As I've mentioned, my recent columns taking issue with economic policies advocated particularly by the right wing of the GOP have garnered a great deal of criticism from those on the other side of the political spectrum, which is to be expected. This criticism divides into two not particularly equal...

As the controversy and demonstrations in Wisconsin continue, it occurs to me that the Tea Party and the Right in this country might be well advised to be careful what they wish for.

It's hard for me to believe that anyone would be naïve enough to think that if we...

"Something's happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear"

Recent events make those Buffalo Springfield lyrics from the '70's seem to spring to mind. It's probably too soon to make any solid conclusions, but events in North Africa and the Middle East suggest that something very real may...

I'll start with a clean-up. In my earlier column on the Tucson shootings I had a number of my facts wrong and several readers pointed this out.. The weapon used was not an automatic, it was a standard hand gun, and the ammunition was not special ammo -...

It's been exactly 50 years since John F. Kennedy gave his first State of the Union address, the speech in which he announced an American commitment to putting a man on the moon and bringing him back safely by the end of the decade of the '60's. It was not...

Let's start with full disclosure: I own guns, a rifle, several shotguns, and a hand gun. I am not anti-gun, and I am pro-gun control. By that I mean that I favor restricting gun ownership to weapons and ammunition that can legitimately be used for sport, hunting, or self-defense. I...

For all the niceties of form that are observed once candidates are elected to office, electoral politics is and always has been a nasty business, and neither party or end of the political spectrum has clean hands in that regard. Maybe it's an inevitable side effect of the political system,...

As I write this column, the mid-term election is only days away -- by the time you read it it will be over, or nearly so. People I talk to, from every part of the country, are unanimous in saying they will breathe a sigh of relief when it's over,...

I don't know anyone worth taking seriously who is not in favor of freedom of speech. "First Amendment Rights," while not absolute (see "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater"), are probably the most sacred Constitutional guarantee of all to an overwhelming majority of Americans.

It gets hard, though, when that...

In addition to the usual melancholy associated with the "official end of summer," this year's Labor Day observance brings with it, for me at least, a particularly poignant reminder of the current state of the economy in the US in general and in Nevada in particular.

Labor unions, once a...

There's an old expression -- "yellow dog Democrat" -- to describe a voter who is such a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat that he or she would sooner vote for a yellow dog than for a Republican. I'm not sure what the equivalent expression is on the GOP side, but whatever it is...

The controversy over the Park51 Islamic cultural and religious center in New York has generated controversy that is way out of proportion to any rational assessment of its importance. The so-called "Mosque at Ground Zero" is neither -- it is a community center with a prayer space located three blocks...

The origin of the phrase "politics makes strange bedfellows" is obscure - most likely it is a 19th Century paraphrase of Shakespeare's line in The Tempest, "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows." Whatever its origins, the phrase has never been more true than this year, in Nevada.

First, a...

I spent about 30 minutes one-on-one with Rory Reid, candidate for Governor of Nevada, and came away impressed both with him personally and with what it became clear were substantive distinctions between him and his opponent Brian Sandoval. Going into the meeting as a Democrat, I was inclined to support...

The controversy over Muslim women's dress is taking on global proportions. France, some time ago, banned the wearing of hijab, the head scarf in public, and now Syria, that most secular of Arab nations, has banned the niqab or full-face veil in schools. In a report on NPR the head...

In a recent post here on HP, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is reported to have said she believed America was turning into "a nation of slaves" because of Barack Obama, Democrats and the new health care law.

She goes on to quote John Jay and C.S. Lewis,...

In my last article I posed some questions and shared some thoughts on faith and what I think is the difference between faith and belief. As was the case with two prior articles on the Religion section of HP, this article drew a large number of...

The Auto-Summarize tool on Microsoft Word is pretty good at getting the gist of a document and distilling it down. Just for fun, I asked it to summarize the Declaration of Independence in 100 words or less, and this is what it gave back:

That to secure these rights, Governments...

Alan Watts drew an interesting distinction between belief and faith. Referring to the root of belief in Middle English (lief, meaning "wish"), he said that belief is a heartfelt wish that things be or turn out a certain way; in other words, there is a way things should be and...

In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, Larry Pressler, a former Republican senator from South Dakota, made a convincing case for the idea that people around his and my age, who were draft-eligible during the Vietnam War, created what he called "The Technicality Generation." In the...