christopher_hallam

Some people, like Tim, have been arguing that Senator Jim Bunning‘s filibuster of unemployment benefits makes the case for reform of Senate procedure, and I agree. But in the meantime, I’m not sure it’s entirely off base for Democrats to be blamed for what’s happening. Obviously the Senate rules make it difficult to end a […]

I’m sympathetic to the argument that domestic terrorist Joe Stack is an “ideological mutt” as Jonathan Capeheart put it the other day, but what’s interesting to me is that the right seems to have claimed him anyway. Shortly after Stack flew his plane into an IRS building in Austin, killing Vietnam Veteran Vernon Hunter, Massachusetts […]

It’s really no secret that the modern Republican Party is, in part, a consequence of opposition to equal rights for people of color, black people in particular. As Matt Yglesias notes, that outright racism has fermented into “anti-anti-racism,” defined as “zealous defense of the interests of white people who may find themselves unduly inconvenienced by […]

Gregg Carlstrom notes the two contradicting narratives on the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, coming from the Washington Post and the New York Times, respectively. On the Post side, Baradar’s capture signals a monumental strategic shift on the Pakistani side, wherein they have finally decided to accept the threat the Taliban poses. The Times […]

I think Glenn Greenwald is missing the point when he cites poll numbers showing majorities approve of President Obama‘s handling of terrorism show that the GOP strategy of fearmongering on terrorism is “far from clear.” What’s clear so far is that Obama has proven to be able to weather those attacks–but it’s also clear that […]

For months, the U.S. and British government have been urging a British court not to release seven paragraphs of a U.S. summary of intelligence information relating to former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, on the grounds that it would “damage” intelligence cooperation. Mohamed claims he was rendered to Morocco where he was tortured, but that […]

I’ve written before about the moral implications of Obama‘s drone-war escalation and the likelihood that strikes are illegal under international law. But today, former Bush speechwriter and torture fundamentalist Marc Thiessen takes to Foreign Policy to argue that Obama’s use of drone attacks is preventing the U.S. from gathering vital intelligence, because the targets die […]

Republican Rep. Paul Ryan proposed a pretty austere alternative budget that consists of deep cuts to popular programs like Social Security in order to shrink the deficit. Democrats have responded by holding it up as an example of what Republican governance would look like. Ryan’s budget proposal sounds like a bad idea. But the Democrats […]

In front of city hall, Belle Glade, Florida, January 1939. Until the 1960s, blacks were forced by city ordinance to live in a section of the city known as “colored town.” (Flickr/NYPL)

On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair admitted that “government agencies may kill U.S. citizens abroad who are involved in terrorist activities if they are ‘taking action that threatens Americans,’” and that they “follow a set of defined policy and legal procedures” in doing so. “If that direct action, we think that direct action […]