The Editors

Terence Samuel tells you which election you should really be watching on Tuesday: The Tuesday special election in Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District is being held to replace veteran GOP congressman Roger Wicker, who was appointed to the Senate last December by Gov. Haley Barbour to replace the retiring Trent Lott. Wicker had been in the […]

Sarah Posner on the religious right: Former Bush family confidant and televangelist advocate Doug Wead joins the fight against Sen. Grassley. Kenneth Copeland continues to be chummy with politicians while the public turns a blind eye. Evangelical leaders unveil “An Evangelical Manifesto: The Washington Declaration of Identity and Public Commitment,” and McCain‘s “conservative judges” speech […]

Kate Sheppard reports on an unusual coalition that has emerged to fight payday lending in Virginia: In the last three years the Interfaith Center has linked up with anti-poverty and consumer rights activists, and groups like the AARP, AFL-CIO, and NAACP, under the banner of the Virginia Partnership to Encourage Responsible Lending. The partnership also […]

Lauren Bruce gives us a more informed description of one of the states currently at the center of the Democratic nomination contest: Despite the portrayal of my home state as a white wasteland, Indiana has a long, compelling history of competing ideas and interests. Yes, it was a hotbed for the Ku Klux Klan, but […]

From our May issue: Kevin Phillips locates the roots of our present financial crisis in policies pursued by the federal government a quarter century ago. Between the 1980s and the present, the United States moved in three unfortunate directions: first, the adoption of public and private debt as both an economic nostrum and culture; second, […]

Gershom Gorenberg reports on an attempt to deliberately shift the tone of Wikipedia articles on the middle east: “We will go to war,” reads the ungrammatical email, “after we have build our army, equipped it, trained… so if you want to win this war help us build our army.” The language, fortunately, is figurative. According […]

Dean Baker gives it to us straight: When Sen. John McCain proposed suspending the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax for the summer, I did what any honest economist would do — I trashed him for sleazy demagoguery. Instead of saving consumers money, McCain’s proposed tax cut would divert revenue the government uses for […]

The McCain Agenda: Kate Sheppard finds a disappointing voting record and little more than empty rhetoric in John McCain‘s environmental proposals, concluding that the the press and public are responsible, again, for bolstering his “maverick” image: The problem is that McCain’s few admirable gestures toward environmental responsibility have blinded the public and the press to […]

Curious about this Nixonland book our guest blogger Rick Perlstein keeps talking about? Well then go read an excerpt from it on the main site: The Democratic Party: enemy of the working man. It was the political version of that New York Times photograph of the stockbroker and the pie fitter joined in solidarity in […]

Greg Anrig explains what Obama should have said when asked whether Republicans have good ideas: In an interview on Sunday on Fox News, host Chris Wallace asked Barack Obama to “name a hot button issue” where “Republicans have a better idea.” Obama replied, “Well, I think there are a whole host of areas where Republicans […]