David Atkins

As we close the weekend, I’ll leave you to enjoy a few pieces I’ve been listening to frequently. First let’s begin with Sibelius’ legendary 2nd symphony, a romantic masterpiece of melody and emotion, and arguably Sibelius’ finest work. This version is played by the Vienna Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein: If you’re in […]

Coming on the heels of headlines about Exxon’s duplicity in covering up climate change and more particularly Shell’s failure to find as much oil in the Arctic as they had hoped, the Obama Administration is canceling oil lease sales: The Obama administration took a number of actions Friday to restrict future offshore drilling in the […]

Yesterday DR Tucker gave a good overview of the reporting on the scandal surrounding Exxon’s cover-up of its decades-old research clearly demonstrating the link between fossil fuels and climate change. In a move that echoes similar scandals involving the tobacco industry and cancer research, Exxon conducted research into fossil fuels and global warming, discovered it […]

One of the challenges of the extremism of the modern Republican Party is that it’s easy to forget just how horrific the George W. Bush presidency was. So much so that it’s beyond appalling that somehow the prospect of a Jeb Bush administration is supposed to be the moderate choice in the Republican Party, despite […]

Shortly after the first GOP debate, most pundits rushed to declare Donald Trump the big loser and Marco Rubio the big winner. They turned out to be dead wrong. After the first Democratic debate, most pundits declared Hillary Clinton the big winner. They turned out to probably have been right. But it was hard to […]

Leave it to Donald Trump to do what few others would. This past Friday he called out Jeb Bush’s brother George for actually being president on 9/11 and failing to protect the country. This of course is causing massive controversy in fact-averse Republican circles. RedState’s Jay Caruso goes so far as to call it “soft […]

Two stories today highlight another common theme in conservative American politics: the intentional withholding of information in order to prevent people from making proper decisions on public policy. First is the continued attempt by (mostly Southern) Republicans to whitewash American history textbooks. The latest version of this is McGraw-Hill’s interpretation of slavery as “immigrant labor”, […]

For months pundits have been waiting for Donald Trump take the precipitous tumble in the polls they have all been expecting since they began calling it the “Summer of Trump.” Now that the Summer of Trump is starting to extend itself into autumn, there’s finally some evidence that Trumpmania is fading somewhat: In New Hampshire, […]

One of the most important pieces ever posted at Politico Magazine was written on January 14 by Evan DeFilippis and Devan Hughes. Titled The Myth Behind Defensive Gun Ownership, it’s worth revisiting again: What do these and so many other cases have in common? They are the byproduct of a tragic myth: that millions of […]

There’s an interesting article today by John Judis in the National Journal about the rise of the “Middle American Radical.” These are essentially Donald Trump’s voters and Ross Perot’s voters, characterized primarily by the belief that the middle class is being disadvantaged by a focus on both the rich and the poor. They earned the […]