Hobby Lobby: A new tool for crushing workplace unionization? A little-known religious exemption to United States labor law may have just become extremely important, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hobby Lobby. By declaring that “closely held” corporations may hold religious beliefs, the court may have provided businesses with a new tool for crushing workplace unionization drives. In…

This machine can tell whether you’re liberal or conservative Thomas Jefferson was a smart dude. And in one of his letters to John Adams, dated June 27, 1813, Jefferson made an observation about the nature of politics that science is only now, two centuries later, beginning to confirm. “The same political parties which now agitate the…

Softball player warms up for hardball council race Michael Maddux is both a softball player and umpire but spent much of last summer indoors, campaigning for creation of a Seattle Parks District, with resources to do such jobs as fixing baseball diamonds in city parks. The Seattle paralegal is about to enter a game of political…

(Daily Clips will not publish next week. The editor’s computer is undergoing repairs.)   In West Virginia’s “chemical valley,” January’s spill had been a long time coming This was West Virginia’s fifth major industrial accident in eight years. Most accidents unfold deep in the mountains that contain the state’s natural resources. In this case, the…