John Mayer has a new song out “Waiting on the World to Change“. It’s got a catchy little tune and a catchy little hook, and has been running through my mind for the past few days. In addition to a condemnation of the current political administration, it’s also a rather depressing little message: [...]

Here’s my dilemma. I like the Republican candidate from my district better than I like the Democrat. So on one hand, I should vote for the Republican.
But I hate what the Bush administration is doing, and I’m furious at the Republican party for letting him do it. Thus, I want to vote [...]

There’s a pro-life rally occurring on campus today. Lots of people with pictures of mangled fetuses and chanting about an American Holocaust. I had a free half hour, so I stopped down to chat with some of them. My position on abortion is that abortion is bad, but that there are better [...]

Political campaigns tend to be obnoxious, annoying, dirty, and all around distasteful. The negative campaigning is enough to get me to flip channels at the slightest hint of a campaign ad. But now political campaigning has hit a new low. A republican campaign in California has been sending letters to (likely [...]

My Top Five List of Meaningless Political Phrases:
1) “My Opponent is Soft on Crime!”
“Soft on Crime” can mean anything. On a broad level, it is often levelled along with evidence that the opponent in question does not take the problem of crime seriously enough, although sometimes it can mean that he favors a preventative [...]

The glorious logic of international diplomacy:
1) North Korea imports materials to make a nuclear warhead, violating international law.
2) North Korea builds nuclear warheads.
3) North Korea detonates nuclear warhead.
4) US/UN push nations to inspect cargo entering North Korea for illicit materials.
If searching cargo was going to work (which I doubt it will), shouldn’t we have done [...]

I teach a large class at a university, and every year I have students come to me with disabilities asking for accomodations. One time I had a person with an eye condition requesting an exam be printed in large font. One time I had a student with cerebral palsy who couldn’t fill [...]

As a political science major in college and in graduate school, I took quite a few classes on statistics. And in those classes, I learned no more important lesson than this: improbable events happen all the time.

Apparently, North Korea tested a nuclear weapon over the weekend. (I’d recommend that you check out the Washington Post’s history of our dispute with North Korea over their nuclear program, if you need a refresher. Good stuff.) And, of course, the United States and the United Nations are scrambling to do something [...]

The GOP is in serious trouble. That’s trouble with a capital “T”. It goes beyond the abysmal polling. It goes beyond the Foley scandal. And it even goes beyond the continuing bad news out of Iraq.
If you want to know how seriously the GOP is messing up right now, just check [...]