Fast-talking, mob-saving New York Lawyer Murray Richman famously said, “When the word is in your mouth, you are the master. When the word is out of your mouth, you are the slave.” Anyone who reads my commentaries with any regularity knows that I am a stickler for the facts. The facts played an important part in my research for my last...

Last Friday’s question regarding the 26-state challenge to President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and the three-days of oral arguments in the Supreme Court drew a lot of response. Before I go any further, let me say that, “no” I have not read all 2,700 pages of the law. I have read through the key features of the law as well as a timeline of...

In an Op-ed for U.S. News and World Report, GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum wrote that “Polls show Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to ObamaCare, especially the individual mandate.” Is he right or wrong? While the Supreme Court deliberates the constitutionality of The Affordable Care Act, Pollster Mark Blumenthal at Huffington Post has done some fairly comprehensive work cataloging the public’s...

Here’s a re-cap of recent issues that have caught my attention. Representative Charles Rangel, (D) from New York, who was censured by the House in 2010 after the Ethics Committee found him guilty of 11 counts of ethics violations, (failure to pay taxes, improper solicitation of fundraising donations, failure to correctly report his personal income), has agreed to pay $23,...

Last Wednesday, (Mar. 21) comedian Bill Maher wrote an Op-Ed for The New York Times; the gist of it being that he’s tired of all the apologies. From celebrities to politicians, anyone and everyone with a voice in the media for what Maher believes are incidental infractions of polite society. “I don’t want to live in a country,” Maher writes, “where...

In the run-up to Super Tuesday, outside political action committees “spent three times as much as the candidates themselves according to a Wall Street Journal analysis…” “Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich spent a combined $2.4 million on television ads during the last two weeks in Ohio, Oklahoma, Georgia and Tennessee, the contests with the most delegates Tuesday, according to a...

Wade Clark Roof is the J.F. Rowny Professor of Religion and Society and Director of The Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Author or co-author of 14 books and over 100 articles, Clark’s mission through the Center is “to advance conversation on major public issues, ethics and...

“It’s a story of when cynicism and idealism collide, when you have to do the things that are necessary to win to try to get in office to do the great things you want to do for the country.” That was McCain/Palin campaign honcho Steve Schmidt commenting to Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe about his time spent with Sarah Palin. (It also...

Anytime anyone makes a statement followed by “But,” you can throw all sincerity from the preceding statement out the window! After Rush Limbaugh apologized to Sandra Fluke for using “inappropriate words” to describe her, it didn’t take long for El Rushbo to fall back on the “B” word: “But all of the other leftists that call me and other conservatives...

There have been so many voices involved on the issue of birth control that it’s hard to separate truth from friction, but I’ll try. To begin with, the mandate to have religious-based employers provide coverage for employees as part of their health plans has its roots in what most people refer to as “Obamacare.” The legislation is actually called The Patient...