Earlier this week, The Commonwealth Club held a town hall meeting on the shootings in Tucson, and the lessons to be learned for public policy. To a person, participants thought the issues that emerge from Tucson have to do with mental illness and guns, not with the tone of U....

It certainly was an "October surprise" when the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. The immediate reaction was to wonder what this would mean - for the President's agenda at home and abroad, and for the American people.

The US is entering a season of key...

The dilemma underlying many ethically challenging issues is selecting the better of two competing moral goods -- or opting for the least bad between two negative choices. Scotland's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, convicted of killing 270 people in 1988 by placing a bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103, was...

A few years ago, just as the dot-com recession was beginning to ease, I gave one of my least well-received commencement speeches. It was to graduates of the College of Marin.

My message to these community college graduates was to take a lesson from the previous few years, during which...

The U.S. economy is still suffering, and some serious strategic and structural changes are needed in business and government to address the underlying causes of the crisis.

But in the spirit of FDR's comment about fearing fear itself, I believe the U.S. media is making this crisis far worse than...

I believe Leon Panetta is an inspired choice. Why? What the intelligence community needs most at this time is a firm management hand and strong ethical guidance, and Mr. Panetta has both. Not only has he managed the Office of the President as Chief of Staff for President Clinton, but...