Author: Adam Lee

Six years ago, this nation achieved a historic milestone when its people elected a black man to be their president. For a country that was sustained by slave labor for decades after its inception and riven by racism throughout its history, this is an almost unimaginable accomplishment. It’s not that Barack Obama promised to single-handedly…

(Author’s Note: The following reviews were solicited and are written in accordance with this site’s policy for such reviews.) Fighting Back the Right by David Niose I previously reviewed Nonbeliever Nation by David Niose, a past president of the American Humanist Association. His new book, Fighting Back the Right, tells the story of how the…

Awful news from Brooklyn this weekend: A disturbed man shot his ex-girlfriend (who’s expected to survive), then ambushed and fatally shot two police officers on patrol, and finally shot and killed himself as police closed in. His social media postings indicated that he was angry over the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, although…

Atlas Shrugged, part II, chapter VII Pulled by a coal-burning engine that’s not designed for the poorly ventilated tunnel it’s about to enter, the doomed train chugs upward into the mountains: Some of the passengers aboard the Comet were awake. As the train started its coiling ascent, they saw the small cluster of Winston’s lights…

The Senate has released a massive report on the torture of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration, and it’s as bad as many of us feared. We already knew some of the terrible things done in our name as Americans, but not the full extent. In fact, we still don’t know the full extent, since…

My latest column is up on AlterNet, Do Right-Wing Christians Want People to be Destitute? It’s about the conservative politicians who want to slash the social safety net, claiming they want to go back to a time when churches and private charity provided for everyone’s needs, and the evidence showing that the actual effect of…

Like Quiet Company, this is another of the bands I first heard about from Chris Stedman’s atheist & agnostic music list. This uptempo, anthemic prog-rock song, from their 2013 album Evil Friends, was his #1 pick, and I find it hard to argue (although I have no idea what the video means):

Atlas Shrugged, part II, chapter VII Stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere, Kip Chalmers is furious, and is inundating the head office with telegrams demanding that he be given transportation or else. In New York, James Taggart is woken out of bed late at night, and like any good boss, responds by…

Following up on our little contretemps in September, Richard Dawkins has granted an interview to Kimberly Winston of Religion News Service about the remarks that have made him infamous to pro-social-justice atheists. And although he seems a bit chastened, he insists he has no regrets: “I don’t take back anything that I’ve said,” Dawkins said…

Just a few days after the non-indictment of Officer Darren Wilson unleashed fury in Ferguson, there’s been another civil rights outrage in a nation that’s weary of them. This time, it was the police killing of Eric Garner, a black man in Staten Island, allegedly for selling loose cigarettes on the sidewalk. The circumstances of…