Nation Topics - Richard Posner | The Nation

Justice William Brennan's watchword was human dignity, and to protect it he interpreted individual rights expansively.

The visionary professor who inspired the "free culture" movement takes on money in politics.

To view education as a profit-making business is to attack the lifelong love of learning.

Big Think seeks to smarten up the Internet by getting up close and intellectual with the most creative thinkers alive.

The conservatives ensconced on the Supreme Court are set to uphold draconian ID requirements on voters that will redefine electoral politics in America.

Pop culture does more than validate the claim that torture could help
foil bombs seconds before detonation. In shows like 24, where
scenes of sensory deprivation are mixed with family melodrama, torture
is so routine that it seems one more plot device to create intimacy in
characters. The reality is that torture isolates its victims from any
sense of intimacy.

Defenders of torture dwell not only in the White House and Pentagon,
but in the halls of academia. When prominent law professors and
academics cite the fantastic "ticking-bomb theory," they not only
spread misinformation and foster a perpetual state of fear, but they
use their credentials to legitimize a culture of torture.

My friend L., a magistrate in Britain, is appalled by American-style
sentencing, which has taken hold there recently.

Toward the end of his memoir, My Brother's Keeper, Amitai Etzioni
recounts meeting with the political consultant Dick Morris.

In these jittery times, many Americans see torture as justified.