Candidates simplify issues. Pandering to voters, they make bold promises. Once elected, office holders must deal with complex solutions to complex problems and often fail to keep their promises, usually because the solutions require the agreement of others. Presidents and governors depend on Congress and legislatures in dealing with most major issues. The nature of […]

If you crammed four live kittens into a plastic carrier, cut windows into the sides, loaded it into a giant catapult and sent it careening through the sky, those kittens would probably know what it feels like to fly on one of the major airlines. All they’d need is a pretzel and a dog-eared copy […]

“People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines. … Such people can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, […]

One hundred seventeen foreign policy and legal experts have signed an open letter refusing to support Donald Trump. The letter criticizes Trump’s promise to kill the families of terrorists and to torture terrorism suspects if he is elected president. The letter also warns that Trump’s “expansive view of how presidential power should be wielded against […]

Sue thinks I’ve been stealing her socks. “What would I want with your socks? That makes no sense,” I said. Sure, a lot of her socks are missing, but that doesn’t mean I took them, even though I am the likeliest suspect. After all, it’s just me and her in the house. She would hardly […]