Evaluating the first year of the Obama presidency Barack Obama’s administration just celebrated its first birthday. Conservatives deem it a year of policy failures and socialistic overreaching, while liberals claim that the stimulus saved the economy from the brink of collapse and that the Republicans are obstructionists. Obama’s first year in office was certainly eventful, … Read more
New online business model will help the press serve the public good Early next year, when the New York Times begins to enforce a metered system in order to charge for its online content, millions of readers will have to decide if that content is worth the price. For a few short years, the Times … Read more
How Scott Brown pulled out a victory in New England Campaign season came early for residents of Massachusetts this year. The January special election to fill the seat of the deceased Edward M. Kennedy pitted the Massachusetts Attorney General, Democrat Martha Coakley, against Republican state senator Scott Brown. Despite Massachusetts’ history of Democratic leadership (all … Read more
A Republican resurgence in the 2010 election? One year into the Obama presidency, the Democrats have faltered on key initiatives, most notably health care reform, and public dissatisfaction with Congress has skyrocketed. Many factors that allowed for the GOP takeover in 1994, including voter frustration, a struggling health care reform effort, frail economic conditions, and … Read more
Puerto Rico might become a state without wanting to Puerto Rico has been a self-governing commonwealth of the United States since 1952, a status that has survived many reform efforts. But there is a bill in Congress that presents a novel issue. The Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2009 would initiate a series of convoluted … Read more
Why the Citizens United case is a blow to democracy The outcome of Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission has rocked the political world by reframing the controversy over corporate influence in political campaigns. In the 5-4 ruling, a majority of the Supreme Court struck down provisions of the McCain–Feingold Act that forbade corporations and … Read more
How the filibuster evolved and why it’s here to stay “In the older and better times of the Senate, it was supposed that the representatives of sovereign states … would restrain themselves from the excessive use of irrelevant talking.” Speaking over 150 years ago, Senator Willie Mangum of North Carolina deplored what he saw as … Read more
Why the politics of immigration must be reconciled with reality Immigration always seems to be a hot-button topic, but despite President Bush’s second-term attempts at comprehensive reform and President Obama’s campaign promises to address the issue, the past two decades have seen little meaningful immigration legislation. While it is convenient to point to the economic … Read more
HuffPost College, a new offshoot of the budding online media empire, launched today. Like the regular HuffPost, it is a strange but fascinating blend of serious news and opinion (“Majoring in Debt,” “Why Historically Black Colleges Remain Relevant”) and scintillating gossip and tabloid fare (“Camo Condoms to Infiltrate College Campuses,” “Cornell Mistakenly Disposes Animal Remains … Read more
No, I don’t think he’s an anti-semite (see Jonathan Chait on that). But he has been reckless enough with the truth, and obsessed enough with Israel, that much of the recent criticism is spot-on. Take Sullivan’s latest post on CPAC for example. He begins by heralding Ron Paul’s surprise victory in the CPAC straw poll, and ends up with yet … Read more