Over the past year, our country has seen a number of extreme weather events – from the local Derecho storm that knocked out power and phone service to the tragic Superstorm Sandy and tornados that ripped through Monroe, Oklahoma, resulting in a tragic loss of life. The severe temperatures and [...]

This Wednesday marked Student Debt Day for activists young and old in the nation’s capital and at key university sites nationally. The focus was the congressional action needed to prevent an impending doubling of interest rates on federally-subsidized student loans, a cruel and unusual punishment that one can hardly imagine [...]

Everyone has a conscience. Most people have a basic understanding of the sliding scale of right versus wrong. Very few people have the uncanny ability to restrain themselves when a self-indulgent moment rears its ugly head and I’m not one of them. I’m sitting at a mid range restaurant, in [...]

We live in remarkably violent times, and it hasn’t always been like this. It ranges from a heightened lack of civility in political processes from local to state and national governmental bodies, to angry insistence on hoarding assault weapons by millions of Americans who honestly believe they need them in [...]

The Boy Scout’s of America (BSA) has voted to allow openly gay Scouts. However, it continues its prohibition on adult scout leaders. We hear that this is a good “first step,” however, I’m not so sure, because we’ve heard this argument before. In 1993, Bill Clinton’s fought to allow openly [...]

Federal employees have repeatedly been asked to shoulder the burden of deficit reduction and this past week, they were targeted once again. Since 2011, federal workers have seen their pay frozen and pension contributions increased for new hires without corresponding increases in benefits. In total, Congress has reduced federal employee [...]

At the end of the day, I am a man. The thing about being a man is that, for the most part, we are simple creatures. We know how to eat, sleep, and obsess about maybe one or two things – electronics, lawn maintenance, or skin care depending on whatever [...]

What caused me to pay attention to President Obama’s commencement speech at Morehouse University last weekend was the opportunity it provided him to step away from the in-your-face day-to-day slugfests of political Washington, and instead to focus on passing eternal verities to a new generation. Such philosophical asides, especially when [...]

Native Americans were subject to centuries of brutal mistreatment following the discovery and establishment of the Americas. In Virginia, our native tribes were no stranger to abuse. But due to more modern discrimination in the 20th century, they are still fighting to close this sad chapter in our nation’s history. [...]

It is nearly a quarter of a century now since two electro-chemists at the University of Utah held a press conference to announce that they had discovered a new way of extracting energy from the nucleus of an atom. For a few weeks the announcement of what was then termed [...]