Carl Sagan and the Churches

Do you remember the immensely popular television series "Cosmos," hosted by astronomer Carl Sagan? Sagan wasn't just a scientist, he was an evangelist. His religion was worship of the universe itself--the Cosmos, which he spelled with a capital C. His most famous line was, "The Cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever shall be."

How Abortion Clinics Market Their Services

Last May, the Supreme Court banned the use of federal money for abortion counselling. Abortion activists howled that it was an assault on free speech. How can women make "informed decisions?," they fumed. How can clinics tell patients "the whole truth"?

The Tyson Rape Case

We know sex sells movies; and now, it seems, sex sells news. Coverage of the Clarence Thomas harassment case, the Kennedy rape case, and the Clinton adultery case have left us wondering if news programs shouldn't be R-rated.

Election Analysis III

We're mid-way through the presidential primaries and perhaps the biggest surprise so far is the poor showing of President Bush. Remember how high his ratings were at the end of the Gulf War? People thought he was unbeatable.

Election Analysis II

Yesterday I gave you an analysis of the elections so far. The voters are confounding the political pundits. The sitting office holders in Washington--Senator Kerry, Senator Harkin, President Bush--are all doing much worse than anyone expected.

Election Analysis I

The dust had hardly settled after Super Tuesday before the commentators were poring over the exit polls to figure out what it all meant. What issues are voters reacting to? What themes are working? What do the results tell us about the mood of the nation?

Why America Doesn't Work Series

As I was driving to work one day I saw a bumper sticker that read, "I Owe, I Owe, So Off To Work I Go." Grim humor, I thought. Is that all there is to the working life? Earn money to spend money, in an endless cycle?

Why America Doesn't Work Series

Like most business travelers, I often rent cars. So I was delighted one day last summer when a clerk at the airport rental counter offered me, as he described it, a "brand new car--only four hundred miles on it."

Vice President Dan Quayle has done it again.

Last year, a Minneapolis TV station captured its best ratings performance in years. Now, it's not very often people argue with success. But strangely enough, right after the station's impressive performance, the station manager was pressured to resign.

Just days after the botched coup attempt in the Soviet Union, the world was shocked when Sergei Akhromeyev, Gorbachev's top military advisor, hanged himself.

A few days ago, the Senate gave us another demonstration of politics at work. It was the so-called "corn-for-porn" deal--which traded cheaper fees to cattle ranchers in exchange for federal funding of sexually explicit art.