The Obama campaign strikes another low blow with a TV spot accusing Mitt Romney of “personally” approving a notoriously abusive tax-avoidance scheme and suggesting he may have paid “zero” tax. That’s badly misleading.

A new Mitt Romney campaign ad passes off opinions of a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush as though they were from a newspaper’s reporters or editors. It’s a political trick used by both sides: hijacking a news organization’s credibility.

If you look at it right, the tax-dodge and welfare attacks reveal true policy differences.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, has confirmed that despite protests from environment and food-safety advocates, it will not restrict sales of genetically modified corn in its stores.

A bad omen for future climate shock: Congress can't even pass a bill to help parched farmers.

How can planners attract the 60 percent of Americans who say they would bike more if they felt more secure? The answer could be cheap and simple.

Plant list included 55 heirloom varieties -- among them, tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant and various ornamental plants.

What if the extremists on the far right get their mitts (pardon the pun) on the White House?

The government blocking a business from opening based on the owner's political views is a clear threat to everyone's freedom of speech—being unpopular doesn't mean you don't have rights.

May be much closer to an unmanageable food shortage – replete with soaring food prices, spreading food unrest, and ultimately political instability – than most people realize.

The drought could cost $50 billion in a taxpayer-funded payout to farmers. Do we need a climate-change safety net?

A new report finds that Hong Kong imports about half of the world shark fin harvest.

John Sununu claimed President Obama “outsourced a major portion of the U.S. space program to the Russians.” But it was President Bush who set NASA on a path eight years ago to retire the Space Shuttle and rely on the Russians for space travel.

With 2012 being another year of violent storms, wildfires, floods and extreme heat, we can argue whether this is a preview or the main feature, but no one wants to see the full climate change show. Some still debate whether a specific extreme weather event is due to climate change, but what is clear is that these kinds of events are our future if we don’t change direction.

The United States has just completed its third year of economic recovery, but the unemployment rate remains above 8%, and there are worrisome signs of a slowdown. So it is no surprise that jobs have become a major focus in the presidential campaign – or that the candidates have very different ideas about how to boost employment.

Is it possible to live modern life without plastic? One Austrian family, concerned about dangers to the environment and health caused by the material, decided to find out. What was meant to last a month has evolved into a new way of life.

Public-sector workers in California's Amador County learned what the Europeans have long understood: having a life is intrinsically valuable.

Although peak coal gets less attention than peak oil, the issue is gaining attention. The world consumes 6 billion tons of coal per year (2010 data), with coal consumption trending upward. The largest user of coal, China, faces the imminent depletion of national coal reserves at current use rates, raising disturbing political, social, and environmental issues about neighboring Mongolian coal reserves.

• Is it a tax or a penalty?
• If I choose to go without health coverage, how much will I have to pay?
• Who will collect it?
• What if I am covered for only part of the year?
• What if I refuse to pay?
• Are there exemptions?
• How many people will pay?
   

The hidden risks of pumping waste underground.

How overcoming the yuck factor can help save the world. (Doesn't Taco Bell already have grasshopper tacos? -B)

The down and dirty history of secret spending, PACs gone wild, and the epic four-decade fight over the only kind of political capital that matters.

America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity but nowadays numbers show that the American dream is a myth. There is less equality of opportunity in the United States today than there is in Europe – or, indeed, in any advanced industrial country for which there are data.

Last month a virus broke out in several open water salmon farms in British Columbia that has the region’s fish farm owners scrambling to mitigate their losses. Called infectious hematopoietic necrosis (IHN), the rabies-like virus was found among salmon in floating net pens belonging to Mainstream Canada, the biggest producer in the region.

The conservative 60 Plus Association is attacking Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio by dredging up old exaggerations we’ve seen plenty of times before.

In case you needed reminding, of the world's wealthiest nations, including China, Brazil, and Russia (and now India), only the United States and Canada do not require labeling of GMO crops.

Monsanto’s genetically modified (GMO) sugar beets,.introduced in 2008, are engineered to withstand the direct application of the herbicide glyphosate. By 2010, 95 percent of the sugar beets grown in the U.S. were Monsanto’s genetically modified variety.

No. The restructured GM is still based in Detroit and is still one-third owned by the U.S. government. But it sells nearly as many cars in China as in the U.S. and has continued expanding operations there.

The Congressional Budget Office’s grim report on the government’s long-term budget outlook paints a rosier picture of the approaching “Taxmageddon” than the name would imply.

The food industry, aided and abetted by ostensibly well-meaning scientists and politicians, has afflicted humankind with the plague of chronic metabolic disease, which threatens to bankrupt health care worldwide.

A judicial review of new health legislation in the US means that the Supreme Court judges will try to decide whether the founding fathers of the nation would have approved the legislation.

“The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.” So declared John Maynard Keynes 75 years ago, and he was right. Even if you have a long-run deficit problem — and who doesn’t? — slashing spending while the economy is deeply depressed is a self-defeating strategy, because it just deepens the depression.

Better educated people are not less likely to be skeptics. Greater scientific literacy and reasoning ability do not incline people toward climate realism. Where skepticism exists, additional information and arguments only serve to reinforce it.

Running their own utility means sun and wind energy instead of coal.

I worked for Reagan and wrote for National Review. But the new hysterical right cares nothing for truth or dignity.