Tom Delay and other social conservatives are on the warpath against liberal judges, and would like nothing better than to impeach the lot of them. While impeachments are improbable, conservatives’ strategy is having a dangerous impact.
Nicholas Confessore
Nicholas Confessore is a reporter for The New York Times. Previously he was an American Prospect senior correspondent and an editor of The Washington Monthly.
Posted inAmerica and the World
Rwanda, Kosovo, and the Limits of Justice
The experience of genocide has forever altered our understanding of criminality. Should it change our approach to justice?
Posted inFeatures
Commission Impossible
All successful commissions are the same; all unsuccessful commissions are unsuccessful in their own way. This is how the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security marked its singular sort of failure: A few days after being summoned to the White House for a chat with George W. Bush, co-chair Robert Parsons announced that the commission […]
Posted inArticle
Feeding Time:
These days, a Democratic president who proposes $8 billion in new federal spending on after-school programs, drug treatment, prisoner rehabilitation, and welfare-to-work initiatives is likely to be laughed out of Washington. After all, there are only two kinds of politicians who propose that kind of thing anymore: loony, unreconstructed, quasi-socialist left-liberals — and Republicans. So […]
Posted inLaw and Justice
Prisoner Proliferation
When most of us think of convicts at work, we picture them banging out license plates or digging ditches. Those images, however, are now far too limited to encompass the great range of jobs that America’s prison workforce is performing. If you book a flight on TWA, you’ll likely be talking to a prisoner at […]
Posted inFeatures
Lowering the Bar
It wasn’t surprising that during the fight over John Ashcroft’s nomination for attorney general, one side seemed especially eager to discuss his putative racism while the other side eschewed the matter. But it was surprising that his defenders were the eager ones. “I have never known John Ashcroft to be a racist,” proclaimed Oklahoma Representative […]
Posted inFeatures
Saving Private Abraham
L ast spring, Spencer Abraham of Michigan was widely considered to be the most vulnerable incumbent in the U.S. Senate–“a guy,” says one veteran politico, “who could only have been elected in 1994.” Like many Gingrichians, Abraham was known less as a politician than as an ideological enthusiast, with few legislative accomplishments and spectacularly low […]
Posted inFeatures
The Plutocrat as Populist
“We are so far behind,” exclaims Terry McAuliffe, gazing out his window toward the Capitol. “I got a briefing last night that absolutely shocked me. I’m not going to give you the numbers. Let’s just say they”–the Republicans–“have 50 times as many e-mail addresses as we have. It’s unacceptable.” McAuliffe has had to use this […]
