If Glenn Beck says the government wants to tax your breathing under the guise of global warming legislation, that doesn’t mean it’s true. If Sarah Palin tells us that health care reform is an evil plot, it’s more a reflection of Sarah than it is health care reform.

Reason dismisses such foolishness for what it is, ignorance swallows it whole.

The issue isn’t really what matters. What matters is to cast doubt on whatever position your opponent takes on the issue.

Political polarization is not the path to true leadership. When politics refuses to go beyond party at all costs, it remains small, unable to lead. Greatness and leadership is usually found outside the boundaries and comfort of party.

Lost in a sea of semantics, twisted interpretations of law, and descriptions of medieval-sounding methods of punishment revealed in recently released Bush-era memos justifying torture is, in truth, a betrayal of the very principles that founded a nation.

Let the terrorist deal in terror. America stands or falls on how it abides by a higher standard.

It is the government with something to hide, or thinks itself justified in so doing, that we must fear most.

And so it appears that the Illinois governor is one ruffian that is now proving his true worth

Too often it seems as if our political leaders and those seeking power pander toward the worst in people – intolerance and resentment, fear and prejudice. Achieving popularity by inciting the darker passions in people may win elections, but it does not constitute merit.

“An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

The justification to use what has heretofore been known as torture, in the name of the very same principles that prohibit such action as immoral, illegal, and inhumane, is to justify the nullification of those very same principles.

It cannot be explained away as a necessary evil. It is merely evil creeping into soul of a nation.

True for any aspect of our lives, but particularly significant today with the rising cost of energy, in terms of dollars as well as the social and environmental consequences of our energy culture.

For decades we in the developed world have enjoyed an abundance that has been all too easy to take for granted; energy flowed into our homes, cars, and offices as if it would never run out.

Do we value our natural resources less and less as we use up more and more?  At some point, will there by a much larger price to pay than we ever bargained for? 

How easy it is to be swept up in the moment and find yourself stepping over the line between fact and fiction. How hard it is to explain it after the moment has passed and hindsight casts its critical eye.