There was never much doubt that if the Supreme Court ever got a chance to decide the constitutionality of the health care reform law that it would be in for rough sledding from the court’s five conservatives. The judicial torpedoing of the law will hurt millions of poor, working-class Americans who desperately need health care, but couldn’t get affordable care before the law was passed, and are just as unlikely to get affordable care if it’s struck down. It’s no mystery who among those millions will be hurt the most.

The shooting that killed seven at a private Christian university in Oakland would never have happened in Korea, where owning a firearm is outlawed. That at least is the assessment of community members who point to America’s own thriving gun culture as a causal factor in this and other incidents. The shooting, the Bay Area’s worst mass murder in nearly two decades, occurred Monday morning at Oikos University, in a business park between Interstate 880 and Oakland International Airport. Another three were injured in the slaughter, according to police.

In a darker reality, you would not be reading this. I would not be a writer. Nor would I be a husband to my wife or a father to my new son. Because if the shaky hands of a police officer had deemed otherwise, my brains would have been splattered all over the backseat of a tan Ford Mustang years ago. I don’t purport to know all the facts of the admitted recent killing of unarmed Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. But I can tell you what it’s like to be a young man of color in a world that too often criminalizes us.

What drove Binh Thai Luc, 35, to be charged this week with slaying five people in a San Francisco home last week? The grisly murders have rocked the city and left investigators and the public  searching for a motive. News media reports have suggested that the killer may have been trying to collect on gambling debts. Although gambling addiction affects every group, researchers have found unusually high levels among Asians.

The primary issue before the U.S. Supreme Court this week is the debate over whether the federal government can compel people to buy a product, in this case health insurance. But just as important is the secondary challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) expansion of Medicaid to cover million of currently uninsured, low-income people. If this is upended, it could flood the courts with legal challenges to a wide range of other laws on everything from environmental protection to civil rights.

For the first time in over two decades, I am no longer a driver. Facing spiking gas prices and much-needed repairs, I finally donated my Toyota Corolla to an organization that takes care of orphans. It's an odd feeling to be on this side of being green. Without a car, my sense of time and space has been immediately altered. What was once a matter of expediency is now an effortful navigation.

Most undocumented immigrants in Arizona either can’t afford private health insurance or don’t qualify for state insurance programs for low-income families. As a result, many seek alternative ways of meeting their health care needs by tapping into an underground market for medications, including birth control pills.

The merry month of March might well have marked the beginning of the end of political lunacy in the United States, replaced by a refreshing maturity among the electorate——never mind the various fevered fanatics currently holding public office, or hoping to. Signs are numerous that zealotry has had its day in the sun, and that radical pragmatism, if you will, shall be the Zeitgeist come November.

Curious historians, cultural fanatics, stumped friends, and inquisitive introverts alike may turn to advice columns. In the age in which columns are run by anonymous “therapists,” in which answers are archived and extremely accessible, and in which screens can be more frequented than friends or professionals, the columns hold a contradictory positive support and easy avoidance. 

In the wake of Citizens United v. the Federal Election Committee, a landmark Supreme Court decision that prohibits the government from restricting political expenditures by corporations, the notion of “democratic elections” in America now sounds more like an oxymoron than an impetus for political participation. In 2008, a conservative nonprofit group, Citizens defied the FEC by trying to air a scathing film about Hillary Clinton, on DirecTV. Broadcasting “Hillary: The Movie,” a feature-length attack ad against the popular primary candidate, explicitly violated the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold). In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Citizens United, a now infamous 5-4 decision that has corrupted political democracy in the name of “free speech.”