Last month in Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray vetoed the Large Retailer Accountability Act, which would have required corporate retailers with sales of $1 billion or more that operated businesses of at least 750,000 square feet in the District to pay a “living wage.”

This summer I had the privilege of co-coordinating an NEH Landmark grant at one of the Great Camps in the Adirondacks. Over a two-week period, I got to know eighty teachers as we thought about the Gilded Age and Progressive Era through the lens of the wilderness.

The battle against teachers and their unions seemed to crescendo last year during Chicago’s teacher strike.  The mainstream media had a field day blaming those “lazy teachers” and their “big unions” for the problems facing Chicago’s public school system, the nation and America’s ability to compete in the world.

President Obama presented his budget proposal in the face of sequestration, the effects of which are slowly making their way into federal programs and offices around the country and the world.  Because proposals are just that, proposals — tentative imaginings of which directions the nation may choose to move, Obama’s concession to tie Social Security to chained CPI is troubling and suggests his willingness to further undermine the integrity of our social fabric.

All week I’ve been glued to coverage regarding our drone policy and the leak of documents rationalizing U.S. government policies surrounding their use. Talking heads, blogs and political commentary have me reeling over the implications of our new policy and its general disregard for due process, judicial review, and civil rights.