Latest Posts

January 26, 2015

The Complexities of Sexuality, Religion, and Cake

Last Friday at Religion Dispatches, Kara Loewentheil explored the recent story of a Denver bakery that is being “sued for refusing to bake a homophobic cake.” She calls into question the legitimacy of the request: It’s a snappy inversion of the now-classic example of bakers who refuse to provide wedding cakes for gay marriage or commitment ceremonies (or florists who refuse to provide flowers, photographers who refuse to photograph the ceremony, etc.). Continue Reading...
January 26, 2015

From Inmates to CEOs

If you’re a convicted criminal, finding a job while you’re in prison is often easier than getting one after you’ve served your time. Because of an expansive list of mandatory post-release sanctions, inmates often leave prison facing what Jeremy Travis, the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former director of the National Institute of Justice, has called a secondary “invisible punishment” that is frequently more severe than the one levied by any judge or jury. Continue Reading...
January 23, 2015

The Super Bowl Hummus Showdown

Taking advantage of every Super Bowl XLIX opportunity to empty a sack full of football tropes, Green America unleashed an email this week, seeking your writer’s help in pressuring Sabra Hummus to discontinue use of genetically modified organisms. Continue Reading...
January 23, 2015

China: Brides Needed, Apply ASAP

China’s brutal one-child policy means that men far outnumber women in China. Men can’t find brides, and that leaves the door open for human-trafficking. Adam Minter reports that some men in China are willing (and able) to pay upwards of $64,000 to woo a woman into marriage. Continue Reading...
January 23, 2015

America: Exceptional Or Entitled?

It’s no secret that government entitlement programs have increased dramatically over the past few decades. It’s no secret that some would like to continue to expand such programs. And it’s no secret that America cannot afford to keep doing this, either economically or morally. Continue Reading...
January 22, 2015

The Change We Need

As Luis de Molina (1535-1600) writes in A Treatise on Money (forthcoming): It is clearly evident that petty exchange is useful to the republic, as it is often that men need coins of a lesser value in order to buy the things they need daily, or to give alms, or for other such things in which the coinage of a higher value is of no use. Continue Reading...