Many years ago, when I first hit the job market after completing a post-doc, I applied for positions at many universities…but my top choice was UW Madison. I didn’t think I had a chance, so I was thrilled when I actually got as far as landing an interview there. I didn’t get the job obviously, but I was happy to just get a shot at it (maybe too happy: I was so wound up, my interview went dismally).

If I were back in that same position today, though, the last place I’d apply to would be UW Madison. It’s still a great university, but I wonder for how much longer — the state seems committed to gutting it.

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Yet another wacky far-right conservative has announced his candidacy for president: Rick Santorum. It’s becoming a crowded field in opposition to the Democrats.

He is facing heavy competition for those voters this year from rivals like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

I don’t think it’s a good thing for the Republic that one side of our two party system is promoting a circus full of clowns.

Lindsay is immensely courageous. He is willing to have bad people executed, and he’s not afraid to say so! Everyone should go and give him a cookie because he is willing to be unorthodox and support the death penalty.

About ten days ago, I wrote an essay for Huffington Post on the death penalty, in particular, focusing on how some of those who oppose the death penalty support imprisonment in a supermax facility as a supposedly more humane alternative—a position I find logically dubious if not hypocritical. The recent decision of the Dzhohkar Tsarnaev jury to sentence him to death made me think about this issue again. It also made me think about how humanists all too often commit the cardinal intellectual sin of many of the religious. That is, they hold certain principles as beyond question. This is not a good thing.

All of you people who say the state shouldn’t kill people are just being dogmatic: it’s positively sinful that you don’t think through the issues and agree with Ron. The only way you could possibly be disagreeing is because you’re unwilling to question everything.

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I am so sorry. I hear your elections didn’t go so well, with conservatives winning big, and all the leaders of your more liberal parties throwing themselves on their swords. But at least Nigel Farage went down in flames! That’s got to be a tiny bit of consolation, right?

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I don’t think he has a chance of getting the presidential nomination, but the more I see of his campaign the more I like him. He represents a side of the Democratic party that has been neglected for decades, and it’s about time it started demanding more attention.

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Pamela Geller and Geert Wilders are awful, terrible, no good people.

Gamergaters are harassers and scum bags, no doubt about it.

But there is no justification for committing, or threatening to commit, violence against them.

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