One lesson most moviegoers picked up from Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” was that the workings of Congress have always involved downright ugly wheeling and dealing. Votes were bought, sold and traded to pass both good and bad legislation. The laudatory goal of that January 1865 backroom
With the 2012 popular vote supporting marriage equality regardless of gender winning in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington, the struggle for marriage equality has turned a corner. It’s not the corner, but an important corner nevertheless. We can quibble all we want about whether human
2012 ended with the Associated Press publishing a new stylebook for journalists that bans the use of the words “homophobia” and “Islamophobia.” The AP argues that “phobia” describes an illness or mental disability and, thus, isn’t accurate in “political or social” reporting. As Michelangelo Signorile
That’s the gist of an all too common question. And when looking at the daily news, there’s clear reason for asking it. Recently we saw again what can happen when anti-Muslim Christians — this time using a film — chose to rile up anti-Christian Muslims.
It’s silly season. And it would be laughable if elections weren’t downright serious. We’re about to see the worst of politics. It’s been building all summer, but now the money really flows. So, here we go. “Awash in money” is an understatement as the 1%
“We look like Mississippi” In a Greenville NBC affiliate interview, North Carolina’s outgoing Democratic governor Beverly Perdue said: “People around the country are watching us, and they’re really confused. To have been such a progressive, forward-thinking, economically driven state that invested in education and that
I lost what was left of my naiveté about the equal justice ideal of the Supreme Court with their decision in Bush v. Gore to select George W. Bush president by suspending Florida’s vote recount in 2000. That political overreach by the increasingly activist right-wing
“Culture Wars” are back in the headlines. They actually never left politics. Right-wing leaders have been invoking the symbol of “Culture Wars” ad nauseam without attracting mainstream media attention. But now, current Republican leaders and presidential candidates have decided to compete to prove who is
This year, let’s keep one resolution when we talk about religious people, let’s never again refer to them as literalists. That’s because they aren’t, and no one is. No one takes all their scriptures, tradition, or even their natural laws literally. They all pick
It’s an important point that right-wing propagandists get, but again and again I hear so many of us miss. As a result, our words and actions often fall ineffectively on deaf ears and closed minds. We keep trying to understand how those opposed to human