hbziler

Terence Samuel on why the president needs a vacation after a tough week: The House is scheduled to start its summer recess at the end of next week. The week after that, the Senate leaves, and then President Barack Obama heads to Martha’s Vineyard with his family for a two-week vacation that ought to dampen […]

Orlando Patterson reviews A Tolerable Anarchy by Jedediah Purdy: Freedom in America has been the subject of several lines of scholarship. Philosophers attempt to derive freedom’s true meaning, intellectual historians examine what eminent minds have argued about it, and social historians study continuities and variations in its meanings and practices, while linguists decipher the ways […]

Ben Adler on what has disability activists worried in the debate on health reform: With an estimated 37.5 million eligible voters with a disability — and the aging baby boom generation means the ranks of the disabled will grow — disability rights is an emerging brand of identity politics. The Democratic Party has been attuned […]

Gershom Gorenberg on how the story of one Jerusalem hotel reflects the larger struggle over the city’s future: Western communists, it was said in another era, took out their umbrellas whenever it rained in Moscow. I remembered that adage as I read a recent statement from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations […]

Paul Waldman presents the 10 dumbest arguments against health reform that have actually been used: As the latest iteration of our once-every-generation-or-so effort to reform our disaster of a health-care system reaches its climax, we find ourselves at one of those times. The opponents of reform are getting serious now, and they’ve turned the volume […]

Dana Goldstein explains the aberration that is the American abortion debate and takes a look at how other countries handle the issue: Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, John Dingell — all over Washington, Democrats who once supported single-payer health care are calling Congress’ stalled health-reform efforts “uniquely American.” This poll-tested rhetoric is intended to reassure us […]

Nancy Scola asks whether the technology that helped Barack Obama win the presidency might help Hillary Clinton save the world: “The man who saved Iran” might be the most hyperbolic thing blogged about Jared Cohen this summer, but not by much. The huzzahs that greeted the news that the 28-year-old State Department staffer called on […]

Jaclyn Friedman on the double standard for athletes and sports when it comes to misogyny and rape: In mid July, a Harrah’s hotel worker accused Pittsburgh Steelers star quarterback Ben Roethlisberger of raping her, and her employer of covering it up. And then, as reliably as thunder follows lightning, the sports misogyny apologists boomed onto […]

Brentin Mock on how Gov. Palin’s policies on environment and energy are failing: There has been much speculation about what outgoing Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska is running toward on the national scene but not so much about what she’s running from. Back in March of 2007, shortly after she took office as governor, Palin […]

Matt Yglesias explains the larger meaning of the decision to cut funding for the F-22: Overshadowed during this week’s continuing debate about health care was a crucially important step in Congress: The United States Senate voted 58-40 in favor of an amendment to strip funding for the F-22 fighter plane out of the Department of […]