The Supreme Court’s evisceration of our campaign finance rules is a powerful argument for the cleansing properties of sunlight. We should respond to McCutcheon by pushing for the full and timely disclosure of every penny donated to advance a political agenda.

If America’s wealthiest can offer unlimited dollars to shape our politics, the least we can do is force them to own their activism. It’s time to get rid of the loopholes for sham ‘social welfare” organizations and trade groups. It’s time to wipe out the dark money, and force those wealthy few to publicly stand behind their positions.

That’s not only a good and timely idea – it may also be the only viable tool we have left to protect our democracy, at least for the foreseeable future.

When the Supreme Court handed down its decision in McCutcheon, Sam Steiner, a fellow at Yale Law School, wrote that the court’s conservatives have ‘no idea how money works in politics.” It’s a common criticism. As Justice Stephen Breyer noted in his dissent in McCutcheon, the conservative bloc’s decision in the case rested ‘upon its own, not a record-based, view of the facts.”

But it’s more likely that the justices know exactly how money works […]

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OSLO, NORWAY — World powers are running out of time to slash their use of high-polluting fossil fuels and stay below agreed limits on global warming, a draft U.N. study to be approved this week shows.

Government officials and top climate scientists will meet in Berlin from April 7-12 to review the 29-page draft that also estimates the needed shift to low-carbon energies would cost between two and six percent of world output by 2050.

It says nations will have to impose drastic curbs on their still rising greenhouse gas emissions to keep a promise made by almost 200 countries in 2010 to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times.

Temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 C (1.4F) since 1900 and are set to breach the 2 C ceiling on current trends in coming decades, U.N. reports show.

“The window is shutting very rapidly on the 2 degrees target,” said Johan Rockstrom, head of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and an expert on risks to the planet from heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising seas.

“The debate is drifting to ‘maybe we can adapt to 2 degrees, maybe 3 or even 4’,” Rockstrom, who was not among authors of […]

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LEBANON, NEW HAMPSHIRE — More than 15 years ago, many states and tobacco manufacturers established restrictions to prevent youth exposure to the marketing of nicotine products. This follows regulations imposed 50 years ago that banned cigarette ads from TV. Despite these continued efforts, a new study by Dartmouth researchers reveals that not only are young people exposed to tobacco marketing, they are influenced by it. According to a study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, exposure to “direct marketing” is associated with increased use of tobacco.

“For several years, the emphasis in the tobacco industry has been on direct marketing, especially to young people who are highly price sensitive and who may find coupons, samples, and promotions appealing,” said lead author Samir Soneji, PhD, Norris Cotton Cancer Center researcher and assistant professor at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

Soneji’s research team explored whether exposure to tobacco coupons and websites would increase the chances that a young person would start to smoke. “We found that both direct mail [coupons] and exposure to tobacco websites were associated with increased chances of smoking initiation and current smoking” said Soneji.

Overall, 12 percent of […]

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Using the Internet can destroy your faith. That’s the conclusion of a study showing that the dramatic drop in religious affiliation in the U.S. since 1990 is closely mirrored by the increase in Internet use.

Back in 1990, about 8 percent of the U.S. population had no religious preference. By 2010, this percentage had more than doubled to 18 percent. That’s a difference of about 25 million people, all of whom have somehow lost their religion.

That raises an obvious question: how come? Why are Americans losing their faith?

Today, we get a possible answer thanks to the work of Allen Downey, a computer scientist at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, who has analyzed the data in detail. He says that the demise is the result of several factors but the most controversial of these is the rise of the Internet. He concludes that the increase in Internet use in the last two decades has caused a significant drop in religious affiliation.

Downey’s data comes from the General Social Survey, a widely respected sociological survey carried out by the University of Chicago, that has regularly measure people’s attitudes and demographics since 1972.

In that time, the General Social Survey has asked people questions […]

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Let me let you in on a little fantasy of mine: every once in a while, I like to imagine finding myself meeting the person who came up with the term “global warming.” Why? So I can punish that person. Severely. See, what a term like “global warming” does is allow the guy in the cubicle next to me to point out of the window in Chicago and say, “If global warming is true, why is it snowing out again?” And that, friends, is something nobody should have to deal with.

Climate change is the better term, of course, and the majority of the scientific community firmly believes that there is such a thing as man-made climate change. From there, we could have a discussion about how profound the effects of climate change are, whether they’re actually better or worse, what other contributing factors might be in play in impacting climate, and all the rest, and those would be worthy conversations to have. What we shouldn’t do is try to use the law to silence dissenting opinions, particularly if those opinions come in the form of scientific research. Yet, that is exactly what one scientific journal has allowed to happen after […]

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