Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, The First Sixty Years
By Geoffrey Nunberg
PublicAffairs
272 pages

Linguist and Berkeley professor Geoffrey Nunberg states early in his new book Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years, "What I'm interested in isn't a distinct...

Huffington is the free, weekly iPad magazine created by The Huffington Post. The latest issue is a special Literary edition, and here the four guest editors explain their motivations.

Before this issue was a reality, before it was even an idea worth talking about, it was an ellipsis...

As budget talks remain in sclerotic repose, one notable spark this week came from Speaker of the House John Boehner, who said that cuts to the federal government's multi-billion dollar oil and gas industry subsidy are "certainly something we should be looking at." Seizing on what is no...

In the current era of economic hardship and political polarity, the ground has been fertile for various messiah figures to enter the scene in the form of politicians, pundits, and public intellectuals -- some warning of tyranny and promising to protect American freedom. With the next presidential campaign season coming...

It may be a sign of the times that this year's holiday season has seen a notable influx in secular and atheist billboards and bus banners sarcastically challenging the veracity of the Christmas story. One in New Jersey reads: "You KNOW it's a myth. This season, celebrate reason."

It is...

"A business man who is generous to all his employees but falls in love with his stenographer is wicked; another who bullies his employees but is faithful to his wife is virtuous. This attitude is rank superstition, and it is high time that it was got rid of." ~ Bertrand...

In a heated campaign season, the third 'Pulpit Freedom Sunday' in as many years, held this past weekend, garnered near equal attention as at its conception during the historic 2008 election. Per the initiative's blueprint, pastors from around the country purported to exercise their freedoms of...

In his compendium on the life and works of Charles Dickens, George Orwell paints his literary forebearer as not so much a revolutionary in the traditional, head-rolling sense, but as more or less a revolutionary all the same. Dickens found fodder for criticism at all levels of the inequitable society...

Ignorance and poverty, and the lack of material means generally, prevent people from exercising their rights and from taking advantage of [opportunities]. But rather than counting these and similar obstacles as restricting a person's liberty, we count them as affecting the worth of liberty, that is, the usefulness to persons...

From the latest criticism of Elena Kagan for her support of an Islamic finance program at Harvard to the escalating mosque construction controversy across the country, there are now warnings emanating from some circles that Muslim leaders are seeking gateways through which to implement an "

Sixty years ago, as Europe's satrapies threw off their colonial patriarchs, the African-Martinican author and poet Aimé Césaire warned the Old World of the damage its adventures abroad had at home. Whatever its obvious destructive effects on the colonized, colonialism also "decivilized" the colonizer. Europeans entered the Third World as...

Day two of the Elena Kagan Supreme Court confirmation hearing saw an act of political soap-boxing by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who dedicated the bulk of his time to the left's griping over January's Citizens United decision. Some of his frustration is likely deserved -- a few responses to the...

Update 6/15/2010: Political hay is being made this week over the decision of Congressional Democrats to bend to the wishes of the National Rifle Association and provide that organization with an exemption on some of the disclosure provisions in the bill. The push for an exemption was led...

My mother used to have a cat that wasn't declawed. As such, most of the plushier furniture items around the house inevitably ended up shredded. She would take the cat to the veterinarian now and then for the claws to be clipped down, which was effective for a time before...

Perhaps the most enervating element of the BP-Deepwater Horizon disaster is its eery familiarity -- the sheer, inexorable predictability of it all. There is poetic injustice in its propinquity on the calendar to the Obama administration's decision to expand offshore drilling last month, and to the Supreme Court decision...

For many religious believers around the world, the credulity with which they defend their faith is oftentimes only matched by the incredulity with which they receive ridicule. The latest example is the response to a campaign by the Atheist Agenda on the campus of the University of Texas in...

Last summer, when mass protests broke out in Iran following what was seen as a rigged election, Americans cried out in support of the uprising through all possible channels. Some commentators here went so far as to claim credit for the "revolution," as if it never could have happened without...

President Obama's first State of the Union address, while predictable and straightforward towards most of the top issues of his first year, seemed rather soggy when it came to his push for a solution to the Citizens United decision handed down last week. He again criticized it, but then gave...

Two events were cause for Americans to leave the house this past week: Sarah Palin and The Twilight Saga: New Moon. The mass, separate interest in each has left many who are fans of neither wondering: What the hell is wrong with these people? Sure, nobody ever went...

The Obama administration's move this week to slash the pay of top executives at 'too big to fail' firms under TARP should be applauded. And that ovation should last for about one second. The pay cuts are certainly just and good, given the current state of things, but ultimately it's...