I'm not saying it's time to break out the champagne and start chanting, "The people united will never be defeated." But the past few weeks have brought us some heartwarming demonstrations that the popular will still has a bite.

February 22:  After a major public outcry, the Office of Science...

Who should pay the costs of climate disasters?  In light of the current debate in the United States about federal assistance to Hurricane Sandy victims and the recent debate at the recent Doha Climate Conference about international assistance for climate change victims, that has become an increasingly pressing question for...

Robert J. Shiller, Professor of Economics and Finance at Yale, recently weighed in with his perspective on subsidizing charity with a New York Times column whose title clearly conveys his message: "Please Don't Mess With the Charitable Deduction."

There is a case to be made for charitable deductions.  Regrettably,...

If this election is a referendum on the benefit of government then superstorm Sandy should be Exhibit A for the affirmative. The government weather service, using data from government weather satellites, delivered a remarkably accurate and sobering long range forecast that both catalyzed action and gave communities sufficient time to...

In a democracy the majority wins. Which makes minority groups vulnerable.  At the dawn of the Republic, John Adams warned about "the tyranny of the majority."

Almost a century later, the 14th Amendment finally declared that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of...

Sometimes it seems that everywhere I turn, the story line pivots on hormones.

Recently the Boys Scouts denied Ryan Anderson, a gay 17-year-old the rank of Eagle Scout because "he does not meet scouting's membership standard on sexual orientation."  Last April, Jennifer Tyrrell, a lesbian parent in Ohio, was...

Watching professional football these days reminds me of Lily Tomlin's Ernestine the telephone operator on Saturday Night Live and her famous punch line, "We don't care. We don't have to.  We're the phone company."

Or in this case the National Football League. By now even those who don't plunk themselves...

The recent colorful tirade by Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe against a legislator who demanded the Baltimore Ravens owner fire linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo for supporting gay marriage and the overwhelmingly positive response to it by football fans and players alike are heartwarming developments. It shows how far we've come.  But the...

On this, the 20^th anniversary of the opening of the first charter school, kudzu comes to mind.

In the 1930s the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) paid farmers $8 per acre to plant this Japanese vine whose deep root structure helps reduce erosion and enrich a depleted soil.  Farmers planted more...

If chutzpah is killing your parents then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you're an orphan then Peter Orszag is the poster child for chutzpah. In his recent article in Bloomberg News he insists the best fix for the post office is to take it private. ...

"Texas judge rules atmosphere, air is a public trust," reads the headline in the Boston Globe -- a tiny breakthrough but with big potential consequences. And as we continue to suffer from one of the most extended heat waves in U.S. history, as major crops wither and fires rage...

Handicapping occurs in sports to equalize the winning chances of contestants of varying abilities. Sometimes, as in horse racing, superior horses, based on past performance, are required to carry more weight.  Sometimes, as in golf, poorer players are allowed more strokes.

Unbeknownst to most of us, the public-vs.-private race is...

As every 6-year-old learns that there is real and there is make-believe. The massive post office deficit that is driving management to commit institutional suicide by ending six-day delivery, closing half of the nation's 30,000 or so post offices and half its 500 mail-processing centers, and laying off more than...

After winning the Illinois primary, Mitt Romney delivered a victory speech in which he deplored America's lost "can do spirit."  Unsurprisingly, he blamed it on government.  If elected he promised, "We're going to get government out of the way." Then he offered a few examples of what he meant....

A few weeks ago Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA who is retiring from the House this year, gave a memorable interview to New York magazine in which he criticized President Obama for aggressively pushing health care reform.  Frank says he warned Obama the Democratic Party would pay "a terrible price."

A few days ago 26 states argued before the Supreme Court that the health law's dramatic extension of Medicaid coverage constitutes unconstitutional federal coercion. "Congress easily could have designed an act that encouraged rather than forced states to expand their Medicaid programs," their brief submitted to the Court argues....

For its first 200 years the American Republic slowly, sometimes infuriatingly slowly and at horrific human cost (e.g. the Civil War) expanded the franchise.

In 1870 the 15^th Amendment gave blacks the right to vote. In 1920, the 19^th Amendment extended the franchise to women. In 1924 Congress granted...

Recent events make clear the need for a new language to describe the raging debate about sex and birth. Consider the problematic word that dominates our conversation: pro-life.

Most pro-life organizations more accurately should be labeled pro-sperm. For they insist the sperm has the inalienable, indeed the God-given right to...

On February 8, 1921 twenty thousand people, braving temperatures so low that musical instruments froze, marched in a funeral procession in the town of Dimitrov, a suburb of Moscow. They came to pay their respects to a man, Peter Kropotkin, and his philosophy, anarchism.

Some 90 years later few know...

Is the Super Bowl a socialist enterprise? The question may be provocative but not, I believe, inappropriate. After all, Indiana, the site of the next Super Bowl, is currently governed by those who insist government should play a minimal role. And socialist is the word they, and their Republican brethren...