Jamelle Bouie

To echo Matt Yglesias, the Obama administration really should use Osama bin Laden‘s death as an opportunity to end the “war on terror” as an organizing principle for American foreign policy. Here is James Fallows with more: Signifying an end to a “global war” does not mean the end of a threat. America faces a […]

Unsurprisingly, California Republicans are pushing the GOP to attract Latino voters: Former staffers for defeated California candidates Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina have an urgent message for fellow Republicans: Their political future depends on Latino voters, and the Obama administration may be providing an opening. […] The numbers of Latinos are ballooning in battleground states […]

Congressional Republicans are really eager to destroy any confidence foreign investors might have in the U.S. political system: House Republicans are considering a plan to grant only incremental increases to the federal debt limit in a bid to extract more concessions on spending cuts and budgetary reform from the Obama administration. The idea has a […]

Abigail Thernstrom, the Republican-appointed vice chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, says no: The majority-black districts to which the civil-rights community and its allies in the media and the academy are so committed also appear to act as a brake on black political participation. A number of first-rate scholars have found that […]

As part of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Effete Liberal Book Club“, I’m reading Chandra Manning‘s What This Cruel War Was Over, a social history of the Civil War which mostly focuses on the motivations of soldiers as they served in the Union and Confederate armies. A large portion of the first chapter is devoted to events leading […]

Salon’s Steve Kornacki writes on racial and political roots of birtherism: [A]s Obama seeks to put all of the zany conspiracy theories to rest for good, it’s worth remembering that there’s a broader phenomenon that birtherism grew out of: The right’s instinctive, aggressive rejection of Democratic presidents. […] The story of **Bill Clinton**’s presidency is […]

Republican Representative Michael Grimm (NY-13) returns home to informed constituents: “The whole deficit is due to the Bush-era tax cuts?” Mr. Grimm asked. “A good part, a good part,” came the resounding reply. Former President George W. Bush was one of the evening’s frequent scapegoats, prompting Mr. Grimm, at one point, to ask: “This year’s […]

Yesterday, House lawmakers in Massachusetts voted to strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights, particularly as they relate to health care decisions. This comes as a general attempt to lower costs, as government officials are worried about spiraling health care costs. Given that this is happening in Massachusetts of all places, it suffices to […]

The Washington Post‘s Aaron Blake makes the case against Rick Santorum as a viable presidential candidate. It’s a good read, but this assertion struck me as a little too strong. Republicans have a long history of picking candidates they are very familiar with — often people who have run for president before and lost. People […]