Opinion

Republican presidential candidates debated a range of economic issues in their third debate, from what to do about Medicare and Social Security to tax policy and even a brief exchange on daily fantasy sports. The moderators became part of the scrum, and Hillary Clinton and her fellow Democrats took a few bashes, as GOP contenders strove to stand out. Here’s an instant analysis from three scholars.

CNBC is hosting tonight's Republican presidential debate, and the business news network is likely to press candidates on their views on fiscal and economic policy. This presents a great opportunity to raise questions about the proposals offered by the new GOP frontrunner, Ben Carson, who is leading polls among Iowa Republicans and tops the most recent New York Times/CBS News survey of Republican voters nationwide. While Carson's string of bigoted and head-scratching statements have received the most attention from the media, his fiscal plan deserve scrutiny, as it relies on pure fantasy. His policies include:

For all the sad and desperate single ladies out there who are pining to “put a ring on it” … LDS Elder M. Russell Ballard has some simple, whimsical advice: You beautiful girls: Don’t wander around looking like men. Put on a little lipstick now and then and look a little charming. It’s that simple. I don’t know why we make this whole process so hard.

How are liberals and progressives supposed to judge President Obama when we consider his recent corporatist appointments, his adamant position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, his schizophrenic position on the environment, and his recent announcement that US troops will remain in Afghanistan? It makes you wonder whether there really is much of a difference between the two major parties.

The United Nations, through its Framework Convention on Climate Change (the UNFCCC), has launched a carbon offsets initiative called Climate Neutral Now. The website says that to “keep our communities healthy and safe we need a climate neutral world”, which requires “action from all of us”.

The so-called ‘war on women’ is not a war; it’s a one-sided assault. It is conservative men, drunk on power, calling women sluts and then rolling up their sleeves and knocking us back into place. It is conservative men letting us know that they own our bodies and reproductive capacity, which according to the Bible have been theirs since the Iron Age. It is conservative men making damned sure that women get punished for failing to keep our legs together—for daring to pursue intimacy and sexual pleasure on our own terms and without their permission. It is conservative men ignoring our pleas that we don’t want to be pregnant and denying us the ability to resist impregnation as deliberately and aggressively as if they had our arms pinned. If that’s not an assault, I don’t know what is.

In the last few weeks, the radical right of the GOP and its various organs have come upon a new concept to cloak their Islamophobia: taqiyya. As they would tell it, taqiyya permits Muslims to lie and, therefore, it effectively makes every Muslim a potential mole, traitor, or fifth-columnist. As Ben Carson, himself a presidential hopeful, would have it, it is because of taqiyya (and not because of simple bigotry) that he believes – the constitutional ban on religious tests for public office notwithstanding – a Muslim should not be permitted to serve as President of the United States. This is a dangerous and insidious argument: not only does it vilify a whole class of people, it does so in a way that makes them permanently suspect. Any Muslim who denies he is practising taqiyya, it may be presumed, may be practicing taqiyya when he or she does so. Therefore, no Muslim can be trusted, ever.

While 50 million children across the United States began this school year pledging allegiance to “one nation…indivisible,” the three most powerful elected officials in our country seemed intent on dividing the nation.

Exceptional, the new book from former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz, is not. It is nothing more than an unhinged rant that smacks of sedition.

It is easy to regard the political controversy surrounding fetal tissue research—which began when a conservative group called the Center for Medical Progress released videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood employees engaged in selling fetal parts – as just another partisan political row. Republicans are racing to defund Planned Parenthood while Democrats try to frame the effort as part of the GOP’s “War on Women.” But both sides might be surprised to know that fetal research began a century ago – and without any political debates. Its compelling results and effectiveness as an area of medical science, ironically, helped to make the fetus the charged political subject that it is today.

Because of the Fifth Amendment, no one in the U.S. may legally be forced to testify against himself, and because of the Fourth Amendment, no one’s records or belongings may legally be searched or seized without just cause. However, American police are trained to use methods of deception, intimidation and manipulation to circumvent these restrictions. In other words, cops routinely break the law—in letter and in spirit—in the name of enforcing the law. Several examples of this are widely known, if not widely understood.

So, California is in a drought. That’s what everybody says. The media says it. The scientists say it. The firefighters working overtime to put out the hundreds of wildfires say it, as do the farmers trying to explain that if something doesn’t happen soon salad will just be something in an exhibit at a natural history museum.

Before Scott Walker unhappily shuffled away from the GOP primary race, he tried to stand out in the crowded field with a right-wing classic: striving to make life harder for poor people who need government aid. Since July, Walker has boasted about his efforts to force every person who applies for food stamps (SNAP) to undergo a drug test. The ever-ambitious Wisconsin Governor even preemptively sued the federal government to ensure that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers food stamps, wouldn't quash the program.