Category: Politics and Current Events
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by Frederick S. Lane Forty or so years ago, a U.S. Senator from Vermont by the name of George Aiken wisely advised both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon that the United States should simply declare victory in Vietnam and bring its troops home. Unfortunately, neither listened to him. His advice, sadly, is still relevant. When…
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by Glenn Branch I send a lot of e-mail in the course of the average day, and ordinarily nobody is fired as a result. But I’m not always so lucky. I work at the National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools. Even eighty-two years…
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by Jennifer Harbury The issue of water-boarding has become quite the political flashpoint in recent weeks. First there was an uproar when Michael Mukasey, now our Attorney General, stated his uncertainty as to whether or not this “interrogation” technique constituted torture. Shamefully, he is not alone. Many officials in our intelligence community insist that it…
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by C. Welton Gaddy Mitt Romney’s speech on Faith in America was both encouraging and disappointing. I appreciate the tone of his speech and the fact that he seriously addressed the issue of religious liberty. I commend him for clearly stating that religious tolerance is not reserved only for faiths with which we agree and…
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by Frederick S. Lane Last week, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney traveled to College Station, Texas, to deliver a major address on faith to an audience at the George H.W. Bush presidential library. Given the fact that the speech was so clearly an attempt to emulate President John F. Kennedy’s famous speech on faith forty-seven…
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by Jessica Bennett For over five years, the United States has held hundreds of people at Guantanamo Bay. The system for legal recourse has been criticized by human rights activists and political leaders around the world. Monday’s Boston Globe has an exceptionally moving opinion piece from Sabin Willett, a lawyer representing prisoners in Guantanamo. The…
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Penny Coleman, the author of Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, and the Lessons of War and Village Elders, lives with her family in New York City. For more information, visit her website at www.flashbackhome.com. On November 6, the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Bill became law. The bill was named for a 22-year-old Iowa reservist who…
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by Aviva Chomsky As I’ve been doing interviews and talks over the past several months about my book, "They Take Our Jobs!" And 20 Other Myths About Immigration, I’ve become more and more convinced that a key, central issue that’s hampering those of us who support immigrant rights is the absence of a basic, fundamental…
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by Fred Pearce Nobel prizewinner Al Gore and I go back a long way. True, I’ve only met him once. I shook the hand of the man who used to be the next President of the United States, the latest controversial recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, when his climate-change roadshow came to Cambridge in…
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by Philip C. Winslow Driving north out of Jerusalem after twelve months away was like settling back to watch a favorite film. The olive trees and stony hills baked under the late summer sun and the eroded limestone cliffs at Wadi Harimiya— “thieves,” in Arabic—looked as smooth as they must have thousands of years ago.…
