But there are a lot of things that the state doesn't cover for all citizens...surgeries, basic care, prescription drugs, x-rays, etc. Applying the same logic would mean denying all health care for prisoners until there's some sort of national health care for all.

But that's what I'm asking...okay, so they don't cover Pike, who's a child rapist. What about a murderer? What about a robber? Which prisoners should get coverage and which shouldn't?

I don't understand your argument. "The solution which we're currently dealing with" is either: 1) he gets the transplant or 2) he doesn't. It's not as though needy people who lack health care coverage will suddenly be granted the money that would have been spent on Pike.

But my point is that if this guy is denied a transplant the state doesn't suddenly pay for your neighbor's transplant. It doesn't work that way—they don't suddenly give that money that was earmarked for prisoner care to other random people who lack health care.

This discussion is being posed as if it's an A or B choice—that prisoners get medical care BECAUSE working class and poor people don't, and that if prisoners didn't get health care, other people would. That's just not true. (Although it is true that someone may fall below a prisoner on a transplant list.)

No bot fly on the list? A bug that bursts out of your flesh? And you can feel it moving around in there as it matures?

Seems like he never made it out of the Old Testament.

A couple of things: the part of the story that you're not reporting on is that this school is almost entirely Latino—and there's a real feeling that this kind of policy would not fly at a school attended by richer, whiter students. Many of the families feel that this policy is incredibly paternalistic and racist. (I'd…

I did watch the video...and I found it very unconvincing. I think the idea itself is as faulty as similar biologically determinist ideas that try to link racism, sexism, homophobia, criminal behavior or even religious beliefs to biology/genetics.

The red menace strikes again!

Speaking as a socialist, that's a pretty insulting view. Considering that China Miéville is an incredibly intelligent guy (listen to him speak, read his book on international human rights law—or read any of his books or essays), it's pretty condescending to suggest that he hasn't spent a great deal of time thinking…

The 10,000 union members who protested in Chicago today would disagree with you. As would the 200,000 who protested in Madison a few weeks ago against the stripping away of collective bargaining rights. As would French and Greek workers who have staged general strikes against austerity in the past several months. As…

Sorry, but to all those moaning about how supposedly one-dimensional this is, this is not the actual story. It's a pitch—a treatment. Meant to give you an overall sense of what something like this might entail. So why attack it on that score?

Mieville is a member of the British Socialist Workers Party—which is a Trotskyist group that looks to theoreticians like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Tony Cliff. They are anti-Stalinist, and don't consider Cuba, China, North Korea, etc. to be socialist. I'm a member of the same general tendency…

People have been protesting her since she was appointed. She was never qualified for the position in the first place, having zero experience or credentials in public education (she and her children attended private schools). She also joked about how the way to solve school overcrowding was for parents to use birth…

Except, sadly, this court just found the opposite of that. In a just and humane world, however, you'd be correct.

I remember when the April Fools Day jokes actually made me laugh.

Partially Irish Chicagoan here (my mom's maiden name is of the "O'..." kind), and I share your loathing. Taking the Red Line up to home on the North Side is awful on St. Patrick's. God damn Loyola kids never learn how to hold their liquor and there's at least one vomit incident on the train. (I've also been witness to…

I'm a little perplexed. He didn't actually insult her...he said in conversation to someone else (that she accidentally overheard) that he didn't like her speech. And this is somehow a "Michelle McGee/Tiger Woods Mistress moment." What?

Well, there are already CEDP chapters in many cities/states across the country. The Illinois chapters will not disband, as there's still much work to—folks in the Campaign here here are still working on both the eventual goal of national abolition, as well as winning justice for torture victims and others who were…