Steve Benen

MORE THAN A ‘THEORY’….By way of John Cole, we see that James Q. Wilson helped highlight one of my biggest pet peeves in all of public policy discourse: when opponents of modern science dismiss evolutionary biology as “only a theory.” People use “theory” when they mean a guess, a faith or an idea. A theory […]

DE FACTO ABORTION BAN….The reality that women seeking abortions in conservative states often have enormous practical hurdles to clear is not new, but this front-page Washington Post piece was nevertheless helpful in capturing the difficulties women who want to end their pregnancies face in South Dakota. The waiting room at the Planned Parenthood clinic was […]

TAKING ON ‘ANCHOR BABIES’….Slowly but surely, the conservative drive to deny citizenship to babies born in the United States to illegal immigrant parents is generating widespread media attention. Whereas the proposal was initially fascinating only to conservative news outlets, now even the AP is covering the story. With more than 70 co-sponsors, Georgia Republican Rep. […]

SOFT BIGOTRY, LOW EXPECTATIONS….If you’re a high-ranking cabinet official responsible for helping operate secret prisons where detainees were tortured, and you get caught, it stands to reason that you won’t be a high-ranking cabinet official for very long. At least that’s the way it works in some countries. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, whose ministry […]

THE MINIMUM-WAGE WEDGE….Rick Klein had a good piece in the Boston Globe over the weekend on Dems embracing a wedge issue that, they hope, will do for them what anti-gay-marriage initiatives did for Republicans. New Year’s Day will bring the ninth straight year in which the federal minimum wage has remained frozen at $5.15 an […]

THANKS A LOTT….When incumbent senators are gearing up for re-election, they usually spend the year before the race building up a campaign war chest. Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) is up in 2006, but he raised an underwhelming $26,690 in the third quarter of 2005, a tiny fraction compared to the totals of his similarly situated […]

SANTORUM’S MARRIAGE INITIATIVE….When the Senate barely struck a deal on spending cuts last week, most of the attention emphasized the detrimental effect the cuts would have low-income families, specifically those who rely on Medicare, child-care programs, child-support enforcement funding, student loans, and foster care programs. As it turns out, though, not all of the provisions […]

FALL FROM GRACE….All has not been well lately for military chaplains. There was the fiasco surrounding Capt. James Yee; the Navy’s punishment for dozens of military chaplains for offenses ranging from sexual abuse to fraud; and the Air Force Academy was rocked by a controversy regarding chaplains proselytizing and harassing religious minorities with official support. […]

POWELL SEEMS CONFUSED….One can criticize the Bush White House for circumventing the law and creating a warrantless-search program, or one can defend the administration and conclude that the president has the authority to engage in these kinds of activities. But leave it to Colin Powell to do both. Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell […]

WITH GOODWILL TOWARDS SOME….When it comes to presidential pardons, Bush can be a bit of a scrooge. President Bush has granted 11 pardons, bringing to 69 the number of clemency orders he has issued since taking office five years ago, the Justice Department said. Three moonshiners and a bank robber are among those pardoned, as […]