The news of President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize coincidentally came to me last week during a Peace Studies Conference. As in many corners, people there were speculating about the motivations for giving this prestigious award to an untested president who has yet to create a legacy of peace in his...

In all of the invective thrown around during the healthcare dialogue, amidst the shouting of the neo-Brown Shirts and among the talking heads speaking out of both sides of their mouths, something fundamental to the entire issue has somehow been omitted. Lurking just beneath the subterranean rhetorical level of Death...

In two recent criminal cases in the United States, defendants received similar sentences for very different sorts of actions. In the first, a young man was convicted of negligent homicide for texting while driving and killing two scientists in the process. The New York Times reported on the case...

With the anniversaries of Woodstock (40 years) and the Geneva Convention (60 years) at hand, we are reminded of the pernicious nature of warfare and the generational duty to ameliorate (if not eliminate) it as much as we are able. The contexts in which these landmark events transpired both were...

Nearly half a billion people on the planet -- around one out of every fifteen individuals -- are afflicted with a condition that is largely unknown in the popular consciousness. While much time, angst, energy, and wealth is spent on diseases du jour such as the swine flu, there are...

Newsflash: It's the end of the world (again), and I feel ... aw, forget it. I guess at this point it's kind of a toss-up between bored, giddy, melancholy, and irate, in no particular order. Still, the most recent apocalyptic homage seems somehow more sobering this time, perhaps due to...

If we're truly looking for paths to economic stimulus -- which is about stimulating optimism as much as anything else -- then we ought to consider getting closer to the source and stop nibbling around the edges of corporate malfeasance. Instead, let's directly incentivize and bring relief to actual people,...

At long last, the plan is finally hatched to "save" the auto industry, or at least General Motors. President Obama's quasi-takeover blueprint is bold and intriguing, and could even become a template for managing the whole financial crisis itself. Indeed, in the spirit of the old axiom, perhaps what's good...

At the risk of throwing dirt on the fire of enthusiasm everyone seems to have for Jon Stewart's skewering of Jim Cramer, there's something troubling about the logic of how this very public tete-a-tete played out. Basically, while it was fun to watch Stewart barbecue the madman of money,...

I keep having these moments in which I attempt to write about some current event (you know, small stuff like economic collapse, an escalating war in Afghanistan, global climate change) but the news cycle has passed me by before I can reduce thought to keyboard. With the proliferation of infotainment...

Seriously, you've got to love Rush Limbaugh. The guy is an American institution -- like a major investment bank, nationwide mortgage company, or neocon think tank -- and we all know how well those have worked out. Aside from college professors, who else could make so much out of so...

Life here in the desert southwest is richly complex and oftentimes a great challenge. A hint of frontier culture remains even as rampant growth and homogenization take hold at breakneck speed. People love the landscapes and the history, but can still sit and watch both disappear in the name of...

President Obama recently revealed his foreclosure relief plan in a speech given at Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona. The choice of locations was auspicious for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Mesa sits in the sprawling outskirts of Phoenix and is characteristic of the...

By now the next phase of the "stimulus-bailout" plan is ready to be implemented. This version totals around $800 billion, plus interest that brings it to over a trillion dollars. Republicans stand aghast in near-unison, lambasting the plan variously as "closet socialism," "larded with pork," and insufficiently stimulative (arguing...

Conspiracy theorists long have mused about a "shadow government" working its machinations from a secret locale with a cloak-and-dagger ethos. But that's not the post-postmodern way of doing things anymore; in the age of hyper-spectacle, one puts it right out there in a manner reminiscent of what's known as...

It's difficult to explain to people outside the region just how "old school" things can still be here in Arizona. In addition to being home to a sheriff known for stunts like bringing back the chain gang, self-styled conservatives dominate the state legislature and have in recent years proposed...

On Inauguration Day, I wrote how some left-leaning "radicals" had been arguing that President Obama's success would only serve to prop up an inherently flawed system. I rejected this perspective as missing a chance to see Obama's election as creating space for "people power" to flourish. Later that same...

In all the hoopla surrounding President Obama's much-anticipated inauguration and ex-President Bush's long-awaited departure, former Vice President Dick Cheney seems to have quietly wheeled off into the sunset. Is that really the most fitting denouement for possibly the most important character of the reactionary soap opera that was the last...

Although it has become something of a cliché in popular culture, I doubt that there is a more basic desire among humanity than achieving world peace. A major problem with this notion throughout recorded history has been that governments -- feudalisms, monarchies, and democracies alike -- have often worked at...

More than a few self-proclaimed "radicals" have expressed mixed feelings about Barack Obama's successful -- and now official -- bid for the U.S. presidency. The line of reasoning for these holdouts has been that (a) the American system is inherently racist, militaristic, and capitalistic, and (b) a progressive President can...