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The three founders of The American Prospect debate the perils and the promise of a public insurance option: In “The Perils of the Public Plan,” Paul Starr warns that a public-insurance option could turn into exactly the opposite of what progressives want. Here he discusses the problems with the Prospect’s two other co-founders, Robert Kuttner […]

Terence Samuel on the unique undoing of Mark Sanford by love: Mark Sanford’s press conference on Wednesday — the most recent in what seems like a weekly series of GOP infidelity apologies — made for riveting television; the more you listened to the South Carolina governor, the less interesting the story’s political implications became compared […]

Adam Serwer on the D.C. gay-rights movement’s ties to the African American community: The anti-gay-rights movement has long sought to use the relative religiosity of the black community to marshal its support. Anti-marriage-equality leaders often cite the results of Proposition 8 in California, which was supported by a majority of African American voters in the […]

Jaclyn Friedman on the legacy of Stonewall after 40 years, and why waiting isn’t working for gay rights: Forty years ago, a raucous group of transvestites, queens, dykes, hustlers, and homeless queer kids gathered at their local bar in Greenwich Village: The Stonewall Inn. This wasn’t a political meeting — and contrary to the common […]

Leigh Ferrara on an advice columnist with a unique subject: peak oil. In a small liberal town in Massachusetts’ Berkshires, Kathy McMahon makes her living spicing up people’s sex lives. But arguably her most prescient work is not as a couple’s therapist; it’s as an online advice columnist for people who are freaked out about […]

Matthew Yglesias on how the conservative take on Iran has never been focused on the well-being of the Iranian people: Conservative hawks, who just a few weeks ago were eager to drop bombs on Iran, have not hesitated to take advantage of the recent political unrest to launch criticisms on President Barack Obama for being […]

David Nasaw on the search for American identity after the Civil War and the new book “Rebirth of a Nation: The Remaking of Modern America.” History is lived forward but written backward. In October of 1929, no one knew that the Great Depression had begun and would last for over a decade. The soldiers who […]

Michelle Goldberg on what the debate over the burqa means for France: On Monday, Nicolas Sarkozy became the first French president since Charles Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte to address the Parliament, thanks to recent reforms that scrapped a 19th-century law meant to protect the independence of the legislature. Given the occasion, it was rather odd that Sarkozy’s […]

Heather Gerken on the uncertain future of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act after yesterday’s Court decision: Yesterday the Supreme Court wrote a cliffhanger of an opinion on the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, one of the most powerful weapons in the civil-rights arsenal. In the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility […]

Paul Waldman on why it’s time for Obama to start naming the bad guys on health care reform: What will probably turn out to be the most contentious debate of the Obama presidency — health care reform — is now moving into its most intense phase, and the Obama theory of change is about to […]