Kate Sheppard

DADDY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. “Petraeus for President?” ponders Mother Jones: Regarded as a straight shooter by Republicans and Democrats alike, and well respected among current and former military officials, his name has been invoked alongside those of legendary military leaders (among them Dwight Eisenhower) and tales of his keen intellect, competitive flair, and grit abound. According to […]

GOOD NEWS WHEN YOU CAN GET IT.This week’s Newsweek U.S. edition makes the dubious claim that Hillary “seems like the safest money in the 2008 race,” and proceeds to analyze how she might govern the country. This piece is a long, tepid regurgitation of Clinton’s career with little new insight, rife with quotes from anonymous […]

A DUBIOUS CLAIM TO FAME FOR MISSOURI. As Sarah Posner reported last month, a revision to Missouri’s abortion law might put at least two out of the three clinics in the state in jeopardy if conservative lawmakers get their way. The new law puts anyone who provides abortion services – even first trimester and abortion […]

SPEAKING IN TONGUES. Speaking of Spanish and the presidential candidates, as David Weigel points out on the Reason blog, the only GOP candidate doing visible outreach in Spanish is Mitt Romney, on the “Conozca a Mitt Romney” portion of his site. At the page, Romney’s son Craig implores Spanish-speaking voters to vote for dear old […]

HOW TO WIN THE GAME: SHOW UP. Last night’s debate at the University of Miami offered Dems a direct line to the 17 million eligible voters in this country whose first language is Spanish, as well as an opportunity to set them apart from the GOP field. While Republican candidates tend to emphasize border security […]

NOT-SO-GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY. Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation enacted in the United States in nearly a century after Reconstruction. The act resulted in the creation of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice and an Assistant Attorney General […]

UN DEBATE EN ESPANOL. This weekend, the Democrats’ Spanish-language debate on Univision will be the first of its kind in national politics, marking the departure from a time where not factoring the Latino vote into the “must have” category was an option. But the GOP must not have gotten the note about Latinos being the […]

STANDING O. Could Oprah‘s endorsement help swing women voters to Obama? CNN and the Washington Post ponder the question as the megastar vows to stump for the other Big O. But maybe a more important question is whether Oprah’s endorsement will help swing anyone more engaged in pop culture than politics — the boob tubers, […]

I CAN’T BELIEVE I ATE THE COAL THING. Brian Beutler reports back on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Climate Change hearing on the future of coal this morning: “[E]verybody from the governor of Wyoming to the wonks at the Center for American Progress think a cap-and-trade program is inevitable, they also think […]

CALLING A SPADE A LAW-LOVING CITIZEN. One salient moment at last night’s GOP debate was when Chris Wallace asked Huckabee to clarify previous statements on the racist undertones of fellow Republicans campaigning against immigration reform. “If I were to say some of it is driven by just sheer racism, I think I would be telling […]