The Washington Post has a poll out today that shows Mitt Romney trailing Barack Obama by significant numbers in the overall electorate, and especially among women. Such polls mean little at this stage of the race. (Bill Clinton was running 3rd, behind Ross Perot, in the spring of 1992–and given his lounge-singer proclivities, was also …
Obama’s Tough Iran Stand
There’s been some interesting body language as we approach the nuclear arms negotiations with Iran, scheduled to begin soon in Turkey. Usually, the body language is all on the Iranian side–all sorts of demands made or withdrawn, offers made or withdrawn, diatribes and other assorted switcheroos. We’ve had some of that this time. The …
Latest Column
My print column this week is about the wounds Mitt Romney has suffered in the course of winning the Republican nomination and guess what? You don’t have to be a TIME subscriber to read it anymore. But there’s all sorts of good stuff in the magazine that remains behind the paywall. Those who want to be particularly well-informed will …
Springsteen’s Gift
Several people have emailed saying that Bruce Springsteen once again mentioned my Woody Guthrie biography during his recent keynote speech at the South By Southwest festival.
Romney on Immigration: Etching a New Sketch
According to The Note, here’s what Mitt Romney had to say about immigration on Monday:
“This has always been a priority for the president he chooses to do nothing about,” Romney said. “Let the immigrant community not forget that while he uses this as a political weapon, he has not taken responsibility for fixing the problems we …
Bill Kristol’s Blues: The Republican Party Is Still Looking Backward
Bill Kristol proves, once again, that he’s a far better political tactician than a political thinker, with this assessment of the presidential campaign to come. He continues to be something less than full-blooded in his support of Mitt Romney–he’s been twenty shades of tepid throughout–and for all the right structural reasons: …
Trayvon Martin: The Debate We’re Not Having
In my print column this week, which is available to TIME subscribers here, I write about the Trayvon Martin case and the debate we should be having–about guns, not race. We may never know if race was George Zimmerman’s motivation when he killed Martin, but we can be almost positive that Martin would be alive today if Zimmerman hadn’t …
Regression to the Very Mean
Andrew Sullivan nails the loathsome John Podhoretz, who tweets against the Obamacare provision that allows children up to the age of 26 to be covered by their parents’ health insurance.
Presumably Pod doesn’t have children of that age who are caught in entry-level jobs, or temp work, or internships that don’t come with health …
Of Broccoli and Broken Bones
First, if you haven’t read Kate Pickert’s excellent coverage of Tuesday’s supreme court arguments about the Affordable Care Act, you should. Right now. Reading Kate, I find the performance of the Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. appalling. After all the energy expended over 60 years in bringing universal health insurance to …
Gaffe of the Week: Obama’s ‘Space’ Case
The President begins the week with a gaffe that may not rival last week’s Romney Etch-A-Sketch disaster as a defining moment, but is sure to be used against him repeatedly by Republicans until we’ve voted in November. In a ‘hot mic’ conversation with the Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, Obama asked for ‘space’–that is, that Russian …
Israel’s Rule of Law
Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled against the Netanyahu government and order an unsanctioned Israeli settler outpost on the West Bank to be shut down by August. Netanyahu had wanted the outpost to remain open for business in perpetuity–or close to perpetuity, 2015, by which time the government would have argued the permanence of the …
Is Obamacare Constitutional?
Two interesting columns this morning on the Supreme Court’s upcoming consideration of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. Jonathan Cohn, one of the very best writers on this subject, cuts to the chase: If the individual mandate — the requirement that everyone purchase health insurance — is unconstitutional, then Medicare and …
Mitt Romney’s Etch A Sketch Disaster
I’ve been thinking about this all night: Eric Fehrnstrom’s Etch A Sketch gaffe yesterday may go well beyond a momentary embarrassment and become a campaign-defining disaster, much as John Kerry’s “I voted for it before I voted against it” gaffe — which came at almost exactly the same point in that campaign, as Kerry locked down the …