This week, I am in Dayton at the Kettering Foundation’s Public Policy Workshop. I am writing a series of small pieces about the experience. Thank you to my colleague, Taylor Willingham, for suggesting I do so. _______ These are people who would not normally mix. Or would they? Sitting in Salon G of the Dayton…

The Senate’s bipartisan review of FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina’s devastation came out late last month. If you had read the business pages, you would have been able to predict the outcome. Official Washington has been in a corporate-style mergers and acquisitions frenzy ever since 9/11 kicked off the creation of the Department of Homeland…

I wanted to let you know of a recent project I have been working on. The Northwest Area Foundation last month released results of a nationwide survey that reveals an America acutely aware of people’s financial struggles, yet optimistic that the number of people struggling can be reduced. Almost all survey respondents (92 percent) said…

This week the Supreme Court decided in favor of the government and against a collection of universities who did not wish to be compelled to allow military recruiters on campus. This complaining group had a name that referred the amusing notion of “Institutional Rights” (perhaps because they had to fill out the acronym “FAIR”). The…

This also appeared, in adapted form, in theJanuary 23, 2006 edition of The Christian Science Monitor. Just last week, walking through the lobby of my favorite movie megaplex with my children, we were accosted by people paid to bother us. The offered my children tattoos, and stretchy bracelets. They were pitching a mobile phone geared…

In the computer world, there is a fight brewing between the hulking behemoth market-leader and a ragtag group of scrappy underdogs. It pits a large corporation with a vision of informational hegemony against lone individuals, laboring on their own to perfect their intellectual creations. What the individuals have on their side is the simplicity and…

The scene where the perp breaks down and confesses all is always a crowd pleaser. That sweatbox drama, the pacing inspector giving the third degree, the metal table marred with cigarette burns. We imagine ourselves behind the one-way, watching the confession unfold. But, what would it be like to be chained to that table instead?…

(Also appeared in the August 19, 2005 Christian Science Monitor) What if, like the new Iraq, we in America had a matter of months to draft a new Constitution? Could we do it? No way – we can barely meet our annual October budget deadline. First, we’d argue over whether current amendments should stick around;…

(From the August 15, 2005 edition of The Christian Science Monitor) There we were, my son and I, at the top of a four-foot quarter-pipe ramp. We are learning “aggressive inline skating.” This particular ramp is one that always bothers me, because it starts vertically, and I often fall, skidding across the asphalt below. We…