Ringside

The question of how to treat women in the workplace has been tripping up America for years. Dolly Parton probably said it best in her 1980 hit, “9 To 5”: “Workin’ 9 to 5/What a way to make a livin’/Barely gettin’ by/It’s all takin’ and no givin’ /They just use your mind/And they never give […]

Despite the invincible conviction on the right that Obamacare is a disaster and that Americans are losing their health insurance, a newly released Gallup poll shows the number of people without insurance has declined to 15.6 percent-its lowest level since 2008. The rate of uninsured dropped among all age groups, but the Affordable Care Act […]

Once, long ago, lawmakers from both parties worked together to pass campaign finance reform legislation. It was a simpler time, albeit with terrorist attacks and wars in the Middle East and a presidential administration bent on giving tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, and in 2002, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold Republican Senator John McCain (remember […]

Out in America today, lots of people are fed up. They’ve reached the end of their rope. They’ve had it up to here. They’re mad as heck, and they’re not going to take it anymore. First up: Fresh off yet another victory for the wealthy at the Supreme Court, Charles Koch is absolutely fed up […]

In a triumphant ceremony in the Rose Garden yesterday afternoon, President Obama announced that the White House’s last-minute push to enroll seven million people in private health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act was successful. Sign-ups even slightly exceeded the administration’s goal, coming in at 7.1 million newly insured Americans. This was despite the […]

Cold War nostalgia is hot these days. Everyone who’s anyone is watching The Americans, FX’s taut drama about Soviet sleeper cell spies living in the the suburbs of Washington, D.C., during the 1980s, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their kids by day and carrying out hits by night. Vladimir Putin got geopolitcally retro […]

By today’s Obamacare deadline, 7 million Americans will have signed up for health-care insurance through one of the Obama administration’s online exchanges-despite continuing technical difficulties that have plagued HealthCare.gov since its launch. Shortly after midnight last night, site operators discovered a bug in the system that required them to take the site offline. Things were […]

While the Republican presidential contest for 2016 is delightfully, crazily up for grabs, you probably figured there was one thing you could bank on: Rick Perry would never run again after humiliating himself so memorably in 2011 and 2012. Think again! The Man from Oops is back, now sporting a pair of “make-you-look-smarter” glasses and […]