David Atkins

An adviser to Rahm Emmanuel demonstrates his disdain for the Democratic base: Unless they get the crazy lefty money machine going nationally, it’s not going to matter that there’s a resurgent left,” said an adviser to Mr. Emanuel who did not want to speak publicly about strategy. “The liberals at Heartland Cafe in Rogers Park […]

Timothy Egan has a decent piece in the New York Times about the phenomenon of former blue-collar types like Scott Walker, Joni Ernst and John Boehner getting rich and becoming stingy Republicans: Meanwhile, Walker’s low-wage fortress of Wisconsin lags behind the national average in job creation. If paying people next to nothing at the entry […]

This is the current website of the House Judiciary Committee headed by Bob Goodlatte. Go ahead and check it out. Just for posterity when it changes in the future, here’s a screenshot: Here’s more: It’s also worth noting that these images are all moving gifs like you might find at Campaign Sick–but on a server […]

As the reality of the changing economy starts to dawn on more policymakers and educators, some are attempting to adapt by pushing more students into higher education and focusing not just on more STEM education, but directly on computer science. Arkansas will be the first state to begin requiring high schools to offer classes in […]

A large number of commentators have pointed out how unusually mendacious the House GOP budget is, containing unexplained unicorns amounting to trillions of dollars in mysterious revenues and budget cuts. Here’s Debbie Stabenow to explain: “We have a point of order in the budget for anything that adds to the deficit, but we have a […]

We already knew that Republicans like to live in their own alternate version of reality, sanitized of any inconvenient truths that might interfere with their ideology. But Florida (as usual) is pushing even the GOP’s incredible willful suspension of disbelief: The state of Florida is the region most susceptible to the effects of global warming […]

Every year, twice a year, Americans not living in Hawaii and Arizona go through the ritual of changing the clocks–even though it’s not entirely clear why we still do it anymore. The reason most of the developed Western world adopted daylight savings time was ostensibly to save energy and brighten moods by giving people more […]

I know we like to focus on the day-to-day nitty gritty of politics here at the Washington Monthly, but it’s a slow news Sunday so it can’t hurt to have some speculative fun and talk a bit about virtual reality. As most of us are aware by now, the FCC is going to classify broadband […]

One of the more dangerous disconnects in American politics lies between the technology sector and progressive public policy wonks. Talk to many progressives about the impact of mechanization and technological change on employment, and they’ll fervently deny that it’s a factor. Technology, they say, has always advanced and created new jobs alongside it, and fears […]

It’s the 50th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday in Selma, and it appears that after withering criticism and embarrassment, the GOP has decided at the last minute that maybe one of their leaders should actually bother to show up. But the near miss won’t do much to obscure the message: the GOP has essentially abandoned […]