To a hungry polar bear losing its natural habitat, humans are just meat.
January/February 2015
Flipping Their Wigs
The framers would be shocked at how far conservative jurists have narrowed the definition of what constitutes political corruption.
SCOTUS Heads Toward the Cliff
Conservatives have made the Supreme Court radical. But not radical enough for libertarians.
The Rise and Fall of the U.S. Government
While other conservatives say that the American state has become too powerful, Francis Fukuyama argues that it has grown too weak.
Talk of the Toons
A selection of political cartoons from the past few weeks.
Three Simple Fixes That Could Save Pro Football
Reimagining the game for the twenty-first century.
Tilting at Windmills
Frame of reverence If you went into homes up in the hollows of Charlie Peters’s West Virginia and elsewhere in the decades following World War II, you could often find photographs of FDR. The same was later true of JFK’s picture, and not just where Catholics lived. The people who hung them on their walls… Read more »
Why a Second Progressive Era Is Emerging- and How Not to Blow It
America is in the midst of a crisis that needs no introduction. Ideological warfare and policy paralysis in Washington. Declining economic well-being among the mass of Americans combined with expanding wealth at the top and an economy too weak and rigged to change the dynamic. A profound need, and public hunger, for solutions from government… Read more »
Ten Secret Truths About Government Incompetence
What you can learn from the management mistakes of Obama and Bush.
Why I Quit the Congressional Research Service
How Congress’s dysfunction has degraded its own in-house think tank.
Let Us Now Praise Corporate Persons
Citizens United was a bad decision; but the cry of “Corporations are not people!” isn’t helping fix the problem—in fact, it’s making it worse.
Corporate Law’s Original Sin
The public be damned,” railroad magnate William Henry Vanderbilt snorted at a reporter in 1882. The impertinent scribe had asked whether Vanderbilt ran his railroads with an eye toward public benefit. At the time, Vanderbilt was among the most powerful men in American business—and by his own estimation the richest man in the world. His… Read more »
Meat Puppets
How Washington bought into the anti-saturated-fat agenda.
Is a Grand Strategy for America Even Possible?
Three of our finest flag officers attempt to offer unifying visions for the United States, but run aground on the same political polarization that flummoxes everything else.
A Thief, a Dirty Politician, and a Suicide Bomber Walk Into a Bar …
Yes, terrorists conspire with criminal networks and corrupt officials. But that doesn’t mean cracking down on crime and corruption will stop terrorism.
College Football Coaches, the Ultimate 1 Percent
More than a century ago, the very idea of paying coaches was up for debate. The
arguments against it looked very similar to the arguments today against paying players.
