If emotion is indeed so politically compelling, then leaders of the left must re-frame the debates over the global migrant crisis and US immigration in an emotionally compelling way. Doing so will combat contrasting emotional pleas from the right to close our borders to the people who most desperately need our help.
Read moreA Conservative Year for the Roberts Court?
Two of the major cases taken up by the Court for the current 2015 term could spell certain disaster for liberals.
Read moreThe Deprivation of Debate
Even if all sides cannot agree on solutions to the problem of free speech on college campuses, we need to acknowledge that the problem exists – and we must be able to talk about it.
Read moreEnvironmentalists Should Thank Fracking for Stopping Keystone XL
Despite the greenhouse gas emissions that the tar sands represent, Obama did not reject the pipeline because of environmentalist protests. Rather, the combination of increasing domestic oil production, low oil and gas prices, and high costs of tar sands extraction killed the pipeline.
Read moreHonoring Victims and Survivors of Traffic Violence
After last weekend, we have all been scarred by traffic violence. Let’s not allow Skidmore to become a community where our scars go unnoticed. Let’s make changes for the better to our campus and to the Saratoga community. Let’s honor this life lost and make this tragedy count for something because it is, after all, the least that we can do.
Read moreVote... Because You Can
Increased community-campus dialogue would encourage Skidmore students to engage politically at the local level and ameliorate the controversial nature of their participation.
Read moreMaking Sense of the Senseless: Rethinking the Logic of Mass Shootings
We as a society set ourselves up to fail by naming these acts and their perpetrators senseless and irrational, and such labels make it nearly impossible to identify the reasons why they keep happening.
Read moreDeath is not Productive!
The death penalty is executed in an arbitrary and discriminatory fashion, but the arguments against it do not end there. Debates over capital punishment have focused primarily on its moral and practical policy attributes. A more basic question is whether capital punishment is constitutionally permissible in this country.
Read moreClinton: The Pragmatic Candidate for Health Care Reform
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, both 2016 Democratic presidential candidates, have a shared vision of greater access to affordable health care. Although they share similar goals, Clinton has the advantage of an exceptionally thorough and practical strategy.
Read moreVodka with Gennady
In late May 2015, my father and I traveled to the provincial town of Ustyuzhna, Russia to deliver the gravestone of a deceased relative.
Read moreFeel the Bern's Political Reality
Just as the 2016 Republican presidential candidates have been racing to the right, so too have their Democratic counterparts been lurching leftward to appeal to the increasingly salient interests of progressive activists.
Read moreThe Politics of Anger: You Mad, Donald?
A politics drained of anger would be a politics that could not generate a Pure Food and Drug Act or a National Labor Relations Act or a Civil Rights Act or an Affordable Care Act. And a politics drained of anger would preclude us from continuing to debate whether even such significant legislative interventions are enough to solve the persistent problems they seek to address.
Read moreOn the Issue of the Voters' Register in Ghana
A new voters’ register, or at the very least, a reformed voters’ register, is necessary for ensuring the future security and stability of Ghana ahead of the upcoming 2016 general elections.
Read moreWe Don’t Have a Trump Problem, We Have a Republican Voter Problem
Any time a candidate for president of the United States makes the kind of statements that Trump has made and continues to consistently top the polls in the Republican Party’s race, that is a story worth covering. However, the media seems unwilling to take the Trump phenomenon to its natural conclusion: that Trump has flourished for such a sustained period of time is less an indictment of Donald Trump, but rather says far more about the constituents of the Republican Party.
Read moreWhen Principles Trump Pragmatism
Ironic as it may seem for Boehner’s rise and demise as Speaker to have come from the same source – the will of radical Republicans – it is hardly surprising, given the increasingly blurred lines between the GOP establishment and the far right.
Read moreMusings on the CNN Republican Presidential Debate
It’s the most wonderful time of the year -- for those of us who derive pleasure from the antics of the Republican presidential primaries. This past week, eleven top-polling candidates gathered to vie for both the 2016 nomination and the most convincing embodiment of the retrospectively declared saintly principles of Ronald Reagan, whose presidential library aptly served as the location for the CNN debate.
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