The director and star of "The Company You Keep" has somehow managed to come off as the most pious player in the film industry, but Redford's political inclinations seem to be the safe politics of a millionaire movie star, which is perhaps why he never seems to support anything except the environment and wildlife.

In a matter of days, the IRS is already getting ground to mincemeat. Meanwhile, a spectacular panorama of Bush-era abuses have yet to draw the attention of a single Congressional subcommittee.

All the dire talk about the costs of college can scare off young people for whom education spending can have huge long-term payoffs.

At first afraid to speak out, women are beginning to fight back against the distributors, proprietors and site hosts who comprise the online revenge economy.

The president's new choices for Commerce secretary and FCC chair underscore how far down the rabbit hole his populist conceits have tumbled.

Why the new immigration deal may fall apart once again, just as in the past.

The GOP's demographic disadvantage doesn't guarantee Democratic success -- but it does give the party an unbeatable opportunity.

Why liberalism needs socialism -- and vice versa.

If you look at the history of Scouting, you find that it is a culture perhaps most vividly represented in the life and works of Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the cross-dressing British general who won the Boer War.

Any incumbent Democrat who is not serving progressive interests should be weighed as a possible primary target.

In combination with blacks, the growing Hispanic and Asian vote will claim a hold on the majority of votes in the Electoral College and make it nearly impossible for the Republicans to win any race for the White House.

It's easy to see echoes of Gatsby's basic conflict between established sources of economic and cultural power and upstarts in virtually all aspects of American society.

While public opinion hasn't gotten carried away with fear after the Boston bombing, much of the news media is stoking the fires of fear but scarcely raising a single question that might challenge the basic assumptions of a forever "war on terror."

You can argue that the Tsarnaev brothers' politics were wrong. That their tactics were counterproductive. That they were just "losers," as their uncle called them. But we can't understand why unless we dig into those politics. Which is something that, 12 years after 9/11, the American media still refuses to do.

A real renaissance in American manufacturing will require energetic, high-road government intervention with an eye to innovation, not simply fatter paychecks in China.

Can Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's manifesto, "Lean In," speak to women of color?

A party that prizes ideology over reality can't evolve, not after selling its rank and file on the supremacy of its beliefs.

At a time when GPS-enabled ankle monitors can do the work of a hundred paparazzi hot on the scent of a celeb, we're paradoxically using bail more than ever.

Just as GOP filibusters have stalled President Obama's legislative agenda in the Senate, the party is pursuing a parallel strategy of preventing the administration from governing by blocking nominees for boards and agencies.

Why does the U.S. believe that only violent overthrow will work?