For those still unconvinced about the reality of climate change, the year that just ended should erase any doubt. Climate data from the air, land and water all reveal an indisputable portrait of a warming world. On Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA jointly announced that 2015 was the warmest year on […]

Christopher Feaster lived in a homeless shelter in Washington for most of high school. Laundry was a once-a-month luxury. “I would have to re-wear socks,” he says. “They were white socks, but they were so dirty that they were brown and sometimes they were starting to go black. I had to re-wear underwear because I […]

Don Smith saw the boots first, just the toes, peeking out from a drift of snow along the side of the empty road. He brought his car to a stop, clambered out into the early morning chill and peered through the half-light, searching for a sign of his son. “I looked over and there was […]

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s death penalty Tuesday, but if you think this is a harbinger of the end of capital punishment, think again. The 8-1 decision was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who have no intention of ever ruling death sentences unconstitutional as a general matter. The reason these […]

When Arizona Sen. John McCain, R, was running for president in 2008, his campaign experienced turbulence over an issue currently vexing the campaign of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz: the phrase in the Constitution stipulating that the president must be a “natural born citizen.” There are conflicting legal views (naturally) about what that means. Law professor […]

If information confirmswhat we already believe,hey, it must be true Why does misinformation spread so quickly on the social media? Why doesn’t it get corrected? When the truth is so easy to find, why do people accept falsehoods? A new study focusing on Facebook users provides strong evidence that the explanation is confirmation bias: people’s […]

The phrase has become inescapable — again. In campaign speeches, media headlines and your Twitter feed: “politically correct.”But what does it actually mean? Depends what year it is, and whom you’re asking.These days, for GOP candidates, it’s a catch-all synonym for liberal cowardice or caution – whatever it is that’s keeping America from being great, […]

There’s an easy way to sum up virtually any debate about tax policy: “You call them loopholes. I call them deductions.” Paying for new spending by “closing the loopholes” is a favorite rallying cry of almost everyone. But rarely are those people picturing giving up their own deductions for mortgage interest, employer-sponsored health insurance, dependent […]

A successful cyber-attack on a power grid is a nightmare that keeps intelligence services and security experts awake at night. Now the threat is no longer theoretical: A grid in Ukraine has been brought down by hackers. The vulnerability they used? As so often with hacking, human stupidity. The engineered blackout scenario is so scary […]

The 2016 presidential campaign not only will feature more money than any since Watergate, but also more secret money than the days when black satchels of illicit cash were passed around.   The so-called dark money, or contributions that don’t have to be disclosed, topped more than $300 million in the 2012 presidential race, and some […]