By Michael Kaufman
The threat to democracy embodied by the United States Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case extends way beyond the oft-discussed issue of campaign funding. Perhaps even more ominous is the way corporations have interpreted the decision to mean they can pressure employees to vote a certain way.

By Jeffrey Page
From its name, the “American Family Association” could represent all that is good, all that is worthy about this country. It does no such thing.

By Carrie Jacobson
As the doors slam behind me, I try hard, every day, not to look back.

By Michael Kaufman
I’m glad the president showed up for the second debate. At the first one he reminded me of a boxer approached by a mobster before a big fight and told to go in the tank or else something terrible would happen to his children.

By Jeffrey Page
Obama, one day after the attack in Benghazi: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.”

By Bob Gaydos
I am in search of people who inspire young people today. Heroes. The JFK mold has been broken. Who fits the new one? What does it look like? I need your contributions to do this. Take time, please, to offer a suggestion. Ask your children. Let’s interact.

By Emily Theroux
President Obama was present, engaged, assertive, even aggressive when necessary, without relying on Joe Biden’s fallback posture during last week’s vice-presidential debate with Paul Ryan — laughing in his opponent’s face. Mitt Romney, by contrast, was defensive, offensive, rattled, domineering, snappish, and a complete churl. My relatives in South Carolina have an expression for such boorish behavior: Mitt acted, as my mother used to say, “like something on a stick.”

By Bob Gaydos
The sex scandal will remain a sordid, unfathomable chapter in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, certainly as long as the victims are alive and, one hopes, so long as people of good conscience are around to make sure history is not rewritten.

By Emily Theroux
Plutocrat Mitt told a roomful of “have-mores” that these have-nots were professional “victims” whom he wasn’t even going to worry about during his elitist presidential run — yet Everyman Mitt smirked through his lying teeth, gushed about “our poor,” and might as well have called them “my base.”

By Jeffrey Page
The moderator must be taller and tougher than the candidates. His demeanor should suggest that he’s not about to take any abuse.