The Allegory of the Cave was used by Plato in The Republic to illustrate “our nature in its education and want of education”

The Federal Reserve has banned employees of the Payne County Bank in Perkins, Oklahoma, from wearing the American Family Association’s Christmas buttons. The buttons say “Merry Christmas – God with us” and show an image of Mary cradling the infant Jesus.

A San Antonio woman whose music downloading case was the first to reach the U.S. Supreme Court says she doesn't know how she'll pay…

STATE DEPT. OFFICIAL TELLS STUDENTS: DON'T DISCUSS WIKILEAKS ON FACEBOOK OR TWITTER…OR ELSE. Talking about WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter could endanger your job prospects, a State Department official warned students at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs this week.

What other description fits when our leaders insist on doing of more of what hasn't worked?

10.30.10 – I find Polly Toynbee, along with half-a-dozen other columnists, useful in making up my mind about issues. That is to say, whichever side of an argument they are on, I feel safe to take the opposite view.

10.25.10 – New checks on Scottish parents who want to help out at school events are a form of identity card scheme, ministers will be warned today.

10.20.10 – It will allow security services and the police to spy on the activities of every Briton who uses a phone or the internet.

10.15.10 – Researchers who tracked nearly 13,500 children from birth to age seven found living with a single parent or step-parents doubled a youngster’s risk of developing emotional problems, poor behaviour and hyperactivity.

10.11.10 – A ‘BIG brother’ database storing the medical record of almost every patient in Britain has been drastically scaled back amid privacy concerns.

10.10.10 – Government reports characterizing some returning veterans as possible extremists have echoed the sentiments of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has likened tea party participants to shades of executed mass murderer Timothy McVeigh. Contributes to report about using social services to battle 'extremism'

10.9.10 – Pat Lavery, a catering supervisor at St Mary’s Primary School in Co Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, handed the boy a biscuit after he asked for one. The child and the woman are related.

10.4.10 – Rob Long – My bathroom, in other words — which to me represents the pinnacle of easy livin’, the perfect intersection of raw technological innovation and empathetic human understanding — is an environmentalist’s nightmare.

9.29.10 – BEIJING — Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and billionaire investor Warren Buffett are set to meet China's super rich Wednesday to sell the art of giving over a dinner that has sparked some soul searching among the world's second-largest number of billionaires.

Paul Karl Lukacs | Customs and Border Protection goons want U.S. citizens to answer their questions as a ritualistic bow to their power.