Reading Time: 8 minutes All end-of-year lists are suspect. One must embrace futility when trying to summarize what happened on a planet of eight billion for one spin around the sun. So why do we do write them? At best, to break up our routines of knee-jerk outrage at the latest inane news item, and to think more systematically […]
politics
Posted inPolitics
Rep. Jamie Raskin announces cancer diagnosis (without any mention of God)
Reading Time: 3 minutes Yesterday, Congressman Jamie Raskin released a statement revealing his diagnosis of “Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma, which is a serious but curable form of cancer.” It’s a devastating blow for one of the most admirable members of Congress. It also comes nearly two years to the day after Raskin’s son died by suicide. Raskin was […]
Posted inReligious News
Cycles of extremism: NGOs suspend services after Taliban bans female staff
Reading Time: 3 minutes In a series of moves surprising no one, the Taliban government in Afghanistan this past week banned women from universities, and also locked girls out of primary school (essentially ending education to female persons across the board), before also banning women from work in any local non-government organizations (NGOs). The usual nonsense reasons pertaining to […]
Posted inPolitics
GOP lawmaker praises pastor whose church ignored child sex abuse
Reading Time: 2 minutes On Monday, Congressman Louie Gohmert, one of the most conservative members of the Republican Party, gave a general speech on the floor of the House and recited a sermon written for him by Pastor Tommy Nelson. Gohmert explained that Nelson, a friend who runs Denton Bible Church in Texas, sometimes joked about how he would […]
Posted inLGBTQ News
Why the Christian Right tried (and failed) to kill the Respect for Marriage Act
Reading Time: 9 minutes The Respect for Marriage Act finally passed a its last vote. It’s now on its way to the president’s desk, where he’ll likely sign it into law on Tuesday. But it got there over the kicking and screaming of the Christian Right, a loose-knit assortment of hardline evangelical culture warriors and creepily-authoritarian hardline Catholics.
Posted inCulture
Beyond Meathead and Archie: Can Braver Angels help bridge our current divide?
Reading Time: 4 minutes A national movement seeks to bring liberals, conservatives, and others together at the grassroots level—not to find a centrist compromise, but to find one another as citizens. Through workshops, debates, campus engagement, and more, Braver Angels helps Americans understand each other beyond stereotypes, form community alliances, and reduce the vitriol that poisons our civic culture.
Posted inEconomics
Bankman-Fried arrested—Now what’s to be done about Ponzinomics?
Reading Time: 5 minutes On December 12, Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested at his apartment complex in the Albany resort in the Bahamas, after US prosecutors sent formal notice to local officials that they had filed criminal charges against him. The founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which Bankman-Fried announced was filing for bankruptcy on November 11, had been scheduled […]
Posted inPolitics
Nonreligious voters gave Democrats crucial wins. Will people notice?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Two trends in America are finally converging in a way that could become the dominant story of future elections: More Americans are leaving organized religion, and nonreligious voters are crucial to Democrats and their agenda. The Associated Press, which conducts a massive survey called the AP VoteCast, says that voters without any religious affiliation—roughly 22% […]
Posted inCulture
LGBTQ happiness booming in … Bhutan?
Reading Time: 4 minutes The tiny, landlocked Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan would hardly seem a likely haven for an LGBTQ revolution. After all, this mountainous Asian country of fewer than a million inhabitants is far more famous for its arch-conservative Buddhist traditionalism and quaint “Gross National Happiness” (GNH) index than for groundbreaking relaxations of longstanding socio-sexual mores. The GNH is […]
Posted inPolitics
The clear and present danger of a Senator Herschel Walker
Reading Time: 3 minutes As Georgia’s runoff election for the US Senate enters the early voting period, every reasonably-informed voter must know that Herschel Walker is a deeply flawed human being. But one of those flaws makes him an especially dangerous Senate candidate.