A student debt "jubilee" would reflect both the values upon which this nation was founded, and the economic principles which have sustained it through its greatest periods of growth and prosperity. It is time for a truly transformative idea: Let's Abolish All Student Loan Debt in America.

I quickly grew tired of reading passionate reviews of American Sniper that contained a sentence midpoint that read, "I haven't seen the movie." And so it was that I decided to go see the movie myself.

I ask comedian Roseanne Barr whether there's a fine line between what is offensive and distasteful, and what constitutes an abuse of free speech.

Soon no more Holocaust survivors will be alive, and our duty of remembering and understanding increases. This means, among other things, that we must face the uncomfortable truths about human nature that Auschwitz symbolizes.

Getty

Bobby Jindal used the power and prestige of his office to promote an event backed by some of the nation's most religiously divisive and stridently anti-gay activists. And in a bid to boost his own political future, he sent a clear message of support for the Christian-nation views of the event's extremist organizers.

Pool via Getty Images

Yes Mr. Boteach, Bibi should concern himself with offending Obama, because American public opinion isn't guaranteed forever. A less overt and obnoxious approach than siding with a rival political party when presenting Israel's security objectives would be good for everyone.

While Washington state lawmakers' bold pragmatism promises to help their environment and their economy, the new Congress in Washington, D.C., seems hell-bent on pushing legislation that will strip away our environmental protections, continue to ignore the threats of climate change and keep us addicted to dirty fossil fuels.

Marijuana is now the nation's fastest-growing industry. The legal marijuana industry brought in $2.4 billion last year, so it's certainly no longer any sort of laughing matter. That figure represents an increase of a whopping 74 percent in one year's time, and it is estimated that the total legal market could be worth $11 billion as soon as 2019.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI via Getty Images

Republicans do not rank their policy talking points from the most important to the least. Instead, they find those that resonate at the most basic level, and that can be easily drummed into peoples' psyches.

If we had been able to hold the unemployment rate to its pre-recession level, we would have somewhere around 12-percent fewer people getting disability payments. In other words, we are likely to do more to reduce disability rolls by sustaining high levels of employment than by setting Rand Paul loose to get rid of all the shirkers.

I was quite literally born into the Civil Rights Movement in 1959, as my mother and father were already deeply committed to changing the world for the better by simply getting married: a handsome Negro man to a strikingly beautiful, aristocratic, blue-eyed blonde.

Ferguson & Katzman via Getty Images

Among those who apparently have not yet benefited much at all, at least so far, are owners of small businesses who would like to keep offering coverage to their employees but can no longer afford it. They can't afford it because insurers keep jacking their rates up so high every year that more and more of them are dropping employee health benefits altogether.

Tom Williams via Getty Images

The New York Times reported last week that in the closed-door Republican Senate Caucus retreat, Republican Leader Senator Mitch McConnell "encouraged the Republican troops to refocus policy on the stagnant middle class." That would be like asking the wolves of the world to stop hunting and refocus on cultivating asparagus.

We'll need far more than a single question to decode the role gender has in Clinton's political fortunes. We would need to control for party, and mask that we're investigating bias. Because if voters are viewing Clinton through the lens of party, rather than gender, perhaps that may be progress after all.

Europe should count itself lucky that a leftwing anti-austerity party won the Greek elections, swept into office by citizens who've had enough. Elsewhere in Europe, seven years of stupid, punitive, and self-defeating austerity policies have led to gains by the far right.

Getty

The fact that the NRA has never conducted any study to test the before-and-after results of distributing their safety literature either in classrooms or in community groups makes it impossible to accept their self-congratulatory statements about teaching gun safety to kids.

Getty

There will be some people reading this who shrug when members of this minority die, and say they brought it on themselves. I am talking about addicts. I would like to propose today the hashtag #AddictsLivesMatter, because we need to change how we think about them.