Monica Potts

Until now, I’ve somewhat ignored a new study that found an abstinence-only program had delayed the start of sexual activity among middle school African American girls in the Northeast, but not because I don’t think it’s great news: It is. I don’t think anyone wants middle-school girls having loads of sex. But I didn’t want […]

Dana Goldstein, late of TAP and now at the Daily Beast, reveals today that CBS actually worked closely with the conservative group Focus on the Family in the making of Tim Tebow’s Super Bowl ad. The ad, implicitly but possibly not explicitly, is expected to be anti-choice and tell the story of how Tebow’s mother, […]

The Lancet has finally, finally withdrawn a long-discredited study linking autism to vaccinations for measles, mumps, and rubella. The ethical problems behind the research have long been noted, and other studies have failed to repeat the findings. But the retraction comes too late to stop the 1998 study from doing damage. Money is diverted to […]

When I became a reporter for the daily newspaper in Stamford, Connecticut, one of the controversies we were covering concerned garbage collection. Residents were upset about service cutbacks — so much so that one of them sued. You might think garbage collectors were limiting days for pickup, or limiting the amount of trash each household […]

A few weeks ago, I wrote about college football star Tim Tebow’s upcoming Super Bowl ad that will likely tell us about his mother’s complicated pregnancy in the Philippines and her refusal to get an abortion despite her doctors’ advice. In the post, I argued that triumphal stories like the Tebows’ obscure all the stories […]

Most immediately, the proposed 2011 budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development calls for a 5 percent reduction in its budget from last year, which in turn was a 9 percent increase from the year before. In the introduction, Secretary Shaun Donovan writes that last year’s increase was necessary because of the declining […]

In yesterday’s New York Times, Gretchen Morgenson wrote that the soured deal to buy Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan — two rent-regulated apartment buildings bought at the top of the market by developers who intended to turn them into higher-rate rentals — was just the most high-profile failure. Little deals like that […]

After deliberating for just 37 minutes, a jury in Kansas found Scott Roeder guilty of murder in the killing of George Tiller, a Kansas doctor who performed late-term abortions. Shortly before, Judge Warren Wilbert ruled the jury would not be allowed to consider a voluntary manslaughter charge. That was despite a ruling earlier this month, […]

Female judges make up less than a quarter of the federal bench, and only a little more than that at the state level, a new report found. The report noted that there were plenty of women graduating from law school and passing the bar, just under half, so it’s not that there isn’t a talent […]