ASSOCIATED PRESS

To hear these "experts" pontificating about Islam or Arab culture is more than annoying. It's downright dangerous. Instead of elevating the discourse, they dumb it down. And instead of making us aware of the enormous complexities involved in these conflict zones, they reduce them to simple and easy clichés.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Vice President Biden and his son's response should be to join the millions of people who are challenging the ignorance and irrationality of locking up hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens because of a nonviolent drug offense.

That headline, of course, quotes the cover to the fictional Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: "Don't Panic." This week, it seems like timely advice, as the news media and American politicians go into full-blown panic mode over one death and two illnesses within the United States.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

This is political gamesmanship of the lowest order, playing on media and public fears over a legitimate and terrifying health crisis, to again belittle Obama. And with the stakes sky high in the 2014 midterm elections, the dirty political pool by the GOP was totally predictable.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and it's important that we realize that the faces of domestic violence victims are all around us -- it may be a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a co-worker, or the clerk at your local grocery store.

Fuse via Getty Images

If the news media's job is to educate, and especially to clarify during times of steep public concerns, then the news media have utterly failed during the Ebola threat. And politically, that translates into a win for Republicans because it means there's fertile ground for their paranoia to grow.

carlp778 via Getty Images

Fear of resurgent inflation has been a defining element of U.S. economic policy over the last five years, driving federal spending reductions, personal income tax increases, and, just this month, the end of the Federal Reserve's Quantitative Easing program. But that broad-based inflation has not materialized and we are left asking why?

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Following the non-binding British Parliament's recognition of Palestine, it has been written a lot about Israel's inaction regarding the peace process. While reporting on Israel's politics and policy, it is important to draw the full picture -- most Israelis want peace.

Vstock LLC via Getty Images

It is important for everyone to become more savvy about abuser's excuses because many people unwittingly reinforce them in how we respond to the abuser's "explanations" for his/her violence, and to understand what taking real responsibility means.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

In his recent meeting with Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he was "committed to the vision of peace for two states for two peoples." That sounds nice. But if he'd been pressed, Netanyahu might have admitted that the two states he had in mind were Israel and the U.S., not Israel and Palestine.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

We should act to strengthen the Office of the Surgeon General by protecting it from political manipulation. In our hyper-partisan political world characterized by gridlock and great political poetic license in the interpretation of science to support preconceived political biases, who will have the responsibility to speak scientific truth to power?

ASSOCIATED PRESS

While each of these candidates has danced to a slightly different tune on the science of climate change, they all follow the same move when it comes to opposing any action to address the issue. This is where their dancing feet start to step on each other.

Joe Raedle via Getty Images

Gosh darn it, Florida's Gov. Rick Scott wants you to know that fair is fair and that he plays by the rules. He's going to make his opponent sweat and feel the heat (literally), even if it means putting a floor fan ahead of a debate about the future of Florida.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

In their haste to exploit public fears over Ebola and whip up anti-Obama sentiment for the midterms, right-wing Republicans and commentators have been competing to see who can come up with the craziest theory to explain why the Obama administration hasn't yet followed their brilliant travel ban advice.

The challenges of polling Latino voters have received less attention in 2014, because there are fewer competitive states and districts this cycles where Latinos are positioned to be influential. A notable exception is Colorado.

Wherever traditionally under-registered people congregate, this has the potential to do more than reach people in a partisan fashion, or by phone or email.

This is what it was called before it was referred to as "global warming," and then more accurately and broadly, "climate change." Back in the good old days we figured we still had plenty of time to address it. In that period, nuclear threat was the prime concern.