Q: Is there really any way to resurrect the public square as a place of vigorous social and political debate?

A: No, not at all. We'll never again see the likes of Socrates' agora, or even 19th century political soapbox debate. The situation is in fact miserably hopeless, as far...

Here's a piece of art. Will you smash it?

Of course you won't.

But what if I told you that the art had Hitler's head on it?

And what if I told you the artist who made the art was recently exposed as a Nazi sympathizer?

And...

My head's still spinning from this story, and I'm barely (if that) connected to any of it. Those at the center of this art world controversy have got to be feeling something more akin to a horse-kick to the stomach.

Are you familiar with the work of Charles Krafft? An...

Bradley Manning has been on my mind a lot lately, but not intentionally. His face is painted as a mural on the wall of a brick building next to a deli in my neighborhood in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It's graffiti, and I see it every day because it's located along the...

I was having drinks at a corner pub in Brooklyn one night years ago when I fell into talking with a couple affable older blokes from Ireland. I don't remember how the conversation evolved, but it started out friendly enough, in the way that three strangers drinking in a pub...

A couple months ago I blogged about my brother-in-law, a swing voter. Given the tightness of the election this year, and given the fact that he is the only genuine swing voter that I know, this is a subject I have not been able to put down.

As I described...

I just don't understand swing voters. I simply do not get them.

The swing voter, that maddening, allegiance-changing species. A demographic so thin they are counted in the single percentage digits this year, but so utterly powerful that they will decide the election, just as they've decided...

Grassroots, the entertaining film about politics -- yes, it's possible -- is coming to New York this Friday. The day before it arrives, I'll be at The Strand here in New York, reading from my book Grassroots before sitting down with director Stephen Gyllenhaal and producer Peggy Rajski to talk...

Last week I wrote a post with the blunt headline, "Obama Wants My Donation: Tell Me What to Do." In it I threw it to HuffPost readers to, well, tell me what to do. Obama's campaign keeps calling me to ask for a donation. Do I give one?

OK, let's...

Barack Obama keeps calling to ask me for money, and I can't bring myself to pick up the phone. And the phone won't stop ringing.

You tell me: What should I do?

There's a strange irony to this. In Seattle, the other side of the country from where I sit,...

Marion Zioncheck is the most colorful character in American history that you've never heard of. I'm resurrecting him in order for you to think about him, before you forget about him again.

This is the story of the only U.S. Congressmen ever sent to an insane asylum.

Zioncheck was an...

This Sunday I will be attending the Seattle International Film Festival for the premiere of Grassroots, a film based on my first book, before Grassroots comes to New York -- and beyond -- in July. Never having attended a premiere before, I imagine that people will be approaching me only...

Why am I blogging for The Huffington Post? Maybe because two movies are being made about me.

Hear that? Two. Movies.

Two.

How often does that happen to a non-famous person? What did I possibly do for such a thing to happen to me? I've asked those questions of...