Barton Kunstler, Ph.D.

Now that Joe Biden has pulled President Obama up to the altar of gay marriage, the question of gay marriage once again divides our nation, demonstrating that however daunting the challenges we face, Americans are always willing to engage issues of timeless moral import. I myself would like to offer...

The treatment of Bradley Manning by the United States Army has stained the honor of the American military. Manning is the soldier who leaked over two hundred thousand documents to WikiLeaks -- documents printed by The New York Times and a host of other publications whose patriotism and support of...

The pathology behind the Tucson shooting this past weekend with its six deaths and severe wounding of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is deeply rooted in contemporary American society. The obvious signs -- the rifle scopes on Sarah Palin's "Target America" campaign or the rhetoric of violence perpetrated for the most part...

The 1969 Brooklyn Bridge classic song continues with the words, "For you, but it's the worst that could happen... to me." That is how many of us in Massachusetts are feeling right now with the victory of right-wing Republican (does one really need "right-wing" anymore when referring to Republicans?), Scott...

"Banished veterans." The phrase shouldn't make sense. Someone joins the military, fights in a war, returns home, and then is banished? Thankfully, this can't happen here...

But it is happening here. Thousands of men and women who have risked their lives in the country's wars have been deported or are...

Now that 30,000 more American troops are headed to Afghanistan, complete with "an endgame built in" (right!), many of President Obama's (former?) supporters are trying to figure out why he continually pursues policies we thought we were voting against. I can't figure it out, but I did come up with...

Earlier this year, during an audit of the nation's largest Level-4 BioSafety Lab (BSL-4) at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, 9,220 vials of ebola, anthrax, botulinum, equine encephalitis virus, and other deadly germs were discovered in the proverbial dusty old storage area. No one even knew the vials existed and...

Boston's populous South End will soon be welcoming a host of new residents: ebola, anthrax, smallpox, bubonic plague, and various "recombinant" viruses and bacteria, courtesy of a new federal Level 4 BioSafety Lab (BSL-4) run by Boston University and the National Institute of Health. BSL-4s are devoted to researching, storing,...

Back-Story: Van Jones and Yosi Sargent, two of President Obama's advisors, recently resigned from their positions as head of the administration's Green Energy initiative and communications director of the National Endowment for the Arts, respectively, in the wake of attacks by Fox News hack Glenn Beck. Jones's sin was twofold:...

Last Wednesday night I attended one of the 3,000 vigils called by MoveOn to show support for health care reform. About 60 people showed up in our town, holding candles, and - as was planned for all the vigils -- taking turns reading 11 pages of one-sentence descriptions of MoveOn...

The battle over President Obama's health care initiative has been noteworthy for its opponents' frenzied rhetoric. Of course people may reasonably disagree on the plan or simply oppose it. But outlandish and deceptive language does more than distort. It pushes the negotiated "center" much farther to the right and focuses...

President Obama has recently ratified continuation of the U.S. rendition policy -- removal of terrorist suspects by extra-legal means to a foreign country for interrogation. This was intended to allow prisoners to be tortured in many nations, Syria, Egypt, Latvia, Jordan, Morocco, Yemen, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Pakistan, among them in...

As if non-existent weapons of mass destruction, a bogus link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, Halliburton's bottom lines, and "he tried to kill my dad" weren't bad enough reasons for invading Iraq, now comes the revelation that Old Testament luminaries Gog and Magog also helped George Bush justify the war....