ehm1212

Asawin Suebsaeng asks if ground tactics in Afghanistan have really changed since the Bush years: Along a sunburnt dirt road, amid the obscure mountain stretches surrounding Kabul, lies a small rural Afghan town called Kharabagh. Situated atop a rocky, angled slope, the village now serves as an unofficial refugee haven for about 30 families. Formerly […]

Paul Waldman on the insanity of the health-care debate and the forces behind it: H.L. Mencken famously observed that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. Were he alive today and watching our debate over health-care reform, he would nod his head knowingly and say, “See? I told you so.” […]

Courtney Martin on the mistakes of Ted Kennedy‘s youth and his attempts to compensate for them: As Sen. Edward Kennedy was put to rest this weekend, cable news networks filled airtime by exhausting every angle of his life. They waxed poetic about his leadership style, debating who would be the Senate’s next “lion.” They delved […]

Dylan Matthews asks if Adam is good for the Aspies: Were it not for its titular character’s Asperger’s Syndrome, Adam would be an unremarkable, color-by-numbers romantic comedy, with a couple who meet serendipitously, fall in love, encounter some obstacle, and try to miraculously overcome it. But whether it is a good movie is somewhat beside […]

Stephen Holmes eviscerates reviews Christopher Caldwell‘s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: What will be the consequences for Europe of decades of immigration, much of it from the Muslim world? In the eyes of Christopher Caldwell, a culturally conservative columnist at the Financial Times and an editor at the Weekly Standard, Europe is being remade, […]

Dayo Olopade looks at a food-justice movement spearheaded by Gulf Coast youths: President Obama‘s daughters get healthy school lunches. Why don’t I? So asked a pigtailed black girl plastered on buses and billboards around Washington, D.C. The White House blasted the political ad, which promoted healthy food options in public schools, as exploitative — but […]

Harold Meyerson asks if D.C. is the only place in America not affected by the downturn: The view from Charlie Palmer’s Steakhouse is terrific. Look out the massive picture windows and there, above the leafy trees that stretch nearly to the top of the hill, the Capitol dome glistens, refulgent in the late summer heat. […]

Gershom Gorenberg on organ-trafficking, shoddy journalism, and a foreign-relations snafu: Lest there be any misunderstanding: As an Israeli and a Jew, I don’t believe that the current government of Sweden is quasi-Nazi, that all Swedes are anti-Semites, or that I should boycott Ikea, the Swedish furniture firm. At the same time, to remove all doubt, […]

Alec MacGillis on the difficulty politicians have when speaking about the poorest Americans: In the spring of 2007, I traveled to Allendale, South Carolina, a struggling town near the Georgia line, to interview John Edwards about his ideas on fighting poverty. I watched as, photographers in tow, he strolled the back alleys and shook hands […]

Ian Millhiser looks at a radical right-wing movement — and it’s not the birthers: Almost a year after she called for an investigation to discover which members of Congress are “anti-American,” Minnesota’s nuttiest lawmaker is back. In a recent appearance with Fox’s Sean Hannity, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann accused her colleagues of “forg[etting] what the […]