John Nordin

John Nordin is a Mint Press columnist who divides his time as a professor and a researcher between the Twin Cities and Greece, where he specializes in Greek politics, international relations and the economy. John holds a Ph.D. from MIT, and has worked as a Lutheran pastor, a computer science teacher in Kenya and a writer.

Was The Voting Rights Act An Effective Way To Fight Discrimination?

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling against the 1965 civil rights law, the real question is whether the Voting Rights Act ever did what it was supposed to.

John Nordin
Par John Nordin

The significant decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on same-sex marriage rights has already overshadowed their equally significant decision on the Voting Rights Act, but before that case vanishes from our awareness, it’s worth a deeper look. Reactions to the Voting Rights decision -- which struck down parts of the landmark 1965 bill -- were

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How Obama Can (Technically) Get Away With Saying That The NSA Isn’t ‘Listening In’

An outdated Supreme Court ruling that first put the « meta » in metadata is to blame.

John Nordin
Par John Nordin

The United States, in the oft cited phrase, is a government of “laws and not of men.” We look to the Constitution and the Supreme Court to regulate what is permitted. One battleground in the debate about the NSA no-longer-secret surveillance program concerns its legality. And even if laws authorize it, are those laws constitutional? To some, it

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And The Most Stalwart Critic Of Intrusive Surveillance Is… Antonin Scalia?

On the eve of the NSA surveillance leaks, it was the notoriously conservative Supreme Court justice who best explained why the Fourth Amendment matters.

John Nordin
Par John Nordin

The revelation about the massive NSA data-collection program has dominated the news this week. Sadly, a long line of Democrat officials, including Minnesota Sen. Al Franken and a certain former constitutional law professor -- that’s President Obama -- have been telling us that none of this matters. It does matter. An effort is being made to

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Greece’s Golden Dawn And The Extreme Right’s History Of Violence

As with so much else in Greece, there is a lot of history, and Golden Dawn’s comes at the tail end of a long tradition of state-sponsored oppression.

John Nordin
Par John Nordin

This article is the second part of a series on the extreme right in Greece, following part 1: "Why Is Neo-Nazism Gaining A Foothold In Greece, Of All Places?" May 29 marked the anniversary of the fall of Constantinople -- present-day Istanbul -- to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. To commemorate this, hundreds of neo-Nazis marched on the Greek

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Why Is Neo-Nazism Gaining A Foothold In Greece, Of All Places?

The first in a series on the rise of the extreme right in Greece explores how xenophobia might arise out of the traditional Greek self-concept.

John Nordin
Par John Nordin

This article is the first part of a series on the extreme right in Greece, followed by part 2: "Greece’s Golden Dawn And The Extreme Right’s History Of Violence" There is an energetic young man working at the hotel in Athens, Greece. Clearly the junior member of the desk staff, he helps with bags, answers questions from guests, and is generally

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The Sight Of Despair

The effects of fiscal austerity are on full display in Athens, Greece.

John Nordin
Par John Nordin

It’s three in the morning as the municipal trash truck eases down a car-lined street.  For most of the block it has just enough room to get through, but at one point a waiting taxi driver has to be persuaded to move his vehicle out of the way.  There is no automated pick up of barrels.  Indeed the trash isn’t in barrels; the two assistants pick up

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Scandals With Traction?

Thirty-nine percent of polled Republicans convinced that the Benghazi issue is the worst scandal in American history don’t know where Benghazi is.

John Nordin
Par John Nordin

Forty-one percent of Republicans, according to a recent poll, think the “cover-up” of Benghazi is the “biggest political scandal in American history. Forty-three percent disagree; 74 percent think it was worse than Watergate. The noise machine is in full cry. The president lied, didn’t care about the attack, and tried to blame a video rather than

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