It’s not clear who should have been celebrating when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in early February that the state has to provide gay couples the right to marry and nothing less. The decision barred the Massachusetts legislature from adopting a law authorizing “civil unions” in which “spouses” would have “all the same benefits, […]
Paul Starr
Paul Starr is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Bancroft Prize in American history, he is the author of eight books, including American Contradiction: Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now (Yale University Press, October 2025).
Posted inFeatures
The Republican Lock
The 2004 election is really only about one question: whether the Republican Party will enjoy thorough and unchecked power in all branches of the federal government. Despite the virtually even split in the American electorate, conservatives have every reason to expect that November will bring them total political control. Four years ago, America had what […]
Posted inFeatures
The New Politics of Medicare
The passage of the Republican Medicare overhaul, with its new prescription-drug benefit provided wholly by private insurers, was a huge political victory for the president and an ideological triumph for conservatives. Unlike Bill Clinton 10 years ago, George W. Bush promised an extension of health coverage and has now delivered it. Conservatives, moreover, have succeeded […]
Posted inFeatures
The President’s New Crusade
On Nov. 6, George W. Bush claimed the legacy of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan in a speech setting out a “forward strategy” to extend freedom and democracy to the Islamic nations of the Middle East. Liberty, the president said, is the “plan of heaven for humanity,” which seemed to imply, in an […]
Posted inColumns
The Democrats’ Military Option
Count me among the skeptics as to whether a politically untested general can successfully run the gauntlet of a Democratic presidential-primary campaign in America today. The organizational confusion, inconsistent statements and other troubles that beset Wesley Clark in the first weeks of his campaign all testified to his lack of political experience. But count me […]
Posted inFeatures
Elections as an Exit Strategy
In central Iraq the United States now has its own West Bank, its own encounter with terrorism as a routine occurrence rather than a rare event. As George W. Bush likes to say, we have carried the fight to the enemy — and now are conveniently at hand to be shot at and blown up […]
Posted inFeatures
Will Bush Pay for Deception?
There are lots of reasons to think that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will merely be a historical footnote to the war. Polls this spring have shown little public concern about the government’s inability to validate the principal reason that it offered the world for military action. There hasn’t even […]
Posted inFeatures
The Bush Bankruptcy Plan
We are used to politicians moderating their programs once in office. But George W. Bush has done the opposite, ratcheting up his plans to the applause of conservatives while much of the public still doesn’t grasp the radical implications of what’s under way. Nowhere is this more evident than in the president’s fiscal policy. During […]
Posted inFeatures
A License for Power
Where’s the conservative suspicion of the media now that we really need it? The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to roll back long-established rules limiting media ownership, a move that would make the media behemoths more powerful than ever. You might think that prospect would excite an outcry from the right as well as the […]
Posted inFeatures
Of Our Time: The Loophole We Can’t Close
There may be no way to limit spending that is both constitutional and effective.