SHARE        Monday, June 11, 2007
On Finding Common Ground Our mental filing cabinets in America today seem to have only two drawers, labeled "those who think like us", and "those who do not". Those who think like us earn our uncritical admiration and our unbending ear. Those who do not are just filed away, and never listened to again.

(3 comments) SHARE        Monday, June 11, 2007
Does Deterrence Trump Fallibility? After a long and relatively quiet time away, capital punishment suddenly appears poised to rejoin the crowded battlefield of America's culture wars.

(5 comments) SHARE        Sunday, June 10, 2007
If John Q. Public Ran For President After work one recent evening the author had the good fortune to chat with John Q. Public over a few beers...

SHARE        Friday, June 8, 2007
Stem Cells To Stay Locked Up The decision we face is whether an unwanted blastocyst, a mass of one hundred cells fully eleven weeks away from any neural function, has moral rights equivalent to the moral obligation we have to act for the benefit of the sick among us.

(4 comments) SHARE        Thursday, June 7, 2007
No Sin Left Behind Public interrogations of piety and faith, such as undergone by the Democratic candidates earlier this week, amount to a sort of religious litmus test for public office. Something, lest we forget, our Constitution in Article VI explicitly forbids.

(2 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, June 6, 2007
And That's The Way It Is With such an awesome responsibility as often the sole harbinger of news good and bad, we should expect much from our television media. Instead, we get the titillation of the trivial.

(2 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, June 5, 2007
On The Release Of Two Prisoners Dear Mr. President, From the mind's prison, I release you – consider your time as served. However, Mr. President, be mindful that your freedom was not earned, nor was it reward for good behavior. Rather, your freedom was granted of my epiphany, after more than six years, that a mind consumed with holding one captive is a mind itself held in captivity.

(13 comments) SHARE        Monday, June 4, 2007
Refueling Our Fears The news this weekend of the arrest of three suspects allegedly plotting to sabotage the jet fuel lines servicing JFK Airport – a plot in its nascent stages and one not likely to have caused much in the way of actual damage besides psychological – will undoubtedly have the effect of increasing the supply of fuel to the mass media's jet engine-like power to soar the worries of everyday Americans to the stratosphere.

SHARE        Sunday, June 3, 2007
Science 101 From climate change to embryonic stem-cell research, from evolution to theories of the origins of life and the universe, science and scientific information is being yanked back and forth in high-profile public debates of urgent consequence to our nation's fiscal and educational future. The oncoming presidential election year promises even greater degrees of controversy and contention, and the outcomes are less than certain.

SHARE        Saturday, June 2, 2007
The Voice That Is Great Within You To the Class of 2007 Graduate: Use the voice that is great within you to raise uncomfortable questions, and speak uncomfortable truths.

SHARE        Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Asleep And Dreaming Our soldiers need to know that while their nation loses sleep worrying for them, and wishing for their safe return home from their Mesopotamian nightmare, their commander-in-chief sleeps easily, more easily than they'd ever assume.

(5 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, December 13, 2006
George's War In just three short months, the fourth anniversary of the aerial "shock and awe" campaign that launched the U.S led war on Iraq will tap our shoulders. It will remind us that a fifth year of war stands raving and eager to follow the same terrible path down which this country has been misled for four.

(1 comments) SHARE        Saturday, December 2, 2006
Titillation Of The Trivial With such an awesome responsibility as often the sole harbinger of news good and bad, we should expect much from our television media. Instead, we get the titillation of the trivial.

(16 comments) SHARE        Friday, November 24, 2006
Our Christian Nation Should Shop Instead For A National Conscience Our greatest challenge if we are to remain a great nation is not terrorism, and not Iraq. Our greatest challenge is to recover our national conscience.

(3 comments) SHARE        Thursday, November 23, 2006
Keeping What We've Been Given While voters resoundingly gave both houses of Congress back to the Democrats on November 7th, Democrats must clearly understand what it is that they have been given: a mere two-year opportunity to demonstrate why they deserve a shot at measuring for new curtains in the Oval Office in 2008. It isn't much time, and there's too much work to be done to waste time sharpening the hatchet.

(1 comments) SHARE        Sunday, November 19, 2006
Giving The Gift Of Child Survival This Christmas Every minute of every day, 20 children die somewhere in the world. Each year, one in seven children in developing countries - nearly 11 million children - die before the age of five. Would it surprise you to know that fully two-thirds of these deaths are avoidable?

SHARE        Saturday, November 18, 2006
Another Crack In The Wall With virtually no public awareness, the U.S House of Representatives late in September passed a bill that undermines enforcement of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, which the Supreme Court has for more than 150 years upheld as vital for the separation of church and state.

(3 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Poverty In America: A Republican Moral Failing Republican leaders for a dozen years have led with the philosophy that the solution to poverty is to grow the economy out of the problem. And yet despite nearly two decades of generally robust economic growth poverty, especially severe poverty in single-parent families with children, has risen dramatically. Now, it's up to the Democrats to show moral leadership on the issue of poverty in America.

SHARE        Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Election Song A favorite line of song, penned by the Canadian band The Magnetic Fields, poses the question: If you don't mind, why don't you mind? Where is your sense of indignation? To anyone who isn't yet appalled by the extent of the disaster that is the Bush presidency, I could not think of how better to ask it: Why don't you mind?

(1 comments) SHARE        Monday, October 30, 2006
No More! Families that work hard and full-time shouldn't be poor in America. On November 7th, Americans need to elect politicians of every stripe who will support a living family income, who will put poverty relief ahead of tax relief for the rich, and who will put the interests and needs of America's workers ahead of corporations and wealthy estate-owners.