Bob Burnett

Berkeley writer, retired Silicon Valley executive

President Obama has tried to do the right thing, both for the economy and the unemployed, but has had

Robert Reich

Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley; Author, 'Beyond Outrage'

Further steps will be taken to prevent one of our missiles from accidentally causing a nuclear holocaust. But I hope the Air Force does a better job remedying this problem than it's done preventing sexual assaults.

Les Leopold

Author, "How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour" (Wiley 2013)

It's as if the entire economic recovery is going into the pockets of the rich. And that's no accident. Here's why.

Dr. James Hansen

Climatologist

If infrastructure, such as the Keystone XL pipeline, is built to transport tar sands, ways will be developed to extract more and more. When full accounting is done of emissions from tar sands oil, its use is equivalent to burning coal to power your automobile.

Peter Van Buren

Author, 'We Meant Well' and the upcoming 'The People on the Bus: A Story of the #99Percent'

Robert MacLean is a former air marshal fired for an act of whistleblowing. His is an all-too-twenty-first-century story that shows us how deep the Washington rabbit hole really goes.

Valerie Jarrett

Senior Advisor and Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls

As the girls described the atrocities they had suffered -- in many cases, for years -- my blood boiled. How on earth could this happen time and time again, right here in our community? How could the internet be used so blatantly as a tool to sell our children into slavery?

Terry Connelly

Dean emeritus, Ageno School of Business - Golden Gate University

The GOP field shows no clear favorite as yet; it includes some veterans of prior races as well as some maiden entries (literally and figuratively). Let's consult the racing form as it stands just now.

Lester & Charlie

Political satirists

The Republicans have exercised so many spin control muscles that those muscles have started to act involuntarily and instantaneously. Like the heart at the core of any wild animal, the GOP has developed an instant if not repetitive spin for everything.

Andy Ostroy

Political & pop culture analyst

It's not difficult to imagine a few years from now a political landscape controlled by a Democratic dynasty, where the only Republicans left in office come from states and districts where the small minority of folks who voted for them share their ignorant, intolerant 1950's ideals.

Terry O'Neill

President, National Organization for Women

Is "military justice" for women an oxymoron? I hope not, but this has been an eye-opening week about the culture of violence against women in the military.

Lincoln Mitchell

Harriman Institute, Columbia University

The march itself is not a very big deal. It will probably come and go with some media attention and disappointing numbers. However, the language being used by the organizers is sufficiently troubling, and intriguing, that it deserves some attention.

Joseph J. Thorndike

Director, Tax History Project at Tax Analysts; Visiting scholar in history, UVA

The debate over fiscal responsibility has been muddled by the Great Recession; inevitably, perhaps, arguments over long-term fiscal problems have been conflated with debates over short-term recovery programs. Both debates have suffered terribly as a consequence.

Alon Ben-Meir

Senior Fellow, NYU's Center for Global Affairs

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to Washington on May 16 comes at a pivotal time when the Middle East is riddled with extraordinary conflicts that have the potential of exploding into a regional war.

William Astore

Writer, Professor, Retired Lt. Colonel, Air Force

You can hardly point out that the Emperor has no clothes if you're not even allowed to look in his direction. And that's precisely the point of the government's war on whistleblowers. The message couldn't be more clear or more authoritarian: Avert your eyes, citizens!

Teddy Cohan

Student, Williams College

Our story, our experiment, to create a world where hard work leads to a better life, the American Dream, is slowly dying. But we can fix this. The Student Loan Fairness Act will soon stand before the House of Representatives and embodies a golden opportunity to save the American Dream.

Daphne Eviatar

Senior Counsel, Law and Security Program, Human Rights First

The case of "Spin Ghul" was perhaps the first time a criminal defendant in a U.S. court begged a federal judge to send him to Guantanamo. While unusual, it wasn't all that surprising.

Steve Clemons

Editor at Large of The Atlantic and founder and senior fellow of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation.

Gregory Hicks has emerged with a story outlining requests made on his end for the movement of a U.S. Special Forces unit that he says was blocked. Hicks matters because none of us knew about his requests or role until a few days ago.