Jamelle Bouie

Yesterday, as reported by The Washington Independent‘s Andrew Restuccia, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski came out swinging against Democrats who attack the Republican energy bill as a “bailout” for the oil industry: The Republican bill holds oil companies accountable and makes sure taxpayers are never on the hook for spill clean up costs. But, and this […]

Not too long ago, The New York Times labeled Lindsay Graham “this year’s maverick.” Thanks to his occasional willingness to work with Democrats on legislation — including major items like climate change and immigration — the senior senator from South Carolina had earned something of a reputation for independence, replacing his friend John McCain as […]

Politico‘s Carrie Budoff Brown reports on a little-noticed section of the financial-reform law, which gives the federal government power to end its contracts with any financial firm that “fails to ensure the ‘fair inclusion’ of women and minorities”: At its core, the section establishes at least 20 new Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion across […]

If this interview with Talking Points Memo’s Brian Beutler is any indication, Jeffrey Lord‘s historical ignorance extends far beyond lynching; he even has a hard time grasping the basics of American political history: “I have felt for a long time that my friends on the American left, in the Democratic party have just had this […]

By a vote of 57-41 (or should that be 41-57), Senate Republicans have blocked a motion to proceed with debate on the DISCLOSE Act. As I wrote earlier today, this isn’t much of a surprise. But given the quality of the legislation, it’s still disappointing. The most galling “no” votes came from the Republican Party’s […]

Riffing off of the WikiLeaks story, Bret Stephens is mystified by liberal calls for withdrawal from Afghanistan. For a group of people who “protest every drone strike as a violation of the laws of war, or trumpet every inflated claim of Taliban civilian casualties,” he comments, they seem blind to the “human consequences of American […]

Last week, Gallup raised a few eyebrows — mine included — when its tracking poll showed Democrats with a six-point advantage on the generic ballot. The generic ballot doesn’t tell us much about the outcome of individual races, but it gives you a sense of the national mood. For most of the year, Democrats were […]

Today, the Senate is expected to vote on the DISCLOSE Act, a bill aimed at countering the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United. To address the new problem of direct corporate spending in elections, the DISCLOSE Act would institute a mixture of disclosure measures and restrictions on certain kind of independent expenditures. Corporations would be […]

Reading Kevin Drum‘s post on class-based affirmative action, this bit popped out at me: Beyond that, there’s another benefit: for all the good it does, there’s no question that race-based affirmative action has drawbacks as well. It makes employers suspicious of minority graduates, wondering if their degrees were really fairly earned. It provokes a backlash […]