The Right-Wing War on State Courts
State courts! Of all the institutions of American government, they might receive the least attention relative to their impact on day-to-day life. State courts are where most criminal trials are held,...
View ArticleThe Republican Party Crack-Up
“The purpose of the Democratic Party,” the political consultant Robert Shrum once advised, “is to take care of ordinary Americans.” Fair enough, as far as his statement goes. But if that’s the purpose...
View ArticleThe Biden-LBJ Comparisons Are Overblown
Pundits have gotten kind of goofy about Joe Biden recently. After the president signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act on March 11, David Brooks called Biden a “transformational president,”...
View ArticleStop Worrying About Conservatives Refusing to Be Vaccinated
It is probably good news that Donald Trump, speaking on Fox News on Tuesday, encouraged viewers to get a Covid-19 vaccine. “I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it,” the...
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We’re Hurtling Toward Global Suicide
On January 13, one week before the inauguration of Joe Biden as the forty-sixth president of the United States and seven long days after the storming of the Capitol by an armed right-wing mob, it was...
View ArticleHalting the AstraZeneca Vaccine Over Blood Clots Could Do More Damage Than Good
The AstraZeneca vaccine rollout was already chaotic. But overly jumpy governmental decisions may have made it even worse. Countries like Denmark, Norway, France, Germany, and Italy all temporarily...
View ArticleRepublicans Know They’re Losing the Filibuster Fight
Glacially and fitfully, the filibuster debate is continuing to move in the right direction. In an interview that aired Tuesday night, President Joe Biden said for the very first time that he’d be open...
View ArticleRepublican Brats Are Complaining About Getting Billions in Covid Relief
One of the more puzzling developments in states’ rights conservatism has been the combination of don’t-tread-on-me militancy with a determination to keep sucking on the federal teat. This untidy jumble...
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The Shadow Over H.P. Lovecraft
Eight decades after the writer H.P. Lovecraft died of intestinal cancer, having published in his lifetime only one book, riddled with printing errors, his name appeared on billboards throughout the...
View ArticleWhat Is Substack?
Substack, the flourishing four-year-old newsletter company, has always touted itself as a savior. It was a way to make real money from writing without the hand-to-mouth hustle of freelancing. You could...
View ArticleConservatives Tried to Use the Pandemic to Crush Abortion Access. Abortion...
After declaring a state of emergency around this time last year, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves announced his intent to halt all surgical abortions in the state. “We’re doing everything in our power,...
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Is Zack Snyder’s Justice League the Worst Superhero Movie Yet?
This week, HBO Max began streaming Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a remake of the 2017 movie Justice League. With an unfathomable running time of four hours and two minutes, the new movie is one of the...
View ArticleThe Obscure House Election That’s Put Democrats in a Bitter, No-Win Situation
After Election Day last year, it was Donald Trump’s doomed, illiberal crusade to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden that preoccupied the nation. Far less attention was paid to a dispute over the...
View ArticleThe Eternal Fantasy of a Racially Virtuous America
“The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us … history is literally present in all that we do.”—James Baldwin, 1965In the weeks since the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a...
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Can OPEC Rescue the Planet?
“In less than 100 years,” Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, told The New Republic in 1973, “this oil business will be finished.” Today, we face a different type of reckoning. Oil won’t run out...
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Philip Roth’s Revenge Fantasy
There is, among the works of Philip Roth, a book his friends urged him not to publish. The document, titled “Notes for My Biographer,” is a 295-page rebuttal of his ex-wife Claire Bloom’s 1996 memoir,...
View ArticleWhat Are Frank Pallone’s Corporate Donors Getting for Their Money?
In a sleepy virtual hearing on Monday, New Jersey Democrat Frank Pallone—chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee—introduced former Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz as the first witness to talk...
View ArticleCan Religion Give You PTSD?
When Ana Sharp Williamson came home from her honeymoon in the summer of 2019, she moved in with her husband and began the process of deciding which church they should go to. She didn’t want to go to...
View ArticleOn Teen Vogue and the “Cancel Culture” Hell We Can’t Seem to Escape
The exit of an editor in chief at Teen Vogue isn’t the kind of thing that usually gets international media pickup, but the brief tenure of Alexi McCammond—whose hiring and resignation at the magazine...
View ArticleIs This Q?
One of the more surprising resignation letters in recent history was published on the day of President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Posted on Telegram by Ron Watkins, a website administrator who emerged...
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