A tightly held secret is being kept from today's young people. Not having children can be great! Amazingly, it appears to be time -- again -- to tell young women and men alike: whether or not you have children really is up to you. And yes, two people who relish...

There's a reason we caution those who live in glass houses about throwing stones.

Republicans calling Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor "racist" should look in the mirrors of their brittle glass house. If they choose to open their eyes, they can readily see decades of Republican racism, and denial....

I admit it. I feel a special connection, an affinity even, with the Class of 2009. Why? Because my husband and I are both "Class of '68." This Class, like ours, will experience very directly the evolutionary reality: the only constant is change. Like us too, these young people will...

Being from Chicago, when I hear, "You can't expect a well-oiled Chicago political machine to understand conservation's importance in salvaging the environment," I take it badly. So here's a test, and a big one. How fast can President Obama say, "Yanking endangered species protection from wolves and polar bears was...

I really, REALLY, don't like doing this. There are many positive things going on in our world on which I would like to focus. HOWEVER, the bad guys are in full-howl, frothing-at-the-mouth mode and, not content with the wreckage already wrought, seem determined to drive us all permanently into the...

He had arrived early, John Hope Franklin, a jewel of humanity who'd lingered long on the grounds of the New Schools at Carver, deep in Atlanta's 'hood. No apology necessary, he assured me, flumoxed that he'd gotten there before us. The twinkling eyes that had captivated students for 70 years...

Want a growth industry for hard times? Try corporate cynicism.

Call me radical -- I don't think being out-of-doors should be life-threatening. Southern Company, a power company behemoth providing some 5 percent of the United States' electricity by burning coal in almost three-fourths of their 77 plants, acts on a...

"Don't be disrespectful!" reverberated across my Eisenhower-era childhood. "Why not?" I'd disrespectfully ask? Even a kid could see that the McCarthy-ites, the John Birch-ers did not deserve respect. So why now would I roll over to the likes of the odious Limbaugh kid from Poplar Bluff, Missouri (where some of...

I've been knee-deep in developing a process and instrument for evaluating the performance of a president. It's harder than it looks, and it's not even President Obama of whom I speak. The task has, however, focused me on issues of authentic leadership as well as what is required of those...

Much as stars enthrall me, I don't expect them to "align" purposefully. So how shall we account for two of humanity's authentically great people -- Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln -- being born on this day 200 years ago? That's life!

Both men loosed furies. Both were greeted with reactionary...

Finally, the national nightmare ends. Finally, an adult, calling us all to put away childish things. Finally, surcease from Joe McCarthy's America into which I was born. Finally, The Usurper relieved of authority he wrongfully exercised these eight terrible years.

Yet it took Senator Diane Feinstein's "Thank you, Mr....

Years ago, when an ice storm raged between us and our destination, we pulled off the road, got a room, and walked to the movies. "Waiting to Exhale" was showing. I use that title to answer, "What'd you do for the holidays?" Listening to the resurrection of democracy is another...

Troubled by the bitter ironies and profound contradictions military chaplains embody, I took a long walk. The inescapable facts are that the military's job is to kill people on behalf of the State, and that Christian ministers say they are guided by a "Prince of Peace" who died in defense...

Two points to my friend who teases, "EVERYthing's political with you, Paula!" Politics, meet grammar. President-elect Obama uses correct grammar correctly. It is a powerful tool as we face the gargantuan and urgently essential task: resuscitating the education system Ronald Reagan started dismantling when Governor of California. His privatizing acolytes...

Georgia should be on everyone's mind tomorrow, Tuesday, December 2. It's our run-off for U.S. Senate. Consider urging like-minded friends to vote, and to remember -- it was the incumbent Saxby Chambliss' scabrous* lies about Max Cleland that made all the difference six years ago. Chambliss is both unrepentant for...

Just thinking about "Black Friday" gives me brain-shivers. Our antidote to traffic snarls and short-tempered shoppers? We put our money where our values are by making donations in friends' or family members' names to worthy organizations: saving polar bears, stopping torture, defending free speech, supporting education, protecting wilderness ... ....

I admit it. I'm incorrigibly, irredeemably, implacably...well...friendly. Yes, I do talk to dogs -- why are their people not doing so? -- as well as to the strangers those fine "woofies" walk. Near the end of a stroll in my urban neighborhood during an especially beautiful twilight, I was even...

"Calumny: a false and malicious statement designed to injure the reputation of someone or something." Hand it to John McCain. Had he not cynically plucked a deservedly-unknown and brutal politician whose entire electoral base rivals the population of Birmingham, Alabama, I would never have had the need for a nineteenth...

Character, not just the Great Depression, has me thinking about Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama in tandem as I wait (anxiously) for the American people to give Senator Obama the opportunity to redirect our tattered ship of state. I am, simply, captivated by people who refuse to be defined by...

A friend and former Marine officer just forwarded this citation to me. It is a quote from the August 11, 2005 New York Times:

"Writing about Vietnam in the foreword to David Halberstam's book ''The Best and the Brightest,'' Senator John McCain said:

'It was a shameful thing to ask...