In his Jan. 27, 2010 State of the Union address the president pledged to keep fighting for health care reform, though it remained unclear how he and the Democrats would be able to pass a bill.

View a variety of recent polls about health insurance reform at PollingReport.com.

This story, published on May 14, 2013, in the New York Times, explains how Vermont became the first state to pass a legislative measure allowing physicians to administer lethal drugs to terminally ill patients in May 2013.

Liaquat Ali Khan is a professor of law at the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kan. A native of Pakistan, he focuses his research on terrorism and conflict in Muslim societies. He has written extensively about Islamic law and in 2008 wrote an article for The American Muslim about Islamic perspectives on the economic meltdown.

Robert W. Hefner is an anthropology professor and director of the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs at Boston University. Since 1991 he has also directed the institute’s program on Islam and society. His many books include (as editor) Shari’a Politics: Islamic Law and Society in the Modern World and (as co-editor) Schooling Islam: The […]

John Hospers is a philosopher, an emeritus professor at the University of Southern California and an editor at Liberty magazine. In 1972, he was the Libertarian Party’s first presidential candidate.

Jack Green Musselman directs the Center for Ethics and Leadership at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He says he would like to see more media coverage of the way ethical norms and religious values intersect, overlap and reinforce one another (or fail to) as part of the public debate about morality. 

Carolyn M. Warner is associate professor of political science at Arizona State University in Tempe, and her research interests include religion, politics, patronage and corruption. 

Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung is a philosophy professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. She is an expert on ethics and has written on virtue and vice. She says organized religion has largely bought into the idea of religion as a private matter – something to be practiced at home and in church, but not necessarily […]