If the Republican Party is to reclaim the Senate in November, it will have to carry toss-up states like Colorado. In a story for Time.com, I took a look at the state’s GOP primary contest. Of all the major races this year, this one may best illustrate how candidates can rise and fall on the [...]
It is sometimes said – most recently by the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid — that Barack Obama needs to be more confrontational with the Republicans (and particularly filibuster-happy Senate Republicans) determined to thwart his congressional agenda. When it comes to the fierce fight over unemployment insurance extensions, Obama seems to be taking the advice [...]
Even after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is fully implemented in 2019, about 23 million Americans will remain uninsured. About one-third of these will be undocumented immigrants, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office. This is by design. Illegal immigrants will not be permitted to buy insurance through government-run exchanges even if [...]
What’s the opposite of a boycott…a buycott, perhaps? In any case, the New York Times reports on the noble effort of Knights Apparel to pay a living wage at its factory in the Dominican Republic. Knights manufactures college logo gear and the living wage is expected to raise the price of its t-shirts into the [...]
Michael Grunwald joins me for this week’s podcast:
Jay Newton-Small reports on the food fight between the White House and Nancy Pelosi two posts below. What’s really happening here is some classic politics that Pelosi, surprisingly, doesn’t seem to understand. There is no down side to Gibbs’ poor-mouthing the Democrats’ chances of losing the House. If they do lose, it’s an old story–saw [...]
The New York Times has the latest in the struggle between Iran’s right and far-right–between the so-called traditional conservative “principalists” and the populist-extremists led by the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad–which seems, finally, to be bubbling to the surface. This is a crucial conflict–these two groups, not the Green movement, are probably the real contenders to shape Iran’s [...]
I can understand why Republicans would want to bad-mouth Barack Obama’s financial regulatory reform bill. It’s a big legislative victory for the White House and the Democrats. So if you’re a Republican, you want to undermine it–perhaps by arguing that the bill is riddled with special-interest loopholes. But supporting some kind of tough Wall Street [...]
