Dana Goldstein

Steven Teles has a very astute analysis of L’Affaire Gates as primarily about “honor:” This whole thing would have been a big nothing if either man were willing to swallow his pride. The cop could have defused it by letting Gates call him a racist and have it roll off his back. He couldn’t because, […]

In the middle of the overheated health-care battle, President Obama took some time out yesterday to highlight education reform in an interview with The Washington Post. The occasion is the official roll-out of the “Race to the Top” program, in which states will compete for $4.35 billion in federal grants intended to spur education “innovation.” […]

To everyone who is up in arms about the increasingly remote possibility of “taxpayer subsidized” abortion in the public plan, think about this: Eighty-seven percent of existing private health insurance plans offer some abortion coverage. That means you’re already subsidizing other people’s abortions, through your employee contribution and co-pays. That’s how insurance works — we […]

Given that I was pretty tough on Obama‘s health care performance tonight, I just want to say that I think his comments on the Henry Louis Gates arrest were surprisingly frank and brave. “Any of us would be pretty angry,” he said, adding, “the Cambridge police acted stupidly” by arresting someone in his own home. […]

In his health care press conference tonight, despite sounding a few optimistic notes — “what’s remarkable at this point is not how far we have to go, but how far we’ve come” — the president seemed, more than ever before, on defense. Obama was clearly determined to hit back against perceptions that his health reform […]

I’ll be back here after the speech with some breaking analysis. In the meantime, follow me on Twitter. —Dana Goldstein

Yesterday, in an interview with Katie Couric, President Obama finally directly addressed the question of abortion financing in the public plan. He reiterated that he doesn’t want to “micromanage” on particular benefits. But in a statement that is sure to rile his pro-choice base, Obama referred to a “tradition” of banning federal funding for abortion. […]

Five centrist Democrats –Reps. Tim Ryan, (OH), Dale Kildee (Mich.), James Langevin (R.I.), Artur Davis (Ala.) and Kendrick Meek (Fla.) — have written a letter to Nancy Pelosi urging that health reform maintain the “status quo” on federal abortion funding. Here is their proposal: …we believe that a common ground solution is to include language […]

Yesterday Bill Gates — one of the nation’s leading education reform philanthropists — delivered an address to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Over 90 percent of American school funding comes from states and localities. That means state legislatures are where education policy actually gets made, despite fireworks at the federal level. Let’s take New […]