America is currently engaged in the most expensive presidential contest in world history. In the United States, money doesn’t just talk – it dictates. How can we hope to make progress on the path to sustainability when the road is blocked by barricades of bullion backed by battalions of billionaires? How do we break through the political gridlock?

In a scalding opinion issued on Thursday, Judge Royce Lamberth of Federal District Court rejected new rules imposed by the Obama administration last spring that limit access to counsel for prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who are not actively challenging their detention.      

Calling the government’s position an untenable challenge to the separation of powers, he said the administration had improperly given itself “final, unreviewable power to delay, hinder or prevent access to the courts, ” which amounted to “executive fiat.”

Calling out the international community to stand up and recognize the glaring hypocrisy of sending various African and Asian leaders of relatively weak nations to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face trial for their crimes, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has called for the former leaders of Great Britain and the United States, Tony Blair and George W. Bush, to be brought before The Hague to stand trial for the illegal invasion of Iraq.

"Governor Romney," said US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, "corporations are not people.”

“People," she said, "have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die.”

CHARLOTTE

The man who ran on hope and change didn’t walk away from them. He redefined them for the long haul. 

And a president who has been accused of being a collectivist and a socialist didn’t abandon a vision of shared burdens and purposes. He replied forcefully with a call for a renewal of citizenship, “the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations.”

CHARLOTTE

Judging by the party conventions, you’d wonder why this election is even close.

In Tampa, despite some unexpectedly amateurish stagecraft, Republicans put on a credible display of unity and resolve. No one could come away doubting that the party very much wants to defeat President Obama in November.