Writers aren't supposed to start their stories with statistics. But sometimes it's inevitable. So here's one that seems pretty relevant to the current discussion regarding contraceptives and women's health care: Men are involved in 100 percent of all pregnancies.

But our voices are mostly missing from the debate.

What's all the fuss about Americans not following religious doctrine? Seriously, we all know that none of us dance and drink as passionately as Baptists. Few are as happy with the invention of the Pill as Catholics. Many seem grateful that Jesus' plea to help the poor is...

If you plan to run for president, it's probably a good strategy to avoid leasing a hunting camp called "Niggerhead." Actually, anyone wanting to live a decent and moral life should consider following the same rule. Texas Gov. Rick Perry seems to be testing that proposition, however, as his campaign,...

Morality drives policy. Too often, progressives have tried it the other way around, then looked on in dismay as conservatives led with their moral view and won one policy fight after another, even when polling showed most Americans disagreed with conservative policies!

On Thursday night, President Obama didn't make...

Democracy, in the American tradition, has been defined by a simple morality: We Americans care about our fellow citizens, we act on that care and build trust, and we do our best not just for ourselves, our families, and our friends and neighbors, but for our country, for each other,...

It seems extraordinary that Americans must still struggle for their right to vote. A new group in Texas -- the Diversity League of Houston -- is leading the struggle there. More about this group in a moment. But it's staggering that after all these years there are still...

A right-wing group in Houston engaged in a systematic voter suppression and intimidation effort used a doctored photo in its showcase video. Tellingly, a hand-lettered sign carried by an African-American woman at a 2000 Florida, Gore-Lieberman recount rally was changed from, "Don't Mess With Our Vote," to read, "I Only...

A mysterious fire last Friday destroys all of the voting machines in Harris County (Houston), Texas. Arson investigators have not yet issued an opinion. Meanwhile, a well-funded right-wing group emerges in Houston and begins raising unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud. A video on their website...

The Civil Rights Movement created "unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes" among minorities, according to Texas conservatives trying to rewrite American history textbooks. They want students to learn that bit of undemocratic, phony history.

Imagine Thomas Jefferson opening the Declaration of Independence with, "We hold these truths to be self-evident,...

It was right down the street from my home. An unhinged man in a single-engine airplane crashed into an Austin office building. The Internal Revenue Service had offices in that building. I was in those offices not long ago for a compliance check on a non-profit I run. I got...

To date, there is no authentic, 21st Century progressive movement. Those may be fightin' words to some, but I think they're true. The contemporary progressive resistance arose in response to a consolidation of neo-liberal, authoritarian power, maybe just in the nick of time. The resistance knows what it resists; it's...

Republicans outraged at criticism of some of their racist loyalists are acting like a lynch mob explaining away the rope. “We didn’t hang him because of race. We hanged him because there was a tree there.”

The party’s faithful, which sadly includes many angry racists, continue to engage in...

Great gods, now they are turning to Texas for advice on health care reform. This is about as useful as asking the executioner for advice on memorable last words. You can hear the deep voice of the killer from under his black-hood as he tests the sharpness of the blade...

Co-authored by Glenn W. Smith and Eric Haas

Real health care reform is within our grasp. President Obama and Congress can create an American plan that can provide health care to all Americans. However, Democrats are not yet doing very well at describing what they are proposing in the area...

John McCain and other Republicans making criminal allegations against the community-organizing group ACORN know exactly what they're doing. They're using alarmist allegations of "voter fraud" to fire up their conservative base and suppress the votes of some citizens who may, out of fear, stay away from the polls.

They exploit...

Sitting in an old oak pew in Nashville's historic Ryman Auditorium, "the Mother Church of Country Music," I'm waiting for American roots music apparitions to rise from the dark pine floors and whisper to me the secret key to a rebirth of a progressive nation. A guy can dream.

You...

If nothing else, and I suspect there may really be nothing else, Sarah Palin gives us a magnified view of weaknesses of the punditocracy, which we might begin to call the Palindrones.

Can't you feel the "what planet are they from?" dissonance in your bones as the Right Wing complains...

If screen credits appear at the end of the 2008 presidential election, I'd guess they'll tell us the story was created by Kurt Vonnegut and Harriet Beecher Stowe, with a screenplay by Thomas Pynchon and Tom Stoppard, as directed by the Robert Altman of Nashville.

This election season has offered...

As Thanksgiving approaches, we should pay homage to the 17th Century Blackwater-like private security firms who made the very first Thanksgiving possible. That's the message from Serviam, a magazine committed to the unstinting defense of private profiteering in every realm of human endeavor. By the magazine's stuffed-turkey logic we should...

Well, that didn't take long. No sooner did the writers grab their picket signs and head for Rockefeller Center than the New York Times belittled and mocked them, paragraph after paragraph. A bit painful, isn't it, this writerly write-down of writers?

In the first paragraph of its initial story,...