New Research Shows Wide Support for Patients' End-of-Life Rights
Recent headlines and stories about a poll from The Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life project missed the real news. The poll showed that a majority or "two-thirds of Americans (66...
View ArticleReflecting on the One Year Anniversary of the Sandy Hook Shooting
By Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy In the 365 days since December 14, 2012, millions of Americans have struggled to comprehend the horror of that morning in the small community of Newtown,...
View ArticleIf You Want the American Dream, Go to Finland
The American dream -- the notion of equal opportunity for all, the chance to pull yourself up by your boot straps and make something of yourself -- is gone. Consider what Ed Miliband, the popular...
View ArticleChina's Dangerous Air and Sea Show: Outcome, Options
Nearly a week has come and gone since Vice President Joe Biden's big Asia-Pacific tour in the immediate wake of China declaring an air defense zone across the East China Sea. It proved to be a...
View ArticleWhen Charity Begins at Home (Particularly the Homes of the Wealthy)
It's charity time, and not just because the holiday season reminds us to be charitable. As the tax year draws to a close, the charitable tax deduction beckons. America's wealthy are its largest...
View ArticleSunday Roundup
This week delivered another stark lesson in the difference between a real scandal and a manufactured one. On Tuesday, President Obama was photographed at the Nelson Mandela memorial service taking a...
View ArticleThe Gun Lobby And The Gospel: 'What Else Did We Think We Had A Right To Expect?'
Prepared Sermon for December 15, 2013 The Very Rev. Gary Hall, Dean of Washington National Cathedral I did not grow up in the church and up until my first year of college I only went in to churches and...
View ArticleYes Virginia, Guns Do Kill People
I've said it before, and I'll keep saying, yes, guns do kill people. Do other things kill people? Yes they do. Lots of things kill people. Lots of people die every day. But as far as I have found, only...
View ArticleAutonomous Drones and the Ethics of Future Warfare
International human rights lawyers and military aviation specialists held their collective breath this summer when, 80 miles off the coast of Virginia, "Salty Dog 502" executed a flawless landing on...
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A Strategy to Stop Killing Kids and Babies on Our Streets? Think Drug...
There has been a fruitless debate about "guns" after the school shooting tragedy in Newtown, CT in 2012, according to a smart commentary by Richard Feldman, head of the Independent Firearm Owners...
View ArticleGasoline Price and Minimum Wage Increases in the Scheme of Job Creation and...
It has been approximately five years since we got out of the Great Recession. What have we observed in the economy since? We have seen a very slow pace of economic recovery as job creation has been...
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The Meaning of Brian Tacadena
Journalist Carey McWilliams published a story in The Nation magazine in June of 1979 titled "Second Thoughts," which looked at the fatal police shooting of 26-year-old Fremin Montoya in Santa Barbara,...
View ArticleHonoring Mandela: A Better Man, Not a Bitter Man
The death of Nelson Mandela on December 5th -- also the very day the modern American Civil Rights Movement began with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 -- marked for me the end of an era when leaders...
View ArticleA Dream I Had About the Rich, Rich, Rich People
I wonder sometimes, what makes rich people tick. Madeleina, my beautiful daughter, asked me the other day why Napolean wasn't content with owning/ruling half the world and risked and lost everything...
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Job at Newtown
When authorized to test Job's devotion to God, Satan got around eventually to killing all of Job's 10 children. Satan, or his agent, managed to kill twice that many, in addition to six adult...
View ArticleThe U.S. Cannot Provide Absolute Security for Its Middle East Allies
The signing of the interim agreement between Iran and the 5+1 countries over Iran's nuclear program produced a very slight and, lately, dimming glimmer of hope that a process of reconciliation between...
View ArticleThe Spies Who Never Came in From the Cold
PART 1 In 1972, the FBI sent an agent from its Newark office to Morris County to investigate why a person named Paton was communicating with the Socialist Workers Party at its New York headquarters....
View ArticleMillennials Do Not Care About Obamacare
Understand my point-of-view. I deal with millennials every day. Miami-dade College is the biggest (175,000 students) and most multi-cultural school in the country. My students, many of whom come from...
View Article'Affluenza' and the Miscarriage of Justice
The justice system. We often like to think that in a great democracy like ours, we are all equal under the law no matter what our personal or financial background. The reality is, that while we may...
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