Just when you thought the Republican race for the presidential nomination could not possibly get embarrassingly worse, it does. Last night, billionaire huckster Donald Trump had already won 7 of 12 state primaries and looked to increase his lead before the night was over. Forty-eight hours earlier he was interviewed on CNN’s State of the Union (Feb. 28), by Jake...

Okay, I missed Lincoln’s birthday on Friday, but this is good. In light of the fiery attacks GOP candidates have thrown at each other, it’s interesting to consider a question presented by FlackCheck.org, the political literacy site: Could Lincoln be elected today if his opponents used today’s political tactics? The concept was developed into a 2012 social studies lesson plan...

The Take had quite a range of recent stories to choose from. The Weasel – Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager and head of Turing Pharmaceuticals, smiled and smirked his way through his testimony before Congress last week regarding questions related to securities fraud. To watch Shkreli’s testimony is to watch a ludicrous stream of redundant answers to questions...

Fact-checking isn’t a perfect discipline, but it has become a somewhat reliable tool for individuals who wish to separate the absurd from the reasonable in political rhetoric. On January 27 (Why do People Ignore Facts?), regarding presidential candidate Donald Trump I wrote, “If 77 percent of what comes out of Trump’s mouth on the stump is patently false, why do...

Entering the downtown Washington D.C. headquarters, two plaques are visible: the first tells individuals where they are; the second lays out its mission – a mission that has, over decades, lost much of its trustworthiness. “In 2013,” CBS reports, “Vietnam veteran Zion Yisrael was told he had five years to live. He has stage 4 liver disease, caused by hepatitis...

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain In their 2010 report, When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions, Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler write, “To date, the study of citizens’ knowledge of politics has tended to focus on questions like veto override...

According to the most recent CNN/ORC poll, billionaire Donald J. Trump is leading the field of Republican candidates for president with 41 percent. Texas Senator Ted Cruz is a little more than 20 points behind. This, in spite of the fact, that when it comes to the facts, Mr. Trump has the most appalling record all candidates, Republican and Democratic....

Spoiler Alert: This commentary may just come as a shock to gun rights advocates… maybe. Regular readers already know that I’m a fussbudget about facts and statistics. They also know that I’ve spoken out against assault-style weapons, and the need to do more when it comes to the epidemic of mass shootings in the country. Nonetheless, from an ethical standpoint,...

(Note: This commentary was written and posted in January, 2016. It was based on then-candidate Trump’s statement of December 7, 2015, calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” as pointed out in the 12th paragraph, below. Comments to this post are now closed.)...

In 1925 and ’26, Adolf Hitler published (in two parts, no less) an autobiography of sorts. While the title translates as “My Struggle,” the real substance behind the work has more to do with Hitler’s political ideology than anything else. His central thesis being “the Jewish peril,” Hitler believed in a Jewish conspiracy to expand global leadership. While the question...