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America Hearts Churchill’s Giant Bust
November 06, 2013
Like Elizabeth II, Winston Churchill seems to be a British personage Americans give more of a shit about than actual Britons do. Last week, in the capital—the United States capital, that is—American leaders gathered to fête the dead old Tory with the unveiling of a massive ...

Throwing the Constitution Out With the Bath Water
November 05, 2013
In an essay so deep and worthy that it just showed up up in two helplessly respectable places in the space of a few days, Alex Seitz-Wald sighs a world-weary sigh and tosses the United States Constitution overboard. “Our Constitution isn’t going to make it,” he ...

November Cold SNAP
November 04, 2013
Welcome to November, poor people. For this month, the federal government taketh away. Benefits to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (a.k.a. food stamps) were cut by $5 billion last Friday. It’s the expiration of a boost in food stamp payments signed into law as ...

This Frisk Has Been Brought to You By…
October 31, 2013
East Germany, you guys totally blew it. All those decades in which Checkpoint Charlie stood blank and advertisement-less were a lost opportunity. In America, luckily, we do things differently. Today the airport security checkpoint—that special place where sobbing ...

A Fine-Ass Committee
October 29, 2013
Americans, who says your government isn’t working hard for you? Just look at the House Committee on Financial Services: they are the hardest workin’ folks in Washington. This statement is especially true if by “House Committee on Financial Services,” you actually ...

Immigration and the Poisoned Well
October 25, 2013
It was the summer of ’13, and all the talk was of immigration reform. Good heavens, the Senate even passed a piece of comprehensive reform legislation! And then the measure went to the House, where members got right down to work . . . by ignoring it for a month, then going on ...

We’ll Always Have The Hills
October 25, 2013
Not too long ago, I was an unpaid intern. For English majors, this is not particularly unusual, the depressing 2013 realization of what Jim Frederick predicted in his 1997 Baffler essay “Internment Camp.” We have reached the point at which a flurry of lawsuits are necessary ...

HHS Begs A-Team to Take Pity on Their Fools
October 24, 2013
The contretemps over the Affordable Care Act reminds us again of the degree to which the hothouse flowers of the American executive branch are simply unable to speak or even string together words that have some meaning or connection to the topic being discussed. Take Kathleen ...

Sheldon Adelson Strikes Again
October 23, 2013
Much of the commentary following the Republican Party’s fruitless shutdown of the federal government suggests that there is only one group who can prevent the party from continuing to implode: the Republican donor class. These fellas–because they’re mostly ...