Dana Goldstein

Joe Biden‘s speech here at the AIPAC Policy Conference this morning was more feel good, less “real talk” than John Kerry‘s. He began by quoting Barack Obama‘s words on his youthful attraction to Israel: “I deeply understood the Zionist idea that there is always a homeland at the center of our story.” Beautiful words. Like […]

I’ll have more on this speech later, but the big takeaway is that John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has called, in no uncertain terms, upon Israel to do more to support Palestinian statehood — including ending all new settlement activity. “Nothing will do more to show Israel’s commitment to peace … […]

Ezra really boils down the debate over race, gender, and the Court: [The Supreme Court] is responsible for a country that’s 51 percent female and whose law graduates are 48 percent female. Its highest profile cases revolve exclusively around things that happen in a woman’s body. If we were aware of those facts and were […]

You know what is so offensive? Those damn P.C. police pressuring the president to place a second woman on the Supreme Court. You know, because it’s not embarrassing or anything that although 51 percent of the population is female, only 11 percent of the Court is. And it’s not like the Court routinely makes decisions […]

Washington is the kind of place where people live to work more often than they work to live. In a city where so many professionals are transplants from elsewhere — and don’t plan on staying very long — one’s work life and personal life can feel like one and the same. (Do I seem slightly […]

Justice David Souter has announced his retirement later this year. What will President Obama look for in a replacement? Here are some telling words from his campaign speech to Planned Parenthood in July 2007, which I reported on here. The emphasis is mine: I think the Constitution can be interpreted in so many ways. And […]

For me, the most fascinating segment of Obama‘s New York Times Magazine interview with David Leonhardt was the one on how the recession is impacting gender roles. Leonhardt begins with the premise — a false one — that the recession is primarily impacting men, especially on a sort of psychic level. He likens the situation […]

In my column yesterday, I discussed how Israeli bellicosity toward Iran actually amplifies Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‘s insane Holocaust-denial, and suggested that the Israeli government and its supporters tone down their rhetoric. A thoughtful reader, Mark Welsh, sends in the following idea on another way to combat Ahmadinejad’s historic revisionism — through taking him up on his […]

The Root’s Dayo Olopade has a not-to-be-missed update on the White House’s Office of Urban Affairs, which is off to a rocky start. Bureaucratically, the Obama administration has given the office — led by inexperienced Bronx politician Adolfo Carrion — a mandate that touches upon the work and budgets of a dozen separate federal agencies. […]