Senator John Cornyn has some stern words for Governor Charlie Crist. Should the Florida Governor abandon the Republican party and run as an Independent for the U.S. Senate, Cornyn and other Republican leaders will demand Crist return their campaign donations.

"I certainly will request the money that I have donated...

As the deadline nears for Florida Governor Charlie Crist to announce whether he'll leave the Republican party and run as an Independent for a Florida Senate seat in the November election, the Democrats are rushing to use Crist's switch to their advantage.

Speaking yesterday at

It's often said that California leads the nation. If the saying is true, then soon there could be more states considering recreational marijuana use. And as more people light up, these cash-strapped states would generate revenue from sales taxes on cannabis.

Californians head to the polls this November...

The news of the United States and Russia agreeing to slash their nuclear weapon stockpiles could mean a boost for a little known energy program. Called Megatons for Megawatts, this government-industry partnership has converted 15,294 nuclear warheads into electricity.

How it works: The program buys...

Mr. Yorke goes to Copenhagen and doesn't find much to like.

The Radiohead frontman confesses to being out of his element among the diplomats and business people at COP15. For starters, they're dressed in suits and he is wearing red pants. Of the politicians in attendance Thom Yorke says,...

Yesterday at COP15, Naomi Klein presented the 2009 Angry Mermaid Award for the worst corporate lobbying group to Monsanto. While the award singles out Monsanto, Klein describes the larger problem posed by corporate lobbying. "There are many sessions about how poor countries should adapt to climate...

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez took the stage at COP15 and launched his own protest. He declared, "If the climate was a capitalist bank, the rich governments would have saved it."

Before linking the economic crisis to the climate one, Mr. Chavez's scathing critique invoked the ghost of Karl Marx...

Pity Al Gore. And pity those who may suffer from his apparent misquote at COP15 yesterday, where he predicted the melting of Arctic ice over the next 5-7 years.

As is the norm, Gore's misinterpretation of a figure from the melting snow and ice report was immediately

Could Google do for the electrical grid what it's done for the Internet?

"PG&E's greatest fear, and they won't say it publicly, is Google," says VentureBeat's Matt Marshall in his interview of Google's Ed Lu, who oversees the search giant's PowerMeter program. PG&E, of...

"Why should we have to wait one more day?" asks Steve Hildebrand, former deputy national campaign adviser for President Obama, addressing the lack of progress on gay rights in America.

Hildebrand was speaking about two weeks ago -- before the hate crimes legislation was passed and before the President's...

As President Obama makes his push for health care reform, one of his key selling points has been that if you're happy with your current insurance plan you can keep it. This message appeals to voters afraid of being forced into coverage from a government program. However, a close...

Saturday night's surprising resignation of Van Jones and the controversy leading up to to it reveals all that is good and great about our political system. It also reveals all that is bad and sad about it.

In the good and great column: Jones's rise from a community...

No offense to the medical device manufacturers, but I wonder if $20,000 preemie incubators aren't the equivalent of those mythical $500 hammers purchased by the Department of Defense.

Consider what happened when a bunch of Stanford d. school students looked at the needs of premature newborns in developing...

Call it Boyle's Law for debate. The lexicon for health care reform has expanded to include the plural noun, town hallers, and it's grown louder as well, increasing in volume from all the shouting. Hot air will expand to fill the available space.

Thus it's refreshing to hear...

Even as it appears that the House of Representatives has reached agreement on healthcare reform, the devil, as always, will be in the details. And in this case, what matters most is what form the so-called "public option" will take.

If approved, as appears likely, legislation that prevents insurance...

Call it the 'Omnivore's Health Care Dilemma.'

Michael Pollan wades into the issue of health care reform by looking, not surprisingly, at food. In conversation with journalist and urban farmer Novella Carpenter, he argues that health care reform and changes to American agriculture will go hand-in-hand.

"If we do get...

"To make health a profit-making institution is psychotic," rants Lewis Black while discussing his belief in God (or not). He's speaking about his faith with Bob Schieffer at the Aspen Ideas Festival and gets sidetracked when he lists health care that actually pays the doctor's bill.

...

The dirty truth about carbon capture: it's very expensive and it's a long way off. Speaking at the World Bank in Sydney, Mark Diesendorf of the Univeristy of New South Wales points to the Bush Administration's shuttering of the FutureGen project as an example of the escalating costs associated...

Now that the House has passed Waxman-Markey, the stage is set for a much harder look at the actual implementation of cap and trade.

Speaking at an energy conference in San Francisco last week prior to the Congressional vote, negative reactions to the proposed cap and trade system...

Here's the thing about the current economic crisis and global warming. For the past decade, there were lots of smart people warning about the housing boom and about climate change, yet they were largely ignored.

We're now being forced to address both these matters -- at last. But rather...