Oh how times have changed. When George Bush was in office, Senate Democrats approved nearly 200 nominees for district and circuit courts, without filibuster. When in July 2004 Democrats blocked three nominees were (bringing the grand total to ten), the GOP screamed bloody murder, with breathless accusations that Democrats broke...

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.
Sir Francis Bacon

In modern times, Francis Bacon would say that "the root of all GOP hatred and vitriol is that conservatives observe when a thing hits, or simply when...

Sporadically over the past six years I have written that an obscure lawsuit, in a town nobody has heard of, was the most important legal battle being waged in our country. Now the case has come before the Supreme Court, validating my earlier view of the trial's importance,...

Religions across the world provide us with an astonishing array of customs, rituals, rites, ornaments, icons, vestments, symbols, sacred texts, relics, and even architecture, each belief system explaining in a unique way life's origin and faith in an afterlife. Yet all religions, with all this diversity, all share one important...

Reverberations in the Echo Chamber

We have with good reason heard much recently of the "echo chamber" in which conservatives whip each other into an anti-Obama frenzy in a destructive paranoid loop of crazy, immune to outside influence and unhindered by the constraints of reality. McConnell and Boehner are like...

Given the blanket press coverage of the government shutdown and impending default, what more can be said that has not already been? For that reason I have restrained from writing on the topic, but also because right wing proclamations have been absurd enough to discredit themselves as the words are...

Nuclear power survives on empty promises and false hopes fed by our inability to effectively evaluate risk. We are lulled by long periods of stability and safe operation, and then seem shocked in the face of catastrophe that could have and should have been anticipated. If the costs of just...

Author Christine Ma-Kellams recently told HuffPost Science that, "In many ways, science seems like a 21st Century religion. It's a belief system that many wholeheartedly defend and evolve their lives around, sometimes as much as the devoutest of religious folk."

Nothing could be further from the truth....

The town of Grecian, Conn., is dominated by an Islamic population. For years, the town supervisor, a devout Muslim, invited a local imam to open the council's monthly meeting with a prayer from the Quran. Two residents, one Jewish the other Christian, were offended by this imposition of the Islamic...

Ignorance as a Platform

If you voted for Reagan, Bush senior, or George Bush Jr. or any senator or congressman who denies the reality of climate change, you must take responsibility for all of its terrible consequences. You voted for candidates who openly dismissed environmental concern as a liberal plot....

The Constitution of the United States is nothing more than a piece of paper home to some clever words. The reason a great nation arose from that parchment has nothing to do with the document and everything to do with its readers. Americans have collectively agreed, by simple convention, to...

By today's standards my political views are considered liberal, perhaps even far to the left of center. Yet just a few decades ago I would have been (and was) labeled a moderate or even slightly right of center for holding the same positions I hold today. The radicalization of the...

"Home prices are surging, job growth is strengthening and stocks are setting record highs. All of which explains why Americans are more hopeful about the economy than at any other point in five years." This is the headline today from the Associated Press. This is not a missive from a...

Variously described as "long-lost" or "recently discovered," the Gospel of Judas has been reexamined and again found to be authentic. By analyzing the unique ink used and how that ink interacted with the ancient papyrus, scientists concluded anew that the document is genuine. When first revealed in the...

Frans de Waal's new book The Bonobo and the Atheist asks a question that vexed Greek sages thousands of years ago and every philosopher since: are we moral because we believe in god, or do we believe in god because we are moral? Cutting to the...

As North Korea's creepy regime blusters and threatens, China proves powerless to reign in its crazy uncle. We should not be surprised at this impotence; but are however because almost every aspect of conventional wisdom about China is wrong.

We have short memories, and as a consequence we keep...

Most Americans have long forgotten that the roads we all take for granted have a rich history that reverberates even today in the current budget debacle and fight over sequestration. We equally give little thought to the extensive and complex air control systems that allow for tens of thousands of...

As the CPAC crowed cheers and offers standing ovations to the growing extremism of right wing idealism, the time has come to offer a comprehensive alternative to the politics of hate. Marc Rubio, the new darling of the right, harked back to the old and tired idea that...

Chimps once again triumph. Tetsuro Matsuzawa, a researcher at Kyoto University, showed that a chimpanzee named Ayumu clearly out-performed humans on some working memory tests, a category of short-term recall. What is surprising is that anybody finds this surprising. We continue to be blinded by our hubris and...

A recent HuffPost blog authored by Max Tegmark claims that religion and science are "closer than you think." The statistic provided as support to the claim is an MIT survey that shows only 11 percent of Americans belong to religions that "openly reject" evolution or modern cosmology, specifically...