The most depressing statistic I have read in recent years is embedded in a 2009 Gallup survey showing that 41% of Americans believe that climate change is exaggerated or a hoax, up from 38% two years ago.  Worse, the number of Americans who agree that the scientists are correct...

Nobody has ever shown that a lifetime in jail without parole is any less a deterrent to future crime compared with the threat of death.  As a general rule, violent crime rates in countries with no death penalty are lower than in the United States.

In supporting the death penalty,...

Justice Antonin Scalia revealed today an extraordinary bias that fundamentally threatens our secular government.  Scalia seemed truly baffled that a Christian cross represents Christianity!  He was puzzled that a cross was not broadly representative of Islam, Judaism or no religion at all.  The Catholic justice went on to proclaim that...

Let us set the record straight once and for all.  Darwin’s famous tome is not properly entitled, The Origin of Species

The original and correct title of Darwin’s book is, On the Origin of Species. In fact the complete title is, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural...

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Thomas Jefferson penned those words in an early debate on the role of government in education.  He went on to say:  “Universal education is the most effective...

Imagine the setting.  Feel the history in the pomp and circumstance of a presidential entrance into the chambers of the House of Representatives.  Consider the deep respect commanded by the office of the presidency.  Tradition runs deep and all in attendance rise to their feet as our leader makes his...

In 1986, Ronald Reagan addressed our nation’s schools with a speech that focused heavily on his administration’s political accomplishments.  He talked about inheriting a bad economy and declining defense budget, and then declared “And I think it’s fair to say that we’ve made a good deal of progress.”

In 1991,...

Diamonds are abundant and not particularly valuable.  This common mineral has become an object of expensive desire through a carefully orchestrated and well funded campaign of deception perpetrated over a span of seven decades.  We have been duped.  We have been fooled into believing wrongly that these stones are rare...

In the midst of his historic debate with Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein famously declared that god does not play dice with the cosmos.  Einstein was objecting to the then-new conclusions from quantum mechanics that the world was fundamentally probabilistic rather than deterministic.   The proposal that the world is inherently random...

For millennia peoples across the globe have searched for a means of getting closer to and finding god.  Elaborate ceremony, choreographed rituals, ornate clothing, enormous houses of worship and convoluted oral histories have all been employed to this task.  But the simple answer to god’s discovery has been right under...

A positive feedback loop is defined as a system that responds to a disturbance in the same direction as the disturbance. With every small input the response gets amplified, growing ever larger until the system collapses. In the physical world, one of the most famous examples is the Tacoma Narrows...

The Legislature in Texas in a fit of religious fervor mandated in 2007 that starting in 2009 public schools must teach the "literature and history" of the Good Book. To avoid the obvious constitutional problems of separating Church and State, the law is carefully worded to provide a fig leaf...

Republicans are imploding, and the resulting compression into a black hole of nothingness is not pretty. Apparently nothing can escape this massive and growing object of right wing infinite density, not even light or logic. As a window into theater of the absurd, we have recently witnessed the governor of...

The concept of irony is often abused and invoked much too easily. But sometimes events conspire to provide true and rich irony that cannot be ignored. The near juxtaposition of the deaths of Michael Jackson and Walter Cronkite yield to us such an event.

Upon the death of another beloved...

According to a 2005 article in the conservative Weekly Standard, Republicans "have long taken the position that, because it is the president's prerogative to select Supreme Court justices, any nominee who is qualified and does not subscribe to an extreme judicial philosophy should be confirmed."

That is until we have...

We are witnessing an epidemic of infidelity among the faithful.

Republican governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford thought he could sneak away unnoticed to meet his lover Maria in Argentina. But his absence was discovered, leading to a "Where's Waldo" frenzy in the news media for nearly one week....

From the past eight years of mismanagement, we have inherited a series of crises. We are fighting two wars. The economy is weak and vulnerable. Unemployment numbers are in double digits. Our debt and deficit is climbing. Social security and Medicare are bankrupting our government. The financial markets remain shaky....

Ahmadinejad admonishing Obama to stop "interfering" in Iran is like New Gingrich lecturing us on the sanctity of marriage. That ridiculous demand detached from reality lends weight to the hands-off approach that Obama has taken in this crisis.

Prominent Republicans like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham clamor for...

When extremists on the left or right express views on the environment, the noise is easy to filter as chatter in the nut-wing echo chamber. But a disturbing trend has developed in which mainstream right-of-center pundits are regressing on issues of environmental protection, and that is more difficult to dismiss.

Nothing reveals more clearly the true nature of abortion opponents than the murder of a doctor who performs the procedure.

Dr. George Tiller was killed on Sunday, May 31 in his local church, where was serving as an usher. Yes, the national anti-abortion groups condemn the murder and trot...