Our president states that North Korea, since it allows some citizens to starve while building weapons of mass destruction, is part of an evil axis. Meanwhile, Bush promotes his defense agenda while   

In a recent TV interview, Ann Graham, Billy Graham's daughter, blamed the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on our nation's collective abandonment of God. According to Graham, God, being a  

The time has come to move beyond the desire for revenge. The enemy is not transparent. He is worldwide in location; he is multiracial in identity. The enemy represents a global problem; and to the e  

You, too, can be a cell phone anarchist. In the grocery store checkout line, when the entrepreneurial fellow in loafers starts hypnotically chanting business plans to his colleagues, simply take a  

Freedom in America means the right to do exactly what we want to do -- that is, if what we do causes no harm to the person or property of another. It is now obvious that our planet is a shared spac  

Occasionally I get to read a response to our editor about the "Phoenix" column, a response happy or agreeable (rare) or an irate ideological objection to the information I present (more typical). O  

It's hard to know what to expect from George W. Bush. As Garrison Keillor pointed out last week, "This man's mouth is where the English language goes to die." We can expect, however, with the popula  

Now that the illustrious U.S. Supreme Court has decided ... Wait a minute, it didn't decide anything except the election result. If the court had stipulated every state's counting methods must be u  

Ralph Nader supporters don't speak collectively, nor do we the people. I waited until the last possible minute to submit this article, in the hope that we'd know the election outcome. No such luck.  

I'm tired of the presidential campaign. I'm really tired of the lies. I mean the real lies, not Al Gore's gaffs. What's worrisome is too many Americans prefer collective delusion over truth. We can  

Politics is a tough bid. I'm not talking about the election pageant and its participants' platitudes. I mean those who think voting is still worth it have to bet on the assumption that a vote makes   

Corporations, with glee and a sneer, are giving us all a run-around. I'll start with a generic example: You call your banker about a mortgage problem. You reach a digital menu of seven choices, none  

The Big Test: the Secret History of the American Meritocracy by Nicholas Lemann reveals the story of how standardized testing for college entrance came about. In the 1940s and '50s, two Harvard edu  

Our students are the most over tested on earth. For some reason, our country, stupidly and unlike other advanced nations, has decided that competent adults can be produced based on specification of  

People promoting religion at my door make me want to drink. Of course, just the appearance of this couple could drive someone to guzzle mass quantities of grain alcohol. The woman had a black dress