"People are looking to state ballot initiatives to have some form of control over governance when elected officials are abdicating," says Jane Hamsher of this year's crop of ballot initiatives around the country. Perhaps best known is California's Proposition 19, which would legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana, but there are also important tax initiatives on ballots around the country, as well as state environmental regulations.

It's nearly the homestretch for the 2010 midterm elections, and unsurprisingly, race remains a hot topic. From a new ad in Nevada urging Latinos not to vote to Sharron Angle's latest comments about Latino youth looking Asian, and ongoing concern that black voters will not turn out in numbers like they did in 2008, it's clear that no matter how much candidates deny it, race is this season's hot button.

It's nearly the homestretch for the 2010 midterm elections, and unsurprisingly, race remains a hot topic. From a new ad in Nevada urging Latinos not to vote to Sharron Angle's latest comments about Latino youth looking Asian, and ongoing concern that black voters will not turn out in numbers like they did in 2008, it's clear that no matter how much candidates deny it, race is this season's hot button.

Dr. Joycelyn Elders is no stranger to making controversial statements in public, so her support of California's Proposition 19, the marijuana legalization ballot initiative, shouldn't be surprising. After all, years ago she was ousted as Bill Clinton's Surgeon General after noting that a discussion of masturbation should be part of educating young people on avoiding HIV infection.

Billy Wimsatt made a splash when he was 21 with the book Bomb the Suburbs--the "bomb" of the title meaning graffiti, not weaponry. Sixteen years later, he's back with a new book, and a new strategy, though with no less enthusiasm and fire for change. Instead, he says, it's time "to play the game in a more sophisticated way—to win."

Peace talks between Israel and Palestine are "a calming pill. Kind of a time game," according to Micha Kurz, co-director of Grassroots Jerusalem and a founder of Breaking the Silence, an organization of former IDF soldiers speaking out about their experiences in the Occupied Territories. While the talks stall, settlement building continues, and settlement building, Kurz notes, becomes a "fact" that makes the idea of a Palestinian state less viable.

Peace talks between Israel and Palestine are "a calming pill. Kind of a time game," according to Micha Kurz, co-director of Grassroots Jerusalem and a founder of Breaking the Silence, an organization of former IDF soldiers speaking out about their experiences in the Occupied Territories. While the talks stall, settlement building continues, and settlement building, Kurz notes, becomes a "fact" that makes the idea of a Palestinian state less viable.

From the file marked "Good but could go bad," there's this news. We already know that CEO pay has spiked alarmingly over the last decade or so, causing dangerous rifts as ordinary working people struggle to get by and watch their jobs go poof.

"Vulnerable Democrats are begging donors for cash -- $2,400 at a time, while their colleagues are sitting on millions of dollars they could unleash with a pen stroke." So wrote Erica Payne of the Agenda Project, pointing out that the control of the entire House could be in the hands of a few Democrats in safe seats.

According to Stephen F. Cohen, half of Russia looks back to Josef Stalin as a great leader and the other half as a genocidal murderer. This disconnect, and a longing for a stronger, secure state, can be seen in public debate over a memorial to the victims of the gulags, where more people died than in Hitler's death camps.