Sulfur, Sulfur, Toil and Trouble
Buried under the Ukraine crisis, sitting forlornly on page 8 of the Monday, March 3, 2014, New York Times is a quiet but terribly important story. The Environmental Protection Agency, we are told, will...
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Russian Indifference
Alexis de Tocqueville, at the very end of the first volume of Democracy In America, took a look into his crystal ball and made a prediction for how global politics and power would change in the future....
View ArticlePresident Obama, the Do-Gooder
With at least one house of Congress almost certain to be under the control of intransigent Republicans through the rest of his presidency, there is little prospect for any major legislative action over...
View ArticleThe Christian Right's Plan for a Strategic Theocratic Mid-Term Takeover
What lessons can we take from the recent debacle in Arizona? What did their anti-gay bill tell us about the direction of the Christian Right in this country? After the veto of Arizona's bill SB 1062,...
View ArticleEducation, Institutional Racism, and the Conservative Response to "My...
On Sunday, George Stephanopoulos, hosting ABC's "This Week," asked the panel for reactions to President Obama's program for young minority men, "My Brother's Keeper." Heather Mac Donald, Senior Fellow...
View ArticleAn Oscar Shutout for Financial Fraud
It's now been nearly 18 hours since the last Academy Award was handed out, which makes it an old story in today's hyper-accelerated news cycle. But here's a final observation -- a question, really --...
View ArticleCrimea Must Not Be Ukraine's Sudetenland
The Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia (at the time) borders Germany, and had both German and Czech speakers, although Germans were the majority. A relative of mine who lived there at the time said that...
View ArticleLessons From a Legend
Mike McCurry, who served as press secretary to former President Clinton, was featured in a news profile recently, about him becoming a teacher in religion and politics at Wesley Theological Seminary in...
View ArticleRep. Ryan's New Poverty Report: A Fat Thumb on the Evidentiary Scale
Paul Ryan and the majority Republican staff of the House Budget Committee are out with a big document that purports to provide a balanced evaluation of the full spate of federal anti-poverty programs....
View ArticleWill Obama Go Big or Base on Budget?
Federal budget plans are about much more than dollars and cents. The proposals provide a glimpse into the types of policies a leader favors and how much he or she is willing to risk to advance them....
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Silencing Whistleblowers Obama-Style
Supreme Court Edition? Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com The Obama administration has just opened a new front in its ongoing war on whistleblowers. It’s taking its case against one man, former...
View ArticleCrimean Punishment
Crimea 2014 is not Budapest 1956 or Prague 1968. As yet there are no tanks crushing hopes for democracy. Nor is this the Cuban missile crisis. But it might have been save for U.S. non-proliferation...
View ArticleCrime Bar: Human Rights Claims Don't Have Expiration Dates
Last week victims of human-rights violations scored a victory when a Haitian court ruled that their claims against one of the worst human-rights violators in Haitian history, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc"...
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Addressing Nuclear Power in Eastern Europe
As part of their industrialization policies, the Communist governments of East-Central Europe built nuclear reactors to boost their energy production. Only Poland, at the time of the changes in 1989,...
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Putin, Ukraine, and the West: What Were We Thinking?
Vladimir Putin has earned his current reputation for doing what he wants and getting away with it. He is after all a former KGB operative, and an authoritarian personality in an authoritarian system in...
View ArticleAmerica: Paying the Piper
One of the lessons we teach our children, when their underdeveloped decision-making machinery is still in charge, is simply this: "If you make that decision now, you will have to live with the...
View ArticleWhy the GOP Will Lose Its Bet Against Obamacare
From all indications the GOP has gambled all the marbles on the proposition that Obamacare will sink Democratic candidates this fall. But the odds are good, they have made a losing bet. In fact, it's...
View ArticleWhat's Not DOA in the Obama Budget
It's of course tempting to decry the president's budget as "dead on arrival" but I wouldn't be nearly so quick to go there. To dismiss its content because it's not going to become the nation's budget...
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