Presidential candidate Mitt Romney (he stopped being governor of Massachusetts awhile back) recently ran into a bit of trouble for using the phrase “tar baby” during an Iowa fundraiser to describe the Big Dig fiasco. As you may (or may not) know, “tar baby” is considered a derogatory term among many African Americans; Gov. [...]

In an excellent op-ed in today’s New York Times, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert points out that our conception of justice relies on two concepts that, as a rule, humans are really bad at judging: 1) that retribution is more moral than preemption and 2) that the response ought to be symmetric in magnitude to the [...]

Is anyone else out there scared of the “let’s go to war with Iran” talk?
The argument for war (invasion, bombing, or something else; it isn’t exactly clear what The Weekly Standard and the rest of the neo-con crowd really wants) goes something like this: (for an example, check out this article by neo-con extraordinaire, Bill [...]

Ice cream trucks at funerals.

What is a proportional response?
Right now Israel is killing about 10 Lebanese for each Israeli that Hezbollah kills. Most of those Lebanese are in no way affiliated with Hezbollah, but of course there is no real way of knowing either way. There are also the incumbent refugee crises. Hezbollah has forced tens [...]

President Bush today issued the first veto of his presidency. It wasn’t a spending bill that he vetoed. He is, generally speaking, more liberal than this Congress when it comes to spending money on government programs. It wasn’t a bill that curtailed executive authority. After all, he uses signing statements to [...]

Argh! So the House voted to prevent the courts from considering the issue of whether the words “under G-d” in the pledge of allegiance is unconstitutional. I happen to be opposed to the phrase “under G-d” in the pledge. I have the utmost respect for religious freedom, and if [...]

Do you ever get those spam emails that offer you a college degree (sometimes even a Ph.D.) for the life experience you already have? That’s why we have accreditation for higher education. So that a degree from an accredited school actually means something - it means that you went through an education that [...]

Once again, Israel is at war with its neighbors.
I won’t play the blame game, except to say that the only innocents are the children. There is no moral high-ground in this war, and everyone is partially at fault. Hamas and Hezbollah are at fault for engaging in acts of terrorism against Israel. [...]

This may be my favorite headline of all time:
Owens says he was misquoted in autobiography