meet Mansoor Adayfi: I Was Kidnapped as a Teen, Sold to the CIA & Jailed at Guantánamo for 14 Years

We speak with Mansoor Adayfi, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee who was held at the military prison for 14 years without charge, an ordeal he details in his new memoir, “Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo.” Adayfi was 18 when he left his home in Yemen to do research in Afghanistan, where he was kidnapped by Afghan warlords, then sold to the CIA after the 9/11 attacks.

“Furious and Disgusted”: Teen Survivor Speaks Out After Wealthy White Serial Rapist Gets Probation

The survivor of a serial rapist who received probation joins us to speak out after a New York judge sparked international outrage when he ruled it is inappropriate to jail the man who attacked her. Christopher Belter pleaded guilty to raping and sexually assaulting her along with three other teenage girls age 15 and 16, but he will avoid serving time in prison, and instead receive 8 years of probation.

“Why Are Ahmaud Arbery’s Killers So Scared?”: Self-Defense Claims by White Attackers Seen As Racist

Update on Nov. 24: Jurors on Wednesday afternoon returned guilty verdicts against all three of the white men charged with killing 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020. Travis McMichael fired the fatal shots and was convicted on all counts, including the charge of malice murder. His father Gregory McMichael, a former police officer, and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan were convicted of felony murder and other charges.

Community Spotlight: The brilliance of Animal Nuz, Daily Kos’ first exclusive comic strip

Unless you’ve been at Daily Kos since the early days, you may not realize how much of the front-page content originated in the Community. Many staff writers and elections team members began as Community members, whose special interests and skills were first expressed in their personal Daily Kos blogs. The site lacked a comic strip, however, until 2010, when Eric Lewis, aka ericlewis0, launched Animal Nuz.

A Pandemic Guide to Anime: Light horror and ghostly shenanigans

Welcome back to our impromptu and sporadically scheduled pandemic guide to anime. Having gone through the lengthy reintroductions last time around, we can skip all that and dive right in. Missed earlier entries in the series and want to catch up? Here they all are, in order.

California resort turns into long-term housing option for unhoused veterans and families

When it comes to supporting our unhoused neighbors, people can turn a cold shoulder very, very quickly. No matter the reason (or, most likely, reasons) someone is experiencing homelessness, they always deserve dignity, respect, and a safe space to live. Unfortunately in the United States, we know unhoused people are routinely excluded and left on the (sometimes literal) outskirts.

Memories of Bill Morlin, a fearless journalism pioneer who exposed the radical right

When I first met Bill Morlin, he was already a legend among news reporters in the Pacific Northwest. I’ll admit I was a bit starstruck: This was the man—on paper, a simple crime reporter for the Spokane Spokesman-Review, but much more than that—who had relentlessly covered the Aryan Nations and The Order. He was the first to report on the Ruby Ridge standoff, before it was even a standoff. His journalism was not just first-rate, it was courageous and groundbreaking.

What Stephen Sondheim Knew About Endings

Back in 2020, I might’ve imagined the end of the pandemic being something like that gum commercial: everyone together, vaccinated, picking the same time to come safely and communally out of lockdown and get back to the way things were before, so grateful to be alive we practically leapt into each other’s arms as soon as we got the chance. That is not, of course, the way things have gone in 2021.

Building back and replanting: How we can tackle climate change through focusing on our federal lands

Republicans have argued for decades that what we used to call global warming and now call climate change is a hoax. And for all those decades, they’ve been, and still are, wrong.

Climate change is real. Human-driven climate change is real. So far, humanity has failed in its custodial duty to the planet and the ecosystems that have provided us with existence for some six million years.

We Know Almost Nothing About the Omicron Variant

As fall dips into winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the coronavirus has served up the holiday gift that no one, absolutely no one, asked for: a new variant of concern, dubbed Omicron by the World Health Organization on Friday.Omicron, also known as B.1.1.529, was first detected in Botswana and South Africa earlier this month, and very little is known about it so far. But the variant is moving fast.

Why the Energy Transition Will Be So Complicated

To appreciate the complexities of the competing demands between climate action and the continued need for energy, consider the story of an award—one that the recipient very much did not want and, indeed, did not bother to pick up.It began when Innovex Downhole Solutions, a Texas-based company that provides technical services to the oil and gas industry, ordered 400 jackets from North Face with its corporate logo. But the iconic outdoor-clothing company refused to fulfill the order.

Beijing Keeps Trying to Rewrite History

Under the relentless crush of Beijing, the courtrooms of Hong Kong have become some of the few venues safe for protest in the city. Defendants accused or convicted of political crimes have turned otherwise banal hearings and bail applications into opportunities to voice dissent and challenge the arduous legal process.

Nuclear Strategists Know How Dangerous the Debt Fight Is

Republicans and Democrats alike have characterized the debt-ceiling fight as a game of chicken, in which two drivers barrel toward each other and each hopes that the other swerves away first. Political pundits have described some strategies for resolving the conflict, such as changing the Senate’s filibuster rules to allow a simple majority to raise the debt limit, as “nuclear options.

Why Biden picked Powell

In the end, President Joe Biden did what many close to him expected: He took a longer-than-anticipated amount of time to arrive at a reasonable, moderate decision that thrilled few but carried limited risk.