Te-Ping Chen

Or at least that’s what Steve Peterman, producer and member of the Writer’s Guild, suggested in last week’s House hearing on the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. The push for net neutrality has occasioned the use of a range of motley metaphors — tollbooths on highways, “slotting fees” at supermarkets — but it was Peterman who […]

Today, McCain embarked from New York City on a boating jaunt down the East River, and in preparation for his ride, Democrats have posted a tongue-in-cheek tourist’s map to mark all the sites along the way that McCain has opposed funding: the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, the New York ports, et cetera. His […]

It’s been such a long, and divisive, primary. And since no deus ex machina has yet descended from the sky to settle the Democratic race for once and for all, why not choose both? After all, as Ed Kilgore argues over at the Plank, “nothing quite scratches the itch like a unity ticket.” Except if […]

Suppose a food crisis hits in, say, Zambia. Or to be more precise–suppose basic staples have skyrocketed by 129% across the globe, to the point that the UN has predicted shortages may stoke civil wars across the developing world. What do you do? Well, if you’re the director of USAID, you’ll immediately direct your staff […]

There’s been a lot of talk about veteran suicides this week, and much of it, unfortunately, has centered on a statistic Bloomberg reported on Monday: The total number of veteran suicides is expected to exceed the number of U.S. casualties in the Iraq-Afghanistan wars. Once the statistic’s initial shock value wears off, it’s clear that–as […]

On Tuesday night, just minutes after networks called North Carolina for Barack Obama, the state of Georgia quietly resumed killing those on death row. The executed was one William Lynd, a 53-year-old convicted of murder. It was the first execution since Baze v. Rees, and one of 50-60 planned before the end of the year. […]

Twenty years ago, citing their unwillingness to serve as an “accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public,” the League of Women Voters stopped moderating the U.S. presidential debates. (The move was to protest candidate attempts to turn them into ever-more elaborately staged and controlled events.) And especially after the stultified train-wreck that was last […]

Amid all the debate about what’s driven spiraling food prices, one piece of history keeps getting left off the table: the key role institutions like the IMF have played in exacerbating the situation. Which is why William Quigley’s work to document the contours of Haiti’s food crisis deserves a closer look. Last month, starving Haitians […]

An Onion-esque headline from the LA Times today: “Federal agents arrest illegal immigrants leaving U.S.” To be fair, I understand there’s merit to the strategy as an attempt to intercept contraband, address other illicit activities, et cetera. But draining resources on the effort hardly gets us any closer to that fond political goal, “securing the […]