Mother Jones Magazine Cover : November + December 2014

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  • Cover Story
  • The Warrior Cops Suit Up

    Drones, sniper rifles, armored vehicles, and a billion-dollar credit line: 72 hours with the nation’s top SWAT teams

  • FEATURES
  • What’s the Matter With Sam Brownback?

    The Kansas governor’s right-wing policy experiment has backfired—in the Koch brothers’ backyard, no less.

  • California Goes Nuts

    The insane, hedge-fund-fueled race to plant thirsty trees in the middle of a catastrophic drought

  • The Hunger Game

    The Assad regime made headlines for using chemical weapons against its own people. But its main weapon is far more archaic and brutal.

  • Is Your Judge for Sale?

    How Karl Rove turned judicial elections dirty. PLUS: What happens when corporate money decides who’s on the bench?

  • Down in the Hole

    Young, bored, bitter—and babysitting 150 megatons of nuclear doom

  • The Demonstration Plot

    4-H used to be about kids and goats at the county fair. So when did it turn into a global powerhouse helping US agribusiness make inroads in Africa?

Contributors

For this issue, 1 David Corn spent hours watching conspiracy theory videos (“Truther Consequences”), while 2 Tasneem Raja plowed through whale sperm studies (“SeaWorld’s Weird Science“) and cronut sci-fi (“William Gibson’s Peripheral Vision“).

3 Shane Bauer interviewed swat teams (“The Warrior Cops Suit Up“) and learned about Syrian snipers (“The Hunger Game”).

Tom Philpott snacked on straight-from-the-tree almonds (“California Goes Nuts”) while reporting in California’s Central Valley, the home turf of photographer 4 Matt Black, who’s documented local farm life for more than a decade.

This was Andy Kroll‘s fifth reporting trip to Wisconsin (“Is Your Judge for Sale?“): He got hooked covering the 2011 state Capitol occupation.

A skateboarding aficionado, 5 AJ Vicens helps ESPN cover the X Games, where judges’ picks aren’t for sale (“May It Sleaze the Court“).

While in rural Montana reporting on nuclear missileers, Josh Harkinson (“Down in the Hole“) spent his downtime at a mermaid bar.

For her new book about 4-H, Raise, 6 Kiera Butler(“The Demonstration Plot“) received grants from the Fund for Environmental Journalism, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund.

David Corn
Tasneem Raja Shane Bauer
Matt Black
AJ Vicens Kiera Butler