If you missed it, President Obama gave remarks and took questions this morning at a retreat for Senate Democrats. You can watch the full video here. Unlike last week’s session with House Republicans, there wasn’t anything particularly exciting or noteworthy to come out of the event, but I did think Obama was right to argue Read More
Ross Douthat on the wisdom of federalizing sex education: The debate might be less rancorous if the naturalists and sacralists didn’t have to fight it out in Washington. This is the real problem with federal financing for abstinence-based education: It drags the national government into a debate that should remain intensely local. We federalize the Read More
I only caught the last fifteen minutes or so of President Obama’s Q&A with House Republicans, but I think I can safely conclude two things. First, this is a masterful performance. Not only did Obama show a lot of confidence in his command of his proposals, but he also showed a surprising command of Republican Read More
As much as I like President Obama, my initial response to last night’s State of the Union was fairly tepid, if not a little hostile, “Show me some progress and then, maybe then, I’ll be a bit less cynical and a bit more hopeful.” I stand by that. This isn’t a new observation, but right now, Read More
Matt Yglesias does the admirable work of explaining President Obama’s bizarre plan for a three-year freeze on non-defense discretionary spending (via Dara): The freeze would not apply to the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security, or to the foreign operations budget of the State Department. The official emphasized Read More
(crossposted) Via Think Progress (by way of Kay Steiger) is the most comically racist thing I’ve seen in a long time: A new professional basketball league boasting rosters made up exclusively of white Americans has its eyes set on Augusta, but the team isn’t receiving a warm welcome. The All-American Basketball Alliance announced in a Read More
Not only is this a fantastic video, it wins points for highlighting the single most frustrating thing about the abortion debate, namely, the fact that anti-abortion folks are the only people in the United States that can pick and choose what they want their tax dollars to support. If I, for example, tried to withhold Read More
(cross-posted from U.S. of J.) As far as I’m concerned, the problem with Harold Ford running for Senate in New York has almost nothing to do with Ford’s general sliminess and everything to do with the fact that it’s a waste of a seat. In 2007, Chuck Schumer and then-senator Hillary Clinton were more liberal Read More
Not to spend too much time on “Negrogate,” but Slate’s Brian Palmer has a good history of the word “Negro” that’s definitely worth reading: Colored was the preferred term for black Americans until WEB DuBois, following the lead of Booker T. Washington, advocated for a switch to Negro in the 1920s. (DuBois also used black in his writings, but Read More
Rudy Giuliani seems to have completely forgotten about the terrorist attack that has sustained his political career for the better part of a decade: “What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did – one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had Read More
