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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 ...

The Obama Method, or, How to Complicate Everything
October 23, 2013
There is the hard way to get something done and then there is the most difficult way possible, otherwise known as the Obama administration method. In fairness, introducing insurance exchanges to millions of previously uninsured people was always bound to be difficult, regardless ...

Unmanned War Crimes
October 22, 2013
The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. Two new reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch describe the American drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen that have boldly taken on the terrorists who hate America. One such terrorist is ...

Tales from the Health Care Exchanges
October 21, 2013
According to media reports, since the October 1 launch of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges, if you try to sign up for insurance through the HealthCare.gov website, your computer is likely to spontaneously combust out of sheer frustration. In the weeks leading ...

A Love Letter to a Columnist
October 17, 2013
I love you, Jonathan Chait. I never want to be without you or your ridiculous brilliance. In a stroke of accidental genius, New York magazine columnist Chait stripped bare the mask of establishment journalism, revealing himself and his ilk so perfectly that I wanted to pull over ...

You’re a Strange One, Mister Graham
October 16, 2013
People: A deal has been struck. Congress is poised to pass a short-term government funding measure and a slightly longer-term hike in the never-ending quagmire that is the debt ceiling. Obamacare will not be defunded. The House and the Senate will get to work on long-term budget ...

Does D.C. Repeat Itself? Very Well Then, It Repeats Itself
October 16, 2013
The nation’s capital has been all but overtaken by blurry, doubled vision. At the Phillips Collection, one of the few museums open during the partial government shutdown, there is, starting this month, an exhibit of Vincent van Gogh’s repetitions, thirty-five repeated ...

A Safe Space Nuzzling the Powerful
October 15, 2013
It’s an interview that has to be seen to be believed. BBC anchor Kirsty Wark lashed out at the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald as he explained his reporting on the U.S. National Security Agency and the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters. Wark also carefully avoided ...

Cruz’s Value Voters Vortex
October 11, 2013
Watching a few minutes, or even a few seconds, of the annual Values Voter Summit in Washington, you’d have no idea that the GOP is struggling—or even, as ABC News says, “working out the terms of their surrender.” The conference, which began Friday, October ...