Second changes are hard to come by when you have a criminal record. But the Chicagoland Youth and Adult Training Center is all about making second chances a reality. read more...

Jay D. Homnick writes: In this spirit, it is appropriate for us to take a moment to publicize the outstanding respect shown by the President and Laura Bush to traditional Jews and their practices throughout his administration. One historic example of this is the startling fact that, for the first ti...

Here’s the second part of my interview with author Solomon Schimmel. Listen to the interview here. Read reviews of the book "The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs: Fundamentalism and the Fear of Truth" here. Solomon: "To the extent that I am ethical and moral, I don’t want ...

A very interesting Day 2! Some highlights: First Amendment issues and the specific domain of government regulation over free speech are narrowly confined to content creators over the licensed spectrum. For example, had the famous Janet Jackson Super Bowl breast exposure incident occurred on cable TV...

A very interesting Day 2! Some highlights: First Amendment issues and the specific domain of government regulation over free speech are narrowly confined to content creators over the licensed spectrum. For example, had the famous Janet Jackson Super Bowl breast exposure incident occurred on cable TV...

Today we began our Summer 2008 Aspen Institute Socrates Society seminars. My session, moderated by former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, addresses Media and Our Conflicting Values. And plenty of conflicting values emerged in our lively four hour discussion. My takeaways after Day 1: * The function of ...

The word 'scumbag' should not be in the lexicon of any current or former U.S. President, living or dead. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that former President Bill Clinton went directly into the gutter to berate Todd Purdum, the Vanity Fair reporter who wrote a thoroughly scathing ar...

Zeke Emanuel is known for having Big Ideas. His short, easy to read new book, "Healthcare, Guaranteed", is a must-read. I first met Zeke several years ago at the Aspen Institute's Socrates Society, and Zeke has been one of the most popular Socrates seminar leaders on the topic of bioethics. An oncol...

You can’t stretch a shared political identity so far that it becomes overly abstract and therefore impossible for people to articulate in a way that everyone can easily understand it. Think of this statement in the context of the Presidential debates in the current election. Why is the media obses...

WARNING: This is a no-edit zone... A writer asked me a question yesterday that I’ve been asked many times: “Of everything you’ve learned about writing, what is the most important thing? What’s the secret?� My response: “The magic.� That answer was as simple to me as a new writer as it ...