The Editors

Scott Lemieux looks beyond last week’s Boumediene decision to consider how progressives should talk about executive power: In particular, there is no reason for progressives to accept the argument that there is a zero-sum tradeoff between reasonable protections of civil liberties and national security. Especially when one considers opportunity costs, there is, in fact, little […]

Anabel Lee reviews the Newseum: The Newseum, though, despite its futuristic architecture and flashy digital videos, doesn’t quite feel like it’s even caught up with the 21st century. Recently relocated from its original home in Arlington, Virginia, to Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C., the museum houses more than 6,000 journalistic artifacts and excels at informing visitors […]

That’s right. In a commentary this morning on D.C.’s NPR affiliate WAMU, Fred Fiske declared that our June special report on the global freshwater crisis, “should be required reading.” To hear the clip for yourself head here and scroll down to “Commentary by Fred Fiske.” So heed Fiske’s advice and mosey on over to TAP […]

Our special report on water issues in the last print issue is now on the main site: Imagine a world in 20 years in which no substantive progress has been made to provide basic water services in the Third World; or to create laws to protect source water and force industry and industrial agriculture to […]

Sean Wilentz on the Republicans and the conservatives: No matter who wins the presidency in 2008, an entire political era, dating back to 1974, appears to be ending. Neither the era’s central political figure, Ronald Reagan, nor Reagan’s Republican successors managed to undo the New Deal or the basic reforms of the 1960s. Yet by […]

Paul Waldman explains: In short, Obama displayed the abilities of a practitioner of the “soft” combat arts. Eastern martial arts are divided into two broad groups: the “hard” arts such as karate and tae kwon do, which emphasize powerful attacks with hands and feet, and the “soft” arts such as judo and aikido, in which […]

Justin Logan explains why not all Iranian politicians are the same and how American elections can effect Iranian ones: On May 28, Ali Larijani, former nuclear negotiator and close confidant of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamene’i, won the position of speaker of the Majlis, Iran’s parliament. Larijani is a member of the mainline conservative faction […]

Courtney Martin writes to Sen. Clinton: I didn’t vote for you in the primaries, but I want you to know how deeply appreciative I am of your campaign, your presence, and your perseverance.You have changed the landscape of politics and gender so dramatically in the last year that it is almost hard for me to […]

Harold Meyerson on how the Kennedy vs. McCarthy divide hurt the Democratic Party: Forty years ago tonight, I was one of a number of very young staffers on Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign crammed into a Los Angeles hotel room, where we watched on television as Robert Kennedy, a few miles down Wilshire Boulevard at the […]

We did a bit of poking around and it turns out that the Rickrolling business we mentioned earlier was done via comments on articles. We’ve turned off both the display of old comments and the ability to write new ones (something we were considering doing anyway given the volume of spam we’ve faced) until we […]