Phoebe Connelly

On Dec. 3, 1984, a chemical leak at the Union-Carbine plant in Bhopal killed 15,000 people. Twenty-five years later, the site remains contaminated, and, according to Amnesty International, more than 100,000 people continue to suffer from health problems. Listen to an NPR report from 2004. Flickr/Ascanio

In the wake of the highest unemployment rate in 25 years, The Roosevelt Institute asked historians, economists and other public thinkers to reflect on the lessons of the New Deal and explore new, big ideas for how to get America back to work. TAPPED will be cross-posting the 10-part series with the New Deal 2.0 […]

Can you spot the glaring problem in this AP story about last night’s state dinner? First lady Michelle Obama chose to wear a gleaming silver-sequined, flesh-colored gown Tuesday night to the first state dinner held by her husband’s administration. She was tending to her hostess duties in a strapless silhouette with the beads forming an […]

It needs to be seen in its entirety to be truly appreciated. Web comic xkcd has retrofitted itself in late-1990s GIF glory to memorialize the Web-hosting service GeoCities, which Yahoo closed today. I wrote about GeoCities’ demise for the September print issue of the Prospect. One of my favorite observations about GeoCities came from Jason […]

The New York Times story on E. coli contamination in ground beef is a graphic account of the dangerous regulatory gap on food safety in this country. It is also a reminder that bacteria is not the only thing that needs monitoring at a food-processing plant. What about labor standards? Workers at the Greater Omaha […]

Here are some of the great pieces I’ve had the good fortune to publish this year: Michelle Goldberg considers the rise of violence on the right. Jessica Hopper reviews the first volume of Susan Sontag’s journals and asks why mothers can’t be intellectuals: Scott Lemieux defends the politics of judicial confirmation. Greg Anrig examines how […]

Michelle Obama (Courtesy Holly Le) The White House farmers market opened yesterday. It’s located just north of the White House on a block of Vermont Ave. between H and I and will operate from 3 to 7 p.m. on Thursdays through the end of October. I am all for more farmers markets — I work […]

Via Mashable, the Obama administration is looking to hire an archivist to capture the communications going out via social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook, to comply with the Presidential Records Act of 1978. Sure, the front page of Whitehouse.gov lists 1600 Pennsylvania Ave as the contact information — but click through and you’re […]

As we reflect on Kennedy‘s legacy, I’m struck by how key his January 2008 endorsement of Barack Obama now appears. His announcement came reasonably early (before Super Tuesday), and, as Marc Ambinder pointed out, “allow[ed] him to separate the politics of the Clintons from the politics of Democrats before the Clinton administration.” Moreover, his pick […]