Last week, Pat Robertson, the sanctimonious, judgmental TV witch doctor, made news in which he condoned the right of a husband or wife to leave a spouse who is afflicted Alzheimer’s disease. His comments instigated an angry backlash, especially among other evangelical Christians. As Rene Lynch reported in the Los Angeles Times: “The controversy stems …
At the CNN/Tea Party Express Republican debate the other night, Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul a hypothetical question about health insurance: What should happen if a healthy 30-year-old man who can afford insurance chooses not to buy it—and then becomes catastrophically ill and needs intensive care for six months? In the face of one of …
For eight or nine months after 9/11, I felt pretty depressed about the mass murder of people who were exactly like me and who on another day could easily have been me, and about the brutal attack on the city where I had made my home. Sometime in the spring, however, I read an article …
I don’t feel much like looking back on 9/11 this morning because I don’t feel that I’ve actually looked away. There entered our lives that day an element of fear that wasn’t there before. Over time that feeling has sometimes sharpened, like during the financial crisis, and sometimes dulled, but it has never gone away, …
Ryan Adams shot the video for this gem of a song on September 7, 2001. The World Trade Center looms in all its dopey, stolid earnestness throughout the film, oblivious to its imminent destruction. It always chokes me to see this.
President Obama launched his jobs offensive with a fine speech Thursday night. He seemed to have reasonable ideas, and the Republicans are going to have to be very careful about not seeming to look obstructionist if they are going to turn him down. There was one note that I wish the president had struck harder: …
I don’t know if people still give Labor Day speeches about the working men and women who built this great land, but there were two articles written about labor today that ought to boil the blood of every working stiff, whether blue collar, white collar, pink collar, no collar, or whatever. First, Paul Krugman continued …
Disunion, The New York Times’ series on the Civil War which I helped create and worked on, was honored by the New Media Institute with one of its 2011 New Media Awards. This marks the second award for Disunion, which was honored earlier this year by the American Historical Association for Best History Writing on …
Our house, about three hours after rainfall from Hurricane Irene ceased. Photo courtesy of Nadia Lindstrom.
Dennis Kucinich of the far left and Ron Paul of the libertarian right agree: corporations are not people. Kucinich speaks to this issue at around the 3:40 mark.