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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

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.

Reconciliation Context Alert!

Paul WaldmanFeb 24, 2010

NPR today, engaging in a shameless act of journalism, gives us some context on just how crazy and unprecedented it would be for Democrats to use the budget reconciliation process to enact changes to a piece of health-care legislation that has passed both houses of Congress (provided they can get the House to pass the Senate's version of health-care reform, this is the strategy Democrats will probably pursue to improve on the Senate's bill). Republicans are shocked, shocked that their opponents would contemplate such a thing -- after all, it's one thing to pass enormous tax cuts aimed at the wealthy through reconciliation, as they did when George W.

On the American Takfiris.

Paul WaldmanFeb 23, 2010

If you haven't yet read Adam's fantastic post over at the Atlantic, you should do so now. Here's an excerpt:

Olympic Cultural Sensitivity Watch.

Paul WaldmanFeb 23, 2010

If you've been paying attention to the Olympics, you've probably heard about Russian ice dancers Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin and their Australian Aboriginal routine. No? Here's the version that they debuted at the recent European championships -- you'll only have to watch the first few seconds to be sufficiently appalled:

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