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Robert de Neufville
Contributor, Big Think
I lecture and write about politics and philosophy. I hold degrees in politics from Harvard and Berkeley, and have studied complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Other interests include theoretical physics, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and the game of Go. You can find me on Twitter at @rdeneufville.
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Two political action committees backed by former Bush political advisers Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie—American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS—have raised a combined $32 million so far this year. They raised […]
Writing in the New York Review of Books blog, Notre Dame professors John T. McGreevy and R. Scott Appleby recently provided a useful lesson on the history of religious discrimination […]
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” may come up for a vote after all. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants to bring the 2011 defense authorization bill, which contains a provision […]
As usual, California is the battlefront for energy and climate change issues. Oil refiners Valero and Tesoro have spent $5.5 million dollars in support of California’s Proposition 23, which would […]
Every week, it seems, we get more bad news about the economy. Today the Census Bureau reported that the median household income in the U.S. fell several hundred dollars in […]
Batwoman is gay. Originally introduced as part of DC Comics’ 52 series as part of a push to introduce more minority superheroes, the new Batwoman was fleshed out by Greg […]
Yesterday, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California Judge Virginia Phillips declared the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy unconstitutional. In her ruling—which comes on the heels of […]
It is technically illegal for the government to torture prisoners. Almost no one would deny that. Section 2340 of the federal criminal code makes it a crime punishable by up […]
President Obama doesn’t get enough credit. As fellow Big Thinker Kris Broughton wrote in a recent post, it’s ridiculous to say that Obama hasn’t accomplished much while in office, whatever […]
Plastic bags are still legal in California. San Francisco and a handful of other California cities already ban the bags, but California lawmakers rejected a bill brought by Democrats that […]
Ezra Klein calls our attention in his regular Wonkbook feature—which is a must-read, by the way—to a paper by economists Carmen and Vincent Reinhart looking at how long it takes […]
Associated Press’ standards editor Tom Kent says the war in Iraq is not over. Jim Romenesko posted a memo Kent distributed to AP staffers this week, instructing them not to […]
It’s a good year to die. Right now—for the first time in 94 years—there’s no estate tax. So if something should happen to you, your beneficiaries won’t have to pay […]
Greg Miller and Joshua Partlow report in The Washington Post this week that the CIA has a “significant number” of members of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration on the agency’s […]
Today’s economic news was not good. The Commerce Department lowered its estimate of second quarter growth from an annual rate of 2.4% to an annual rate of 1.6%. That’s down […]
Near where I live in Berkeley, the country’s first four-year Muslim college just started its first semester. Zaytuna College, which for the time being is run out of the American […]
When I wrote last week about the fact that all California state employees have to sign a loyalty oath, a reader took issue with the picture I posted of school […]
We really are undergoing a clash of civilizations, Ayaan Hirsi Ali says. Hirsi Ali argues that political scientist Samuel Huntington was right when he wrote in 1993 that future conflicts […]
I just had to sign a loyalty oath as a condition of my employment at a California state university. The California constitution requires all state employees to sign the oath. […]
Bloomberg reports this week that News Corp., which own both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association in June—a contribution that dwarfs […]