In a world where there's never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any politician -- or political philosophy -- is made of, right down to the creamy liquid center.

It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

EDITORIAL: Freedom’s just another word
Freedom means different things to each of us, but in New Jersey, California and New York, shrinking personal and economic freedom means shrinking population. In the decade since 2001, New York has lost 9 percent of its population, California 4.5 percent, and New Jersey 5.6 percent.

Growing your own food is like printing your own money. Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA -in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where "the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys." Gangsta gardener.

Is The State more important than your religious beliefs? ...more binding than your marriage? You can divorce both — give either a Dear John letter, if you please. But you cannot break up with The State.

Under-30 voters are “the only age group in which a majority said the government should do more to fix problems,” the nonpartisan Pew Research Center reported in November. In a Pew survey a year earlier, more than 8 in 10 said they believed that Social Security and Medicare had been good for the country, and they were especially supportive of seeing the programs overhauled so they would be intact when they retire. (Young people were also more open than their elders to privatizing the programs.)

"One of the things which I do not understand is the appalling pessimism within the American Right. I realize that a lot of promoters are cashing in on this pessimism. They get rich by preaching that everything is going to hell in a handbasket. Everything is not going to hell in a handbasket. Communism and Fabian socialism went to hell in a handbasket. Keynesianism is going to hell in a handbasket. Liberty isn't."

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 8 great fictional nonviolent superheroes:

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I thought it would be appropriate to celebrate a rare beast in fiction: nonviolent heroes.

In Dec 2012 a European bitcoin exchange said it had been granted "payments service provider status" by French government officials. (Meaning French government considered the exchange to be like Paypal.) If other companies that trade in BTC seek to be legitimized by governments, it could undermine one of the basic things that defines BTC -- that it works best outside the "white market" sector.

This week, Blueseed, the planned startup community on a ship, received seed funding from leading venture capitalists. Backers include Floodgate Fund, Correlation Ventures, and Xu Xiaoping and Wang Qiang of Chinese investment fund ZhenFund.

Not confronted with the stench of rotting bodies, the wail of fathers who lost their children, the cry of children who lost their mothers, the silence when whole families are shredded and burned by our freedom, the American liberal is free to imagine Barack Obama as both a grand leader and something of a friend. Thanks to an award-winning ad campaign, Obama the product - not the man, because who knows that? - is smart, hip and sophisticated, or everything George W Bush was not. But here's the thing with that, friend. Barack Obama is the US President, which is to say: A bad person. A murderer.