I first became aware of Glenn Beck in a sort of backhanded way. He was already well on his way to capturing the hearts of conservative America with his nationally syndicated radio show, but not yet a pillar of Fox News. At the time, I was working on a book...

This week saw what happens when an ugly little thing like empirical evidence collides with what might best be called faith-based health consumerism, which dictates that more is always better. The Federal Preventative Service Task Force, a non-partisan, non-political group founded during the Reagan administration was accused of encouraging health...

The massacre at Fort Hood has me wondering what kind of nation we really are. My inescapable conclusion is that as a nation, we're a fighter, not a lover.

Our lack of amorous disposition is evident throughout the culture wars. Abstinence education staggers on despite ample proof that it...

A year ago, it was Prop 8 that sullied my joy at the official end of the Bush era. One year later, this once proud son of the State of Maine is appalled. 52.7% of the voting electorate there voted yes to the question, "Do you want to reject the...

Conservatives exult. Liberals despair. The public option is dead. Not one week ago that all seemed perfectly true. The question is what changed between then and Harry Reid's surprising pronouncement recently. After much consideration, I have come to conclude that the answer is absolutely nothing. Rather, the Obama agenda has...

Step one: Get yourself elected to high political office.

Step two: Find yourself someone to love other than your spouse. And as long as you're at it, you might as well have sex with someone else's spouse. Why not the husband of an employee?

Step three: Get caught. It's...

Let's start with the obvious. US expenditures on health care are the highest in human history. And yet, we're not nearly as healthy as many countries that spend less. The undeniable conclusion is that we are remarkably bad at investing our wealth in a way that makes Americans healthy. That's...

Movie sequels prove that second acts are usually a terrible idea. The clever becomes dross; the dross becomes fetid, and so on and so forth, until all that's left if toxic landfill. What's true of cinema is also true of politics. If you stick around past your expiration date, then...

As a country with a rather horrific civil war in its past, its no easy to thing to bat around a concept like secession. It's filled with evil reminders of an unjust past that sought, amongst other things, to preserve slavery. And yet, sometimes the body from which a political...

We should get the hell out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. The expense of continuing this foreign adventure and the danger to US citizens of staying has simply become unacceptably high. The concept of victory is no longer meaningful or practical. The sooner we face this, the better off...

It's August, almost Labor Day. For a week, we've read little except about the death and pageantry surrounding the mourning for and burial of Ted Kennedy. You'll note that not even the right wing is going along with this. Why? Because they are all on vacation, just like their brethren...

The problem with the health care debate -- versus the attempt to actually reform a broken system -- can be traced to three simple problems. The first is greed, and I'm not talking about corporate variety. I am referring to the current "haves" who are content to hide behind libertarian...

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines scaremonger as, "one inclined to raise or excite alarms especially needlessly." It's an excellent definition, but for anyone struggling to understand it at the gut level, I'd suggest trying to visualize the face of Former Representative Dick Armey. Many people already knew this, but I didn't...

Last night, I did something that was both enjoyable and difficult: I watched Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. Mr. Moyers is not afraid to call out both the hysterical right wing and their Astroturfing zealots for the way that are using their First Amendment Rights to stamp out other voices....

Eunice Kennedy Shriver was buried yesterday. Not to be morbid, but she'll likely be followed in the not too distant future by her two surviving siblings. When Brother Teddy and Sister Jean go, a remarkable arc in American history will be have come to an end.

For the purposes...

I'm just back from a wedding, which prevented me from catching Real Time with Bill Maher until today. And I have to say that I'm delighted that I didn't watch it Friday night because I would have been too riled up to sleep. Bill Maher and his guest Arianna Huffington...

It's so easy to be negative, but today I'm all about optimism and the power of positive thinking. Here are five reasons to be happy, all of which occurred or came to a head in the past week.

1. The Republicans do something in the tradition of...

Six months into the Obama Presidency and the honeymoon is really and truly over. All in all, he's doing a fine job, which is particularly impressive in light of the rather astounding mess that his administration inherited. But the true test of a president is not how he performs with...

To hear the Republican rhetoric, health care reform is not socialism: it's the first domino on the path to full-blown Marxist-Leninist hell. Their first cousins, the so called "Blue Dog" Democrats share many of the same fears. But at the end of the day, neither group seems concerned about the...

Today, if it walks on four legs and oinks then it does not have swine flu. If it's an elected official of Congress, however, then it's likely spreading something equally unappealing -- a continuing ineffectiveness and an unwillingness to own up to its own recently sordid past.

In today's...