Politics & Current Affairs

The Fed slowly removes the training wheels.

Insufficient commitments to carbon cuts, and a process to encourage deeper cuts that is only voluntary, are bad news for our future.

When we’re worried, identifying with our in-groups feels safe. Demonizing others feels reassuring.

Guess who.

What’s next in education?

Have we ignored another of the criminal justice system’s major issues?

If all the rational arguments argue against American gun culture, then the irrational (sometimes creepy) ones must be to blame for our fatal firearms attraction.

A big part of our current mess has to do with how little about religion we actually know.

You know you’ve gone off the deep end when the human incarnation of Darth Vader says your proposal “goes against everything we stand for and believe in.”

If we can’t reach a national consensus and the Supreme Court can’t agree, it might be for each state to decide.  

The Second Amendment is “… not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Religion is part of the problem. But the bigger picture is much larger than any one book. 

It’s not the end of the world, guys.

The ban brings to light a bigger issue. 

It’s been 60 years since Rosa Parks stood up for equality on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. What would she have to say today?

Lack of deep personal public concern about climate change limits the politically difficult actions governments are willing to take.

The NSA’s ability to get records from telecommunications companies just changed, and that’s a good thing.

Early reports are optimistic.

Robert Dear’s murders at a Planned Parenthood are only the latest in a long string of terrorist attacks by Americans. 

Conversations about police brutality and stereotyping are incomplete without a look at the racial wealth gap.

Syrian refugees and others are in crisis, but to approach the problem with temporary solutions won’t get us very far.

ISIS routinely traffics and sells captured women and girls. Is buying them back fueling more terrorism?

Climate change will hurt farmers, although not all equally. American farmers won’t have it nearly as bad as African ones.

The Star Trek actor has some words on invoking Japanese internment camps in the context of the current Syrian refugee conversation.

The U.K. plans to phase out coal power by 2025, but how will renewable energy factor into the equation?

Edward Snowden lists services that will protect your privacy with just a few downloads.

As outpouring of support for Paris was unmissable, many were questioning the cultural bias behind it.

We naturally respond disproportionately to events that frighten us, but to do so is playing into the hands of the terrorists.

Three passages that will pay dividends when parsed carefully by a patient reader.

Why are we ready to hold big corporations legally liable for lying, but not all the other advocates whose manipulation of the truth does society real harm!?