You can watch financial newscasts and read reports all day long, but there’s one dreaded “d-word” you won’t encounter: deflation.

Still, that threat remains the biggest behind-the-scenes concern of economic policy makers, and has everything to do with why the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates at zero. Their code language for deflation says, “There is no inflation.”

The key remaining question of the peak oil crisis is just when world production is going to start on an unstoppable decline.  A few years ago those analysts who were deeply enmeshed in the problem were saying that 2011 or 2012 looked like the fateful year.

Last week, the Texas Board of Education voted 10-5, along party lines, to replace history textbooks with right wing political propaganda. The vote followed a separate, contentious scrum over whether creationism should be taught in science courses.

Progressives and gay rights activists in Virginia could almost be thanking the state’s new right-wing attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli.

Last week, a 36-year old man from California named John Patrick Bedell walked up to the busy entrance of the Pentagon and unleashed his semi-automatic weapon on two security officers, injuring both before being mortally wounded.