Despite Google's promise to the People's Republic of China that "the day after June 3rd is June 5th", the 17th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square crackdown did in fact come and go this week… Read More

Why is The Da Vinci Code so popular? I had the misfortune of first experiencing it as a book on tape, which renders it ridiculous, perhaps because Dan Brown's adjective-laden descriptive pr… Read More

Arguments that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution does not cover bribery often invoke existing caselaw that has found that it applies to activities directly involved in legislat… Read More

The Quaker Economist recently posted an article arguing that the benefit of hybrid cars is not in the short-term fuel economy they provide, but as a technological springboard to developing s… Read More

The US needs to relearn how to win friends and influence nations, and the Chinese experience in Africa holds good lessons, according to a recent American Foreign Policy Council report.How do… Read More

I'm afraid the blogging has been sparce with a lot of business to attend to, but this is important stuff I wanted to pass on. A recent copyrighted Boston Globe article detailing GW Bush's p… Read More

Sherwin Nuland lists top 5 books that were turning points in medicine in this weekend's Wall Street Journal:1. Interpretation of Dreams by Freud2. The Double Helix by James Watson 3. The Sil… Read More

Centrists are so often frustrated with the black-and-white thinking of the political Left and Right that I think it's worth reflecting on the useful role each political pole plays in the eco… Read More

Are the young men of Generation Y (today's 20-somethings) more listless than their forebears? Alan Stewart Carl comments on a Leonard Sax Wa Po column:Within the last 30 years, marriage rate… Read More

The current New England Journal reports a study comparing federal employee health benefit plans with and without mental health parity (full coverage for mental health services on par with co… Read More

I was an online denizen, reasonably frequent commenter, and occasional diarist at Red State for about 6 months after the 2004 elections (my diary). Ben Domenech (aka Augustine) was a fair-h… Read More

Here's a taste of the fireworks in the Supreme Court today in the Hamdan case, as told by NY Times:Mr. Clement's position was that Congress had not in fact suspended habeas corpus, but that… Read More

A new book by Vermont author Heather Rogers looks at the post 1950s US garbage production and disposal problem. After detailing the industrial and policy choices that brought us to this mes… Read More

Michael Stickings, a self-described Fair Trade coffee supporter, asks whether the forseeable long-term effects of price supports for coffee farmers might become a worse cure than the problem… Read More

New Englanders are more likely to think of marriage as a contract than folks in other regions of the country, I have written, which may explain regional differences of opinion on gay marriag… Read More

IfIf you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you,If you can trust yourself when all men doubt youBut make allowance for their doubting too,If you can wai… Read More

I quote here comments I left at The Debate Link in resonse to an interesting set of thought experiments: things along the lines of 'whom would you save from a burning building--zygotes or a… Read More

The US cannot effectively think of China as a new Cold War adversary, writes Asia Cable. The difference is that China is not trying to export an ideology or exert military control. It is p… Read More

I remain convinced that the US invasion of Iraq was a strategic blunder and morally indefensible.But here is a powerful reminder of how evil Hussein's Baathist regime really was, lest we for… Read More

Once a year since colonial times, residents of New England towns meet in a public exercise of direct democracy that provides a local stage for how messy and wonderful democracy is. These ar… Read More

How do we square a decent respect for opinions of others with the deep conviction that they are wrong? Positive Liberty writes:Just as moral relativism does not imply an automatic cross-cul… Read More

The Debate Link argues that American action to stop the Darfur genocide has a long-range strategic advantage; preventing the Chinese from using their security council veto and military/econo… Read More

A NY Times piece today describes how Darwin's birthday was marked in some church services yesterday. I think it's important that the media run pieces like this that show how religious people… Read More

In neighboring New Hampshire, the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage has reached the phase of legislative hearings. Valley News points out that the hearings may backfire… Read More