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Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman is a contributing editor for the Prospect and the author of Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success.

Recent Articles

Phony Process Objections.

Paul WaldmanMar 01, 2010

Seemingly spent on all their absurd arguments about the substance of health-care reform (death panels! socialism!), Republicans have now moved on to making absurd arguments about the process of health-care reform, namely that circumventing the filibuster is like spitting on James Madison's grave (just to clarify, the filibuster is not in the Constitution). But when you listen to them talk, you quickly notice that they never make a real, substantive argument in favor of the filibuster. Indeed, the word "filibuster" doesn't pass their lips too often.

The Tao of Newt.

Paul WaldmanFeb 26, 2010

Newt Gingrich, the Republican Party's "man of ideas," has been all over the place in the last couple of days, coming up with inventive new arguments against health reform.

Meddling Bureaucrats and the Health-Care Summit.

Paul WaldmanFeb 26, 2010

During the health-care summit, both Obama and Biden tried to make the point that both Republicans and Democrats agree that there should be some government regulation of health care; they're just disagreeing about exactly how much. As they observed, GOP members of Congress have signed on to certain kinds of regulation (the popular kinds), like ending recissions (where your insurance company kicks you off your policy when you get sick) and even outlawing denials for pre-existing conditions, which is a large change with serious implications.

The Amazing Vegetable Oil Jet

TAP talks with The Department of Mad Scientists author Michael Belfiore about the government agency where being outlandish is part of the mission.

Paul WaldmanFeb 25, 2010
The DarkStar, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-designed unmanned aerial vehicle on display at the Smithsonian. (Flickr/Cliff 1066)

The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs, by science and technology journalist Michael Belfiore, takes readers behind the scenes at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which created things like GPS, stealth technology for airplanes, and real-time speech translation now being used by soldiers in Iraq. And oh yeah, the Internet. I spoke with Belfiore about his experience reporting on DARPA and what the agency is up to now.

The Fundamental Dynamic of the Health-Care Debate.

Paul WaldmanFeb 25, 2010

At today's Health Care Smackdown ("You'll pay for the whole seat -- but you'll only need the edge!") and in the postmortems, both sides will likely charge that the other side is being dishonest about their intentions. Democrats will say that Republicans are pretending that they are open to reform, but all they really want is to kill the bill, for reasons both substantive (they don't particularly think health care should be reformed) and political (they don't want Democrats to get a victory). For their part, Republicans will charge that Democrats pretend they are open to bipartisanship, but in truth they just want to pass their bill, and they don't care whether Republicans come along or not.

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