The Washington Post devotes valuable op-ed space today to Sarah Palin, who uses it to denounce “politicized science”: I’ve always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics. Okay. But she’s not denouncing the politicized, oil-drenched policies of the Bush Administration. She’s joining the right-wing hysteria chorus, which has launched a new [...]
No surprise here. As expected, the Senate voted down the Nelson abortion amendment late Tuesday (technically, they voted to table the amendment, which is essentially the same thing as killing it) by a vote of 54 to 45. Pro-choice GOP Senators Snowe and Collins supported the move, while pro-life Democratic Senators Bayh, Casey, Conrad, Dorgan, [...]
The Associated Press and New York Times are reporting tonight that the 10 senators tapped to negotiate an alternative to or compromise on the Senate health reform bill’s public option have dropped the idea of a government-run health insurance plan altogether. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters that the group is sending proposals to [...]
Andrew Sullivan is doing the righteous thing, keeping track of the continuing student protests–and assorted government depredations–in Iran. The Khamenei-Ahmadinejad dictatorship has been killing prisoners, imprisoning and beating protesters, harassing its political enemies at an unprecedented rate. Given the government’s obvious unwillingness to negotiate with the United States or the rest of the world, I [...]
The President gave a terrific economic speech today, proposing some new jobs-creating initiatives, one of which–a 0% capital gains tax rate for small businesses–seems a Republican dream, but was hilariously opposed on deficit cutting grounds by Senator Mitch McConnell…whose votes on a range of budget items during the Bush presidency created the bulk of the [...]
Lately, there has been no shortage of criticism that the Democratic health care bill doesn’t do enough to cut health care spending. My colleague Karen Tumulty had a great story in the magazine recently about how cost-containment provisions in health reform legislation have been whittled down. Right now, on the Senate floor, a group of [...]
This is one of the happier economic weeks the President has had this year. The unemployment numbers weren’t as bad as expected. The big banks are paying back their TARP loans ahead of schedule and with interest. But Obama has wisely decided to keep pushing jobs creation in a speech today (and may also start [...]
Lots of delusional nonsense from the right about climate change these days–especially the hyping of hacked emails from the East Anglia laboratory, which demonstrate that climate scientists can be every bit as unfortunately over-exuberant as other obsessive advocates. But the essential truth about climate change remains the same, as this report shows. The world is [...]
