Author: TheConversation

By Helen Norton, Rothgerber Chair in Constitutional Law, University of Colorado Boulder When regular people lie, sometimes their lies are detected, sometimes they are not. Legally speaking, sometimes they are protected by the First Amendment – and sometimes not, like when they commit fraud or perjury. But what about when government officials lie? I take up this question in my recent book, “The Government’s Speech and the Constitution.” It’s not that surprising that public servants lie – they are human, after all. But when an agency or official backed by the power and resources of the government tells a...

By Ken Hughes, Research Specialist, the Miller Center, University of Virginia Once, not so long ago, congressional Republicans were impeachment’s constitutional stalwarts. They stood up for the House of Representatives’ “sole power of impeachment,” a power granted in the Constitution, including the right to subpoena witnesses and evidence. Even when the president under investigation was a Republican. Even when the Republican political base threatened to turn against them. But that was when the president was Richard Nixon, not Donald Trump. Impeachment: 1974 vs. today I wrote a book on the origins of Watergate, Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the...

By Paul Morrow, Human Rights Fellow, University of Dayton Seventy-five years ago, the world first saw the horrors of Nazi concentration camps. Shot by photographers Lee Miller, George Rodger and others, and published in Time, the Daily Mirror and other outlets, these pictures showed gaunt figures greeting Allied soldiers, and corpses piled alongside concentration camp buildings. They presented guards killed by liberators or former prisoners and civilians forced to view the horrors committed in their name. Critics have argued that regular viewing of these photographs risks further dehumanizing their subjects. Although it is important to engage with such worries,...

By James Carmody, Professor of Medicine and Population Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Medical School A new year brings both hopes and anxieties. We want things to be better for ourselves and the people we love, but worry that they won’t be, and imagine some of the things that might stand in the way. More broadly, we might worry about who’s going to win the election, or even if our world will survive. As it turns out, humans are wired to worry. Our brains are continually imagining futures that will meet our needs and things that could stand in...

By William Clark, Adjunct Lecturer of Health and Wellness Studies, Binghamton University, State University of New York In January, 40% of Americans will make New Years resolutions, and nearly half of them will aim to lose weight or get in shape. But 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by February, and gyms will experience a decrease in traffic after the first and second months of the year as those who made New Year’s resolutions to get in shape lose steam. As a lecturer at Binghamton and former Olympic weightlifter, world champion powerlifter and strength coach, much of my life...

By Peter Cole, Professor of History, Western Illinois University If Martin Luther King Jr. still lived, he would probably tell people to join unions. King understood racial equality was inextricably linked to economics. He asked, “What good does it do to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can’t buy a hamburger?” Those disadvantages have persisted. Today, for instance, the wealth of the average white family is more than 20 times that of a black one. King’s solution was unionism. Convergence of needs In 1961, King spoke before the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest and most powerful...