Chana Joffe-Walt, NPR's Planet Money reporter, has been making the rounds of public radio shows with a confused message about disability and disability benefits. She launched her well-meaning but ultimately muddled tour on This American Life and All Things Considered, then was interviewed on the

On his way to the inauguration, Pope Francis blessed a baby and actually got out of his Popemobile to bless a disabled man. Pope Francis kissed the man, and then cradled the man's head in his hands as he blessed him. Later in his inauguration speech, he spoke...

Now that the dust has settled a bit around Zero Dark Thirty, and as the Oscars approach this weekend, we can see the lines of skirmish forming more clearly. On the one side are the people like Glen Greenwald, Steve Coll, Naomi Wolf, and Frank Bruni who see the film...

Two years ago, as President Obama's former professor at Columbia University, I gave him a grade of B- on his 2010 midterm performance. He graded himself a little higher when asked by a reporter.

But after last night's win and Obama's lead up to that moment I'd...

OK guys. I'm officially sick of the letters you are writing me when you pretend to be Joe Biden or Michelle Obama. I know Joe Biden, and you are no Joe Biden.

Deep down inside, I know that the letters I get from an A-list of Democrats are actually not...

A big argument against those who want to shut down Chick-Fil-A branches at university campuses is the diversity issue. Chick-fila-A's CEO has contributed to anti-gay organizations and has come out publicly against gay marriage. In response to such a protest seeking to close a Chick-fil-A branch on the...

As the unsuccessful G20 meeting came to an end, the Mexican hosts played the music "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's Turandot. One can only wonder about the aptness of that aria as it swirled around the two main protagonists of the economic drama -- Barack Obama and Angela Merkel.

It is time for actors to take an active role in one of the most reprehensible forms of prejudice in our time -- the discrimination against disabled people who are or who want to become actors. Hollywood studios and television production companies have failed to increase the number of disabled...

Did you know that Mitt Romney is poor? Well, he is at least from the point of view of the IRS. Romney guesses his rate is "probably closer to the 15 per cent rate than anything else." Well, the poorest income earners, those who make between $8,000 and $34,000 annually,...

The Chronicle of Higher Education carried a story concerning the fault lines that appear when tenure and adjunct faculty unionize. The biggest problem seems to be that adjunct faculty doesn't get the attention it deserves even though such faculty members make up almost two-thirds of the teaching staff...

It's been a tough week for Republicans, and they are crying. President Obama has decided to get tough and go after millionaires, nailing them to the financial cross by having them pay taxes at the rate that everyone else has to. And what exactly are the Republicans crying?

In upstate New York, where I am living, there is a class of citizens protected from chemicals and harmful substances in drinking water, and then there are the vast majority of people like me, my family, and friends, who are experimental subjects being tested to see if known carcinogens like...

Ohio's Senate just passed legislation that would eliminate collective bargaining for public university faculty because they are now to be seen as management.

The legislation declares all public college faculty members who either "participate in decisions with respect to courses, curriculum, personnel, or other matters of academic...

The genius of the Republican Party has been to convince workers that it is better to support business interests than it is to defend the rights of workers. Republicans have convinced citizens to vote for the GOP largely by focusing on social issues instead of economic ones -- gay marriage...

According to the New York Times, the Department of Finance of New York City is aggressively laying off workers to meet the November modification to the budget. The city has been been particularly brutal in eliminating an entire type of worker -- office machine aides, a group that...

You have to wonder about the uproar around enhanced pat-downs and body-imaging machines. Libertarians are seeing the sanctioned search as an infringement of our inherent right to remain undisturbed by governmental hands. Leftists see the imaging machines as yet another example of increasing surveillance by the military-industrial complex. Social conservatives...

Does anyone really believe that Sarah Palin wrote by herself two full-length books? Neither of these books print on the cover or inside any acknowledgment of a ghost writer. Going Rogue, it turns out was written by ghostwriter, Lynn Vincent, but the book doesn't acknowledge a ghostwriter. Could someone like...

Have you heard? The Tea Party is angry. America is angry. Anger is the watchword of the election season. When pundits wax eloquent, they speak of this ire with reverent awe. When commentators comment, they seem to be squeezing themselves with delight every time they mention voter rage.

Is anyone...

Since when did the media switch from calling Tea Party members "Tea Baggers" to "activists?" Well, certainly the term "tea bagger" immediately became a joke when people began to realize it referred to a sexual practice of gay men. But why did the term "activist" come about rather than "follower"...

Remember how we all grew up reading about the United States being the home of religious tolerance? We learned that the separation between church and state was built into our country's democratic heritage because of those pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock and those non-conformists who founded Pennsylvania? Wasn't that...