No one deserved it more. This Thursday marks the tenth anniversary of Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their trailblazing work in attempting to prevent the planet from being set ablaze due to carbon pollution. The Gore/IPCC win drove climate deniers nuts–a very […]
D.R. Tucker
D. R. Tucker is a Massachusetts-based journalist who has served as the weekend contributor for the Washington Monthly since May 2014. He has also written for the Huffington Post, the Washington Spectator, the Metrowest Daily News, investigative journalist Brad Friedman's Brad Blog and environmental journalist Peter Sinclair's Climate Crocks.
Posted inPolitical Animal
They’re Not ‘Mass Shootings.’ They’re Republican Shootings.
They have no shame. They will never have any shame. The Republican Party–that foul entity that surrendered its dignity to the NRA and the arms industry decades ago–is, for all intents and purposes, an unindicted co-conspirator in the deaths of 58 people in Las Vegas one week ago tonight. The GOP’s steadfast refusal to consider […]
Posted inMain, Political Animal
An Inconvenient Goof
Trump’s energy policies threaten to push our planet past the climate tipping point. Why don’t his supporters care?
Posted inPolitical Animal
Thoughts and Prayers for Jimmy Kimmel
Integrity is not good for one’s career prospects on network television. You have to think that ABC executives are beside themselves with anxiety due to Jimmy Kimmel’s courageous condemnations of the Republican Party’s firearms fetish–especially so soon after he called out the GOP’s fixation on snatching health care from millions of Americans. Outside of ABC […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Talk to the Hand: An Appalling Anniversary
It should have been over a year ago. It should have effectively ended the election. It did not–and the fact that it did not speaks volumes about this country. One year ago today, the Washington Post reported: Donald Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Obama-Trump Voters Need to Apologize to Puerto Rico
Remember Colin Powell’s “Pottery Barn doctrine” with regard to the Iraq War–”You break it, you own it”? That same rule should apply to the consequences of bad voting decisions. Those who voted for Donald Trump last November–especially the folks who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, only to take leave of their senses […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Difference Between a Real President and a Reality-TV One
Eight years ago last Saturday–September 23, 2009–President Obama addressed the United Nations General Assembly. Portions of that speech are quite eerie, as though Obama somehow anticipated that the President who followed him would likely be someone who openly scorned the UN. Consider this passage: Franklin Roosevelt, who died before he could see his vision for […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Failure of Trump’s Assault on Colin Kaepernick
The president has inadvertently made Colin Kaepernick a martyr to millions of Americans.
Posted inPolitical Animal
Even if Democrats Win Back Congress, Medicare for All May Be Doomed
Do you really think they have any idea what they’re in for? Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the handful of Democratic Senators supporting Sanders’s Medicare for All initiative certainly deserve credit for getting behind such a bold effort–but they are profoundly naive if they think a bill establishing such a policy will make it through […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Course to Chaos
When, precisely, did the Republican Party “snap”? The exact moment when the GOP went rabid will be debated for decades: you may recall that last year, I argued that the point of no return for the Republican Party was August 1, 1988–the day Rush Limbaugh’s Sacramento, California-based right-wing talk show was nationally syndicated for the […]
