Thirty-nine states elect their judges in some fashion. What once were “sleepy little affairs,” judicial campaigns have become high-stakes races, drawing in big money and increasingly negative advertising campaigns. In 2006, an estimated $16 million was spent on advertising in supreme court races in 10 states, a record. If predictions hold true, contests in 2008

Nearly two-thirds, 65 percent, of Americans prefer electing their judges rather than having governors nominate them from a list prepared by a nonpartisan committee. Yet when judges run for office they usually have to raise money for their election campaigns. Seven in 10 Americans believe that the necessity to raise campaign funds will affect a

Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, co-authors of UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation, described their findings in a May 15th interview on WHYY-FM’s Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane. The book, published last month by Random House, has been described as “the secret decoder ring for the 21st-century world of disinformation.” Jackson, who directs

The Webby Awards today named FactCheck.org the best political website as well as the best on government in the 2007 People’s Voice vote. Billed as the “Oscars of the Internet,” the Webby Awards are sponsored by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.  This year’s contest drew more than 8,000 entries. Last year, Justice Learning

FactCheckED, a new website designed to help high school students learn to think analytically, has been launched. An offshoot of the prize-winning FactCheck.org website (www.factcheck.org), FactCheckED (www.FactCheckED.org) will offer tools that enable students to search out accurate and unbiased information and in the process become better informed consumers and citizens. In addition, FactCheckED offers lesson plans for

In June 2005, a distinguished group of researchers gathered at the University of Pennsylvania to synthesize recent developments in the field of adolescent brain development and their implications for the prevention of mental disorder. The results have been released in a new volume, Adolescent Psychopathology and the Developing Brain: Integrating Brain and Prevention Science, published