Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland, inteviews historian Garry Wills about Wills' new book Bomb Power, which finds the origins of the Imperial Presidency within the President's power to use nuclear weapons.

Benson Scotch, general counsel to “Bring the Guard Home—It’s the Law!" prepared the following legal memo for the Wisconsin State Assembly's Committee on Veterans and Military Affairs in preparation for hearings held on March 9, 2010 for AB203, the Safeguard the Guard Act, that would require Wisconsin's governor to review all federal orders for Wisconsin Guard troops and to refuse any federal orders determined to be unlawful.

Open Secret is a filmed re-enactment of Alabama's 1901 constitutional convention, which produced the constitution which Alabama currently operates under.  Delegates to the convention openly discussed ways to disenfranchise black and poor white voters, and dismiss women's right to vote.

The Education for All Coalition has developed resources for local organizers in preparation for the March 4 National Day of Action to Defend Public Education.

Re:Imagining Change: How to Use Story-based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements, and Change the World, is a new book providing resources, theory, hands-on tools and illuminating case studies for the next generation of innovative change makers.

Daily newspapers are closing across America. Washington bureaus are shuttering; whole areas of the federal government are now operating with no press coverage. International bureaus are going, going, gone. Journalism, the counterbalance to corporate and political power, the lifeblood of American democracy, is not just threatened. It is in meltdown.

"Yet here it is, that same message: “educate to outcompete the rest of the world, or die,” emblazoned on the flag being carried by the Obama administration as it wages a zero tolerance war on America’s public schools at the same time as it plays Santa Claus to the banking industry, the industries that profit from defense manufacture and war, and the private health insurance industry."

Ben Manski is a regular guest in WPR's "Week in Review"

Is there a “constitutional right to education”? Legal scholar and civil rights advocate Erwin Chemerinsky says there is. “There has to be a right to education in the Constitution,” he declares, “and equal protection is a Constitutional imperative.”

"Who Decides About War?," the National Conference on War Powers, Law, and Democracy, took place October 2-3, 2009 in Washington D.C.. Organized by the Guard Home! campaign, Liberty Tree Foundation, and many partners, and hosted by the National Lawyers Guild at the Georgetown Law School, this conference was the first of its kind in many years, uniting academics with activists, attorneys with veterans, in exploring key reforms necessary to democratizing defense in the United States, and making war less likely.

A world of self-reliant cities is better not only for global ecosystems but also for the health of global democracy. Actively sharing great local business models provides a new tool for spreading democratic practice, not through threats or violence, but through opportunity and collaboration. Self-reliant communities, moreover, have very little rational reason to invade or coerce one another for oil, water or other resources.

"Judicial Review" is not a term familiar to most Americans, but it should be. The concept is a profoundly important operational underpinning of the United States legal system. Anyone working to make this country a more peaceful, just, ecologically sustainable, and democratic place should be eager to examine this basic doctrine.

October 16, 2009 will mark exactly 150 years since 21 brave revolutionaries launched an attempt to seize the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, and spark a slave uprising in the United States.

Recognizing the financial and social costs of anti-immigrant approaches, more states and communities, as this Stateside Dispatch will outline, are looking to alternative solutions that emphasize community policing that incorporates immigrant community leaders into law enforcement efforts, protects witnesses and victims of crimes from harassment to encourage them to come forward in investigations, and restricts racial profiling to prevent police efforts from harming law-abiding citizens. Community policing is a commonly used and accepted method of combating crime by forming collaborative partnerships between law enforcement agencies and the individuals and organizations they serve to develop solutions to problems and increase trust in police.