NYC fast food workers accuse their employers of stealing pay and obscuring it by making it hard to determine what what they were owed.

A Liberal like me responds to a mailing he received from Rand Paul.

I agree with most of his points, but I disagree on one of them. I don't think we should disparage abortion as "the last resort", because human population growth is a big danger to life on Earth. I encourage people to have an abortion rather than a baby.

With a big effort, one very harmful US software patent was invalidated.

One down, hundreds of thousands to go. It is a shame to talk about "bad patents" as if only some computational idea patents might be good.

Trying to make software safe from patent extortion by fighting patents one at a time — under the patent system's current rules — is like trying to make people safe from malaria by swatting mosquitos (and only the ones that come within reach of your hands). We need to get rid of them all, and I've proposed the way.

Obama is finalizing a rule that will require insurance to cover contraception for employees of most employers.

The policy as originally proposed was better, but this is pretty good.

The issue of "religious" employers would not exist if not for the misguided US policy of associating health care with employment. This causes several problems:

• It gives companies an incentive to replace US workers with foreign workers or machines, so as to reduce what they pay for their employees' health care.
• It gives companies an incentive to use part-time workers who are not entitled to health coverage. Walmart does this.

• It means unemployed people often have no health care. (Though Obama's health care law may reduce this problem.)
• It gives religious employers an excuse to meddle with the health care of their employees.

We should tax companies based on their income, and use the money to provide health care for all Americans whether employed or not.

Global heating is wiping out forests in Oregon. When trees burn, they don't come back.