Politicians love to attack the media. It feeds their own egos to attack the messenger rather than to adjust the message. It also can make the public look more favorably upon you if they believe that you are being unfairly targeted by other people. This adage has been especially true running up [...]

You know, you stop reading the news for a week to help your mother move, and the world goes to heck in a hand-basket. I saw in the paper this morning that the government was seizing WaMu (with a name like that it’s no wonder they are having problems), that the Bush Administration has [...]

I know that the recent Wall St. turmoil sounds complicated. And it is. To understand all the details, you need to be an expert in the intricacies of investment banking… or at least that’s what people a lot smarter than I am say. But at it’s essence, this financial collapse is basically [...]

The most interesting comment that Barack Obama made in his speech last Thursday night was this passage that came about a third of the way through:
You see, we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.

It’s an awful word, but I couldn’t resist using it. In any case, if you have any interest at all in the upcoming presidential election, you should read this article on what Obama’s economic priorities are. Obama has been characterized as both a conservative and a socialist, and the article attempts to explain [...]

Gay marriage is supposed to be a threat to the modern family, but I’ve never known a heterosexual couple get married or divorced because of the actions of a homosexual neighbor.
Praying in schools is supposed to be a family issue, but I’ve never known a couple who got divorced because their child’s teacher couldn’t lead [...]

Check out this article written by Judith Warner, who writes for the New York Times mostly on family and gender issues. I found it to be an extremely thought provoking piece on the lack of compassion that many upper-middle class suburbanites feel towards the truly needy. In particular, I found the following passage [...]

Drug legalization (and I will include the addictive mood altering chemicals tobacco and alcohol here as well) is a hard question. On the one hand, it’s not really government’s job to protect people from themselves. On the other hand, issues like addiction, second-hand smoke, “roid rage”, public financing of emergency rooms, drunk driving, [...]

I just ran across this post on a washingtonpost.com blog. The author, a prominent Jewish Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, argues that the Pew Forum survey on religion overestimates the number of atheists in the United States (they estimate about 1.6% of Americans). Rabbi Steinsaltz argues that “true atheists” have two rare qualities: 1) an [...]

How much is a human life worth?
I’m reminded of that question again, because of this case out of Pasadena, TX (a relatively poor suburb of Houston). Here’s what happened: