Robert Slayton

Donald Trump is raising the birther issue again, in a big way. There's no evidence to support his charges whatsoever, but the Donald has been more showperson that businessman for quite a while, so that hasn't stopped him from getting a lot of attention. Some Americans may even be persuaded...

Tax reform is a wonderful subject; after all, it is the great American fantasy.

On the surface, it is an idea whose time is rushing to the forefront of American life. In a 2011 Pew Research Center poll, 59% believed the tax code was so bad, it could...

In the twentieth century, America experienced two Roman Catholic candidates for president from the major parties. Together they established a tradition -- long and honorable, for what it meant to hold that faith and be a politician at the highest level.

Al Smith, the Democrat's nominee in 1928, was the...

The Republicans are positioning themselves to be the leading party in a new century. The problem is, it isn't the twenty-first.

Most of their candidates and initiatives seem perfectly poised to tackle the issues at the start of the twentieth century, one hundred years ago. Rick Santorum, for example, is...

America is losing its social mobility. What makes this particularly dangerous is that it represents a shift from historical patterns, and particularly attacks the bulk of the country, the middle and working class, in unprecedented fashion.

Since the late nineteenth century, the model has been the Horatio Alger stories. In...

The New York Times recently carried a profound article on the group work settings so common in our businesses and schools. It turns out, however that these are the worst possible environments to foster the kind of creativity America needs badly if it is to maintain leadership in...

In a piece two years ago, I argued that the Right's deep animosity toward Barack Obama stemmed from more than just bigotry over race, an idea widely argued at the time. Rather, I posed the idea that Obama represented a changing America in so many ways, an America where gays...

With Rick Perry's bid for the presidency getting into trouble every day, with Gov. Christie unlikely to jump in, plus a host of second string pretenders, it looks more and more likely that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee in 2012.

Now, I wouldn't vote for him. His positions...

When I was a little kid, I never wanted to be a firefighter; still don't. But I have admired them for a long time.

Between undergrad and grad I took a few years off to live on my own, holding down a blue collar job in a print shop in...

In Dosteyevsky's masterpiece, The Grand Inquisitor, Christ comes back to earth during the Spanish Inquisition. Quickly apprehended, he stands trial, and is to die a horrible death at the stake the next day. That night, however, he receives a visitor, Torquemada, the chief prosecutor.

This notorious figure offers up a...

The standard stereotype of the disabled is that we're all angry. Of course, we have to be mad at life, because of what it's done to us. In movies, in books, the image presented over and over again is of someone who ranges from perpetual rage to a more modest...

Several years ago, I got together with a buddy of mine for an evening of great conversation, lubricated by a very fine bottle of scotch whisky. Deep into the night -- and the bottle -- there was a revelation. He had long believed that the real reason we had maintained...

We were young, assured, and ready to vote our passionate convictions. True believers, all of us knew -- with absolute surety -- that we had the wind of rising public opinion at our back, that history was with us, and it would prove how right our cause was. The party...

I've been thinking about the golden age of Republican politics and what made it so successful.

No, not the Reagan era. Those eight years were followed by a mixed legacy. According to one scholarly biography of George H. W. Bush, the gipper's successor had extremely mixed feelings about the...

The world is a complex place. And the solutions to our problems -- very real problems -- will require complex answers. But many conservatives, including those with elite pedigrees, are not contributing useful solutions or analysis.

Let me explain what I am looking for, and what I am railing against....

California's Republican Party is going to lose statewide elections for a long time. And it's not just because of the leaders and candidates; it's their electorate that is preserving this fate.

Let's start with the people who should head the ticket. The Golden State's Grand Old Party has professional politicians...

The new American obsession is with deficit reduction; everybody is talking about it, wringing their hands with concern for debt levels. Many commentators are declaring that the near future will go down in the history books as the Age of Austerity.

Before I critique these campaigns, let me state clearly:...

The Republicans won a big victory on election day, and congratulations are due. The shift was actually of historic proportions, the biggest since the Truman years. But now the fun starts, analyzing what the results actually mean.

First, one of the hallmarks of this year's campaign on the right was...

For those of you who missed it, last Friday, for the first time in the history of the world, doctors injected stem cells into a human patient with a spinal cord injury. This was done at the Shepard Center in Atlanta, using breakthrough medical technology developed by Geron.

The long...

I'm going to say something that may surprise some of you. This country is in jeopardy because of the Tea Party's failure as a grass roots movement.

Before you stop reading, give me a moment to explain. A number of sources have discussed how upset a majority...