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"This is not a day care. This is a university!" This was the reaction from the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, Dr. Everett Piper, in response to a student's complaint about a sermon he had delivered on the topic of love. The student, Dr. Piper wrote, said he felt "victimized" by the sermon because he was made to feel guilty about not showing enough love toward others. "Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic," Piper says. "Any time their fe

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla and San Diego Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez recently took a trip to Colorado to take notes on ways to increase election turnout. In the 2014 general election, Colorado’s voter turnout was more than 54 percent, the third highest in the nation. In that same year California had a record low voter turnout, just 42 percent. Perhaps Colorado’s higher voter turnout was due, in part, to the fact that it was the first time every registered voter in Colorado re

Historically, presidential races have come down to only a handful of toss-up states being the difference between victory and defeat -- the red/blue map has become fairly well-defined. Enter John Bel Edwards (D) who won the governorship of Louisiana on November 21 by a fairly resounding margin, capturing 54 percent of the vote. State governorships can give a glimpse into the 'at-large' intentions of a state, but this is hardly a sure thing in politics. Louisiana has a long history, since WWII,

A gunman walks into a public building and begins to shoot indiscriminately into the crowd. His goal is utilitarian: He wants to inflict the most harm and create the most panic possible within the crowd. He has no specific target other than the symbolic nature of the venue he is attacking—a symbol worthy of his violent outrage. The gunman sees no faces of his victims; instead, he sees hapless enablers of a status quo that he finds immoral, repugnant, and evil. This could easily have described wh

One of Obama’s most prominent campaign pledges included a promise to close Guantanamo Bay. The prison camp has housed hundreds of prisoners in the war on terror since 2002, acting as a location to both detain and interrogate what the United States considers “extraordinarily dangerous people.” Since it first opened though, the prison has come under increasing scrutiny. In addition to charges of torture, Amnesty International has called the facility the Gulag of our time, and the facility has dra

Enough signatures were collected in Colorado this month (with more than 60,000 to spare) to place a $25 billion tax increase on the ballot in 2016 to pay for a single-payer type insurance for the whole state. Vermont passed a similar measure several years ago, but lacked a funding mandate for the program, which has been derailed by politicians refusing (or at least stalling) on paying for the ballot-approved measure. Single-payer insurance was supposed to be one of the hallmark traits of the O

The Supreme Court’s June 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision held that the fundamental right to marry extends to same-sex couples, a small minority of Americans. Among other things, the new right includes constitutionally guaranteed rights of inheritance and parental status for children. An objective assessment of the impact of the Obergefell decision on religious freedom indicated that, despite contrary assertions from same-sex marriage (“SSM”) opponents, burdens on religious freedoms are low a

For nearly two hundred years, voting has predominantly been tied to fixed residency: citizens are entitled to vote in the districts in which they live. While seemingly a fair and direct application of the principle, "one person, one vote," property owners are beginning to assert that their ownership of property in voting districts outside the one in which they live justifies extending them the right to vote in these districts as well. So, does the right to vote – and should the right to vote –

Election Day 2015 has come and gone, and voters in cities in six states again found that they were not limited to marking only one candidate, but had the ability to rank the candidates in order of choice. Voters had the chance to vote with ranked choice voting in the following city elections: * San Francisco, CA * Telluride, CO * Saint Paul, MN * Takoma Park, MD * Portland, ME * Cambridge, MA That expansion of voter power is not a miracle cure-all for our democracy, but has clear positiv

When it comes to strengthening election laws to eliminate voter fraud, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) has captured headlines for years. He has helped several states, including Arizona, develop their own voting laws--and recently pushed the Kansas legislature to give him prosecutorial powers over election fraud cases.While critics claim this is a duplication of powers, with local prosecutors having the same duties and responsibilities, Kobach claimed at the signing ceremony in June th