Paul Waldman

One of the arguments conservatives have made in their criticism of the Prop. 8 decision (see here, for instance) is that, according to some reports, trial judge Vaughn Walker himself is gay, which obviously means he can’t be impartial in this matter. But this has uncovered a problem that could lead to a serous legal […]

When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, he said, in ways both explicit and implicit, that we could transcend what divided us — our racial, religious, geographic, or political differences — and unite in a common national purpose. This rubbed some people the wrong way. Some found it naïve, some even found it cynical. […]

As you’ve no doubt heard, yesterday a federal judge struck down California’s Proposition 8, which outlawed marriages between same-sex couples. This is the first step in a process that will ultimately lead to Anthony Kennedy deciding whether gay people can get married. This decision wasn’t a surprise to anyone who followed the trial — the […]

Most progressives are feeling uneasy about this fall’s elections, the results of which will probably be somewhere between “that could have been worse” and “Oh. My. God.” I’m willing to bet that many of the nutball Tea Party candidates who have emerged will end up proving too extreme even for an angry electorate (and some […]

As I (and plenty of other people) have said a million times, conservatives who fancy themselves tough-talkin’ terror fighters do a great deal of service to al-Qaeda when they do things like oppose an Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan. They validate all the arguments al-Qaeda makes, particularly the one that says that America is […]

This is lovely: Florida Republican Kurt Kelly is slamming Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, suggesting that his absence during a war-funding vote might mean the freshman lawmaker actually wants American troops to die. In a Friday appearance on Fox Business, Kelly ripped into Grayson for not attending a House vote earlier in the week to provide […]

In case you needed a reminder that things are different in America, check out this op-ed in the Independent, wherein British Prime Minister David Cameron — the leader of the Conservative Party, remember — writes of his commitment to gay rights: There’s no single lever we can pull or even collection of measures that we […]

(Flickr/lrargerich) If someone told you that 50,000 people were murdered in ritual Satanic sacrifices every year in America, would you think that sounded frightening, or ridiculous? This weekend’s On the Media featured a pair of interesting stories about the use of numbers in journalism, showing how fuzzy they are. Reporters love to put statistics in […]

It’s hard to be rational about a politician when you disagree with nearly everything he or she does. That’s a problem that plagues all of us who comment on politics. But those of us who want to be honest try to keep the danger of losing our grip on reality in mind as we evaluate […]