Mr. DeMint goes to Honduras
Meet Jim DeMint. Mr. DeMint is the junior senator from South Carolina, elected for the first time back in 2004 in one of the less-noticed rightward shifts in the country in the wake of George W....
Author: Sarah Jaffe
Sarah Jaffe is former deputy editor of GlobalComment. She's interested in politics and pop culture, and has a special place in her heart for comics.
Did money kill the public option?
“Democrats kill the public option.” Well, the public option lives beyond the Senate Finance Committee. But that headline should still give chills to anyone who thought that a Democratic...
The G-20, Tea Parties, and the politics of outsiderism
Political protest has always been an outsider's game, a struggle for attention from what tends to be a small group that believes it can win over more people with more visibility. Sometimes it's a...
JUSTICE: surveillance has nothing to do with who is in the White House
The Obama administration might be bogged down in health care fights right now, but another battle looms on the horizon, one that caused problems on the campaign trail and continues to raise hackles...
“You lie!” – You’re shouting it to the wrong U.S. president, Joe
I've been waiting a long time to hear a crowd chanting “You lie!” about the president of the United States. Problem is, they're chanting it at the wrong times and, for the most part, about the...
Obama’s health care speech: bipartisanship as one-way street
The most outstanding characteristic of the Democratic party since the departure of Lyndon Johnson has been its strange fear of being identified with its own progressive base. President Barack Obama...
Health care reform: an extension of the American dream
For a country that relies on the bootstrap myth, the U.S.A. certainly has a health care system that punishes people who attempt to live that way. The self-employed, the small business owner, and most...
From Tolkienites to Warcraft warriors: an interview with Ethan Gilsdorf
Gamers and fantasy fans are often maligned as freaks and geeks, but they also foster close-knit communities that support each other and are wary of outsiders. Writer Ethan Gilsdorf left the gaming...
Levees and lives: New Orleans four years after Hurricane Katrina
Four years. It's a presidential term; it's the length of a high school or college education. It's also the amount of time that has passed now since Hurricane Katrina swept across the Gulf Coast and...
Mourning Ted Kennedy – and picking up reform where he left off
Ted Kennedy was my senator from the time I knew what a senator was. He loomed over Massachusetts politics like no one else ever has or ever will—forty-seven years in the Senate, and fighting until...