| Feb 10, 2016 | Peace / SecurityFor anyone who cares deeply about being informed, watching Republican presidential debates can feel like a form of torture. But the program becomes more terrifying altogether when their ignorance is hitched to an endorsement of actual torture. At the latest GOP debate...
| Jan 20, 2016 | Rights / DemocracyYou may have heard there’s a growing political movement against mass incarceration. Someone should clue in the judges. In the past 30 years, federal judges have turned to imprisonment — as opposed to probation — as the punishment of choice for even minor crimes,...
| Jan 13, 2016 | Peace / SecurityPicture a world in which most of the people you encounter — on the street or at work, in stores or classrooms, at the movies or in church — are openly carrying guns. That’s the world Second Amendment absolutists are promoting when they repeat their mantra, “The...
| | Peace / SecurityThe armed men occupying an isolated federal building in a remote Oregon bird sanctuary say they won’t leave until the federal government stops its “tyranny.” Yet it’s not clear what that tyranny is, exactly. One of the group’s leaders is Ammon...
| Dec 30, 2015 | Environment / HealthIt’s time — past time, really — to name the person of the year. (TIME Magazine does it. Why not me?) There were many worthy candidates in 2015: the Pope, the Donald, and Luke Skywalker, to name just a few. But only one symbolized the spirit of the year. I speak, of...
