There's No Republican Mandate for More War
Quite predictably, some pundits in big media are spinning the Republican takeover of the Senate as telling us that America wants President Obama's policies to be more Republican, whatever that might...
View ArticleElection 2014: Americans Ready to End the War on Drugs
When historians look back at the movement to end the war on drugs, they might very well point to the 2014 election as the moment when it all got real. With marijuana legalization measures passing in...
View ArticleLessons for Democrats: It's Time to Remember Who We Are
We Democrats lost the U.S. Senate on Tuesday night for many reasons. But I believe the most important reason is that we ran away from who we are and what we stand for. Too many of our candidates and...
View ArticleGOP's True Identity
Senate Republicans can run (and they did effectively to win the majority) but they can't hide. If they persist with unpopular policies they espoused in the minority, their controversial views will...
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Philosophobia: A Disease That Attacks Democracy's Immune System
Why does America fear philosophy? For starters, American history is wrought with a "get 'r done" no frills mentality. Why use a fifty-cent word when a five-cent one will do? With such a pragmatic...
View Article2014 Election Confirms Citizens United Decision Based on Fundamentally Flawed...
The 2014 congressional elections confirmed that the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United was based on fundamentally flawed premises. The Court majority in Citizens United explicitly based its...
View ArticleDuck and Cover: Surviving the Republican 'Purge' to Come
My liberal friends and I prepared for Election Day like survivalists. Or like some folks did back in the "duck and cover" days when people had those bunkers supposedly filled with provisions enough to...
View ArticleThe Most Important Book of the Year: Bob Herbert's 'Losing Our Way'
Bob Herbert's new book Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America is one of the most important, most compelling books that I have read in many years. For those of us who have felt that...
View ArticleA Wakeup Call for School Leaders
What do you say after an election night like November 4? We lost. As a matter of fact, some have called it "a bloodbath." A bloodbath that has us looking at each other wondering how did this happen?...
View ArticlePromise Zones Provide Opportunity and a Pathway to an Equitable Future
In an area where many families live in homes without running water or telephone service, where nearly one-third of the children live in poverty, and proper skills training and education seem out of...
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Another 58.6 Billion for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan?
Kabul -- Yesterday, in the Afghan Peace Volunteers' (APVs') "Borderfree Center" here in Kabul, I heard someone banging on the front gate and hurried downstairs to open it. As it happened, I was the...
View ArticleAmerica's Lagging Female Political Representation
America continues to lag most other democracies in terms of female representation. This distinction is not one to be proud of yet our nation has been behind the curve on female political representation...
View ArticleThe Senate: A Republican 'Landslide'?
The news has been filled lately with assertions that the Republicans won the Senate in "a landslide" and that the 2014 Senate election was "a complete repudiation of President Obama." If one looks at...
View ArticleDid College Football Games Predict Tuesday's Electoral Outcomes?
Last week, I wrote about how some of my political science friends had come up with a weird thesis. They had conducted research showing that the fate of gubernatorial candidates in general elections...
View ArticleAmendment 1: What Lies Ahead for Abortion in Tennessee?
On November 4, Tennessee's Amendment 1 passed with 53% of the vote. The Amendment is designed to give the Tennessee legislature broader power to regulate and restrict abortion. The assumption that more...
View ArticleLike Internet, Distributed Democracy Routes Around Gridlock
Shortly before midnight on Tuesday, as Republicans were shoring up their midterm victories, Ben Casselman, chief economics reporter for the statistical analysis site FiveThirtyEight tweeted, "So voters...
View ArticleWe Won't Get Drug Reform Unless We Demand (& Recognize) It: Marijuana Is Not...
Democrats suffered bruising and humiliating defeats on election day, and, despite reassurances from professionals that such losses were structural and "in the cards," this outcome stands in contrast to...
View ArticleFederal Judge: No, Congress Can't Transform Prairie Dogs Into 'Commerce'
Anytime a judge tells the federal government that it lacks the power to do something, it's newsworthy. And it happened on Wednesday, in a quirky case involving prairie dogs. In a decision that displays...
View ArticleThe Agony of Victory May Soon Face Republicans
Clint Eastwood said, "Winning an election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. OK, now you're the mayor. The bad news is, now you're the mayor." If you voted Republican on November 4th, you have...
View ArticleThe Happiest Year in Recent German History
On the evening of the 9th of November 1989, when the message came in that the Berlin Wall was open, I was sitting in the Chancellery in Bonn, in a meeting on the issue of housing migrants from the...
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