Chris Mooney

Two years ago, Evan Snyder, a developmental and child neurologist, was working at the Harvard Medical School, transplanting neural stem cells into the damaged brains and spinal cords of mice and other animals and watching them reconstitute tissue or recover function. “I had just moved to better lab space,” Snyder recalled in June at the […]

AUGUSTA, MAINE — In Latin, the word dirigo, Maine’s state motto, means “I lead” or “I direct.” On a sleepy summer Wednesday at the Maine State House, with the legislature out of session, this slogan at first seems out of place. Scattered visitors waltz into the capitol without passing through security, having parked their cars […]

In November of 1992, shortly after Bill Clinton was elected president, a telling controversy arose at a meeting of the Republican Governors Association. When a reporter asked the governors how their party could both satisfy the demands of Christian conservatives and also maintain a broad political coalition, Mississippi’s Kirk Fordice took the opportunity to pronounce […]

When communications consultant Susan Nall Bales talks to environmental groups, she tells them that they can’t fix government policies until they first fix themselves. For Bales, that means these groups must become acutely conscious of the stories that they’re telling and the hidden chains of reasoning their narratives can set off in the public mind. […]

As early as this week, the full Senate may vote on the nomination of the conservative lawyer Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Estrada’s nomination squeaked out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 10-9 party line vote: no Democrat supported it, and now liberal activist groups […]

In a recent New York Times Magazine cover story about animal rights, journalist Michael Pollan reported that 51 percent of Americans believe that “primates are entitled to the same rights as human children.” It was a surprising finding, but one that Pollan simply attributed to a “recent Zogby Poll.” When Pollan’s article came out, you […]

It must take guts to be a “young-Earth” creationist. After all, imagine rejecting virtually all of modern science based on a literal interpretation of Genesis. Imagine opening yourself up to ridicule by insisting that Adam and Eve lived alongside the dinosaurs, Dinotopia-style, and that Noah crammed brontosauruses onto the Ark — necessary inferences if you […]

“A day doesn’t go by but somebody comes into my office and says, ‘How do I get into the intelligence system?’” remarks Arthur Hulnick, a 28-year Central Intelligence Agency veteran who now teaches international relations at Boston University. This avid interest is a far cry from 15 years ago, at the height of Iran-Contra, when […]

Writing in late September, the National Review‘s Byron York took a telling swipe at Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Contrasting their relatively cozy treatment of conservative University of Utah law professor Michael McConnell, whom President Bush has nominated for the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with their rejection of Texas Supreme Court Judge […]