Five years ago, I opened up my e-mail to find a message from Priscilla Painton, then-executive editor at TIME. “No, this is not a solicitation to buy a subscription,” she began, before telling me that the magazine was looking for a new politics editor and asking whether I was interested. I don’t entirely remember what [...]
When the history of Facebook-enabled activism is written, the backlash against the Susan G. Komen foundation’s decision to end grants to Planned Parenthood clinics will fall somewhere behind the Arab Spring and ahead of the effort to get Betty White to host Saturday Night Live. The Betty White campaign took months; the Komen foundation reversed [...]
With less than a week to go before the Iowa caucuses, it looks like the “come-from-way-behind Rick Santorum boomlet” I joked about a month ago could actually be a reality. And unlike many of the other candidate surges that have caused whiplash in this GOP-primary season, Santorum’s actually makes sense. It still doesn’t mean he [...]
When a 17-term Republican congressman and former chair of the House Judiciary Committee says the First Lady has a “big butt,” there’s only one way to respond. So with apologies to Seth Myers (and Amy Poehler)… Really, Jim Sensenbrenner? Really?! While speaking to a constituent–and one who has just expressed her admiration for Michelle Obama [...]
Correction appended, 12:04pm The new internet era of politics has changed a lot of things about the way Presidents go about their daily lives. A stray comment captured on tape can instantly ricochet and cause havoc. Post-9/11 security concerns combined with the ability to find detailed information about virtually any location has made the already challenging [...]
If you’ve read Newt Gingrich’s Rediscovering God in America–and you really should, to get a better understanding of why this thrice-married former Speaker is gaining ground among social conservatives–you know that he considers secularism one of the greatest threats facing the country. In fact, here’s the first sentence of the book: There is no attack [...]
It’s been a while since the GOP presidential candidates have engaged in a good old-fashioned round of Who’s the Biggest Islamophobe. Those party-poopers Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney usually sit out the game. But in the wake of the Muslim Brotherhood’s strong showing in early voting for Egyptian parliamentary elections, their opponents will be tempted [...]
While the nation’s Catholic bishops were gathered in Baltimore for their annual meeting this week, Washington Post columnist and former Bush adviser Michael Gerson wrote an op-ed declaring that part of the Obama Administration “is at war with Catholic leaders and Catholic belief.” Echoing the words of New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who is president [...]
