picardow

Gabriel Arana says that even if the courts rule that SB 1070 should not go into effect next week, the Obama administration has failed: In typical conciliatory fashion, Obama has straddled the fence on immigration. By bringing the case, the administration is showing it sympathizes with the concerns of the immigrant and Hispanic communities. But […]

Matthew Yglesias on how the tenuous fate of the new START treaty shows the continuing power of neocons within the Republican Party: If you think getting to 60 Senate votes for serious climate legislation or immigration reform is a daunting task, consider the fate of the new START arms-control treaty, which must garner a constitutionally […]

Tim Fernholz on what to look for when Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke delivers today’s semiannual report to Congress: At the hearing, Bernanke will have to justify his middle course between the inflation hawks and Fed directors pressing for more action: keeping interest rates at zero for the foreseeable future — the limit of conventional […]

Adam Serwer on how the independent fact-finding body at the heart of the New Black Panther case is deeply politicized and largely ineffective: While the politicization of the Civil Rights Division has drawn a great deal of attention, the politicization of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the independent fact-finding body created in 1957 by […]

Paul Waldman on the left’s discovery that Obama is not the progressive they fell in love with: Was this disillusionment inevitable? “Inevitable” might be a strong word, but the answer is: pretty much, yes. That isn’t an excuse for Obama’s failures. Just as to be fair we have to give him credit for what he […]

Ari Paul on how, by turning his back on labor, Andrew Cuomo could hand New York state to the GOP: Democrats depend on labor for fundraising and voter turnout, and progressives depend on that union push for a big Democratic coalition that will more likely advance issues such as gay marriage, drug-policy reform, and more […]

Renee Feltz says passing the DREAM Act is the surest way to stop Obama’s slumping poll numbers with Latino voters: Whereas critics of comprehensive immigration reform say granting undocumented workers citizenship is tantamount to rewarding illegal behavior, the 2.1 million young people who would benefit from the DREAM Act were brought to the United States […]

Sara Mead on how learning to read by third grade is a goal that can organize everything we do for kids: If you’re reading this, that probably means that someone, once upon a time, taught you to read. Most likely, this happened sometime in your first few years of elementary school — kindergarten or first, […]

TAP talks with Dalton Conley about a Department of Labor crackdown on the intern racket: If unpaid internships are a real problem, why has it taken so long for the issue to blow up? I think it has to do with the cycle of the economy. When the economy’s booming, and everybody’s got work if […]

Lisa Guernsey on why reading programs must combine playful learning with direct instruction: Timothy Shanahan, a literacy researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has co-authored reports on the need for explicit instruction on basic skills, recently argued on his blog that “good teaching includes both didactic lessons and opportunities to practice and […]