President Obama gave us a surprisingly hopeful State of the Union address tonight. I say surprising because he has faced intractable opposition from a GOP determined to undermine his every move. Indeed, both houses of Congress have demonstrated a keen desire to toil less on “prosperity [that] is widely shared,” as the president proffered tonight,…
[Trigger Warning] While it may end up a footnote compared to “Obamacare,” President Obama could do worse than to be remembered for telling survivors of sexual violence, “I’ve got your back.” But, as they say, he’s not just talking the talk, he’s walking the walk on this one. Last week, the Obama administration released a…
You may have noticed less fresh posts and updates than normal. I have a very good reason. There has been construction at SCS headquarters! After almost seven years, The Sin City Siren is getting a brand new office! Well, it’s still in my home … but I will have a door! And possibly even a…
While it was no surprise, the news this week that Las Vegas CityLife is ending still touched a deep nerve in our community. The self-described “gritty” alternative weekly newspaper was always a bit of an underdog in its 21-year run, especially in a city that celebrates glitter over substance and g-strings over bootstraps. I have…
[Trigger Warning: Body policing, fat shaming, eating disorders] It’s the middle of January and we’re coming up on the day most New Year’s resolutions fail, which is either “ditch” day on Jan. 17 or “Fail Friday,” depending on who you ask. Losing weight, getting fit, and eating better rank in the top 10 New Year’s…
I guess by now it should come as no surprise that Nevada ranks dead last in education. We’ve been at the bottom of the Education Week Quality Counts report since 2010 and not much better before that. That’s the Battle Born State: The nation’s toxic waste dumping ground With one of the nation’s highest suicide…
The alternate headline for this post was, “Environmentalism: The long-view on dismantling oppression.” When I first launched The Sin City Siren seven years ago, one of the issues I wrote about often was environmentalism. After a while I got tired of defending the importance of talking about environmental concerns on a feminist site: Why do…
[Trigger Warning] They say bad news comes in threes, but I’m just about this week with just two stories. Exhibit A: Over the weekend one of the Steubenville rapists, Ma’lik Richmond, was released early from juvenile detention after nine months, short of his one-year sentence. Richmond, who was 17 at his sentencing last year, got…
I know there’s a lot going on in the world. I know that I should wait for the “right time” to bring this up. But damn it, there’s never the right time! I’m tired of waiting for a Wonder Woman movie. There. I said it. Don’t get me wrong. I love me a comic book…
Trigger Warning: rape, violent crime Even as the Justice Department reports that our nation’s crime labs are processing more rape kits, there is a greater backlog than ever in analysis of potential evidence. Indeed, it is estimated that there are as many as 400,000 untested kits sitting in evidence storage all across the country. Considering…
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