Sea level rise and destruction of water resources as glaciers melt alone may have horrendous human consequences.

It is a privilege to join the campaign to support Bradley Manning for his courage and integrity in serving his country by helping make the government accountable to its citizens, and to inform the world of what its people should know.

You know, people talk about [Richard] Nixon's "madman theory." We don't really know much about that. It was in memoirs, by somebody else.

The US is also unusual in the enormous scale of religious fundamentalism. The impact on understanding of the world is extraordinary. In national polls almost half of those surveyed have reported that they believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago (or less) and that man shares no common ancestor with the ape. There are similar beliefs about the Second Coming.

A democracy barely functions under the neoliberal system.

A person who issues that charge that someone adheres to the principle "do as I say, not as I do" has three options: produce an example; withdraw the charge; take the coward's way out and slink away silently.

There's a strong nativist tradition - saying, "we have to protect ourselves" - that comes from the founding of the country. If you read Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment in the United States and the most distinguished representative of the movement here, he actually advised that the newly founded republic should block Germans and Swedes because they were too "swarthy" - dark.