Trending Topics >>
Saturday, May 18, 2013

Archive

    May 1, 2012

  • When Republicans Eat Their Own

    by Lou Dubose
    Senator Richard Lugar has probably read the script for his current primary campaign in Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservice’s remarkable recent book about the Republican Party’s 50-year descent into extremism. Read »

  • Occupy Occupy?

    by Lou Dubose
    There has been little media coverage of the tension between the Occupy Wall Street movement and the progressive institutions—such as MoveOn.org, the AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers, SEIU, and Rebuild the Dream—that are working together as 99% Spring. Read »
    • April 15, 2012

  • Americans United for Life: Bent on Ending Abortion at All Costs

    by Lou Dubose
    Last month, a woman as single-minded as Inspector Javert again closed in on her adversary. Americans United for Life President and CEO Charmaine Yoest used a PR Newswire press release to announce a whistleblower’s lawsuit alleging Medicaid fraud at a Pl Read »
    • April 15, 2012

  • Politics and “Personhood”

    by Michelle Goldberg
    When American politics was engulfed by a furious debate over contraception earlier this year, many onlookers were puzzled. The 2010 election, which saw sweeping conservative victories at both the state and national level, was fought over economic, not soc Read »
    • April 1, 2012

  • A Glimpse Into Their Gray Matter

    by Jenny Blair
    Reviewed: The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality by Chris Mooney (Wiley, 336 pp., $25.95). When psychologist Martha Stout wanted to illustrate what sociopaths don’t understand about the rest of us Read »

  • Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santorum, and the Pope Walk Into a Room—Your Bedroom

    by Deirdre English
    The battle against Rush Limbaugh yielded a surprising victory against an aggressive misogynist parading as a defender of religion. When Limbaugh excoriated Sandra Fluke for saying Georgetown students shouldn’t have to pay for contraception, the cannons Read »

  • Republicans’ Ultrasound Obsession

    by Lou Dubose
    The national campaign to restrict women’s reproductive rights is being waged on many fronts, but Texas, as always, is the nation’s proving ground for bad public policy. The same transvaginal-ultrasound bill that an outraged public in V Read »

  • Fetal Attraction

    by Lou Dubose
    Rick Santorum represents a Roman Catholicism that was the norm in working-class Northeast parishes in the 1950s, before the Second Vatican Council began moving the Church in the direction of modernity. Santorum has literally dragged the presidential deba Read »
    • March 15, 2012

  • The Real Romney: Faith in His Bones, Politics in His Heart

    by Lou Dubose
    A presidential primary that has come down to a contest between a Mormon and a Roman Catholic puts Mitt Romney at a distinct disadvantage. He has to convince voters that he is a devout Christian — a prerequisite for a Republican candidate — while avoid Read »

  • Saints and Sinners

    by Lou Dubose
    If Mitt Romney would loosen up and speak more openly about his faith, he could lay claim to his spiritual patrimony and increase his support among evangelicals. Evangelicals are traditional marriage absolutists, and defense of marriage is an institutiona Read »
    • March 1, 2012

  • Kitchen Nightmares

    by Jenny Blair
    Reviewed: The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table by Tracie McMillan (Scribner, 284 pp., $25). If you want people to eat healthy, why make it so expensive?” Read »

  • Extremely Loud, Incredibly White, and Targeting the Occupy Movement

    by Lou Dubose
    If politics is show business for ugly people, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference is Broadway for Republicans. It is big audiences and big stages. Last month, 10,000 right-wing activists came to Washington to listen to every Republican nat Read »
    • February 15, 2012

  • Hotheaded, Flat-Footed & Powerful

    by Scott McLemee
    Reviewed: The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work by Belén Fernández (Verso, 240 pp., $16.95). The press enjoys "power without responsibility": So goes Rudyard Kipling's classic coinage. Though meant as a denunciation, Read »

  • Voters’ Fate and the Buckeye State

    by Lou Dubose
    Did the Ohio Legislature almost steal the 2012 election with a law passed in 2011? The past three presidential elections pivoted on voter turnout in Ohio. In 2000, George W. Bush wouldn’t have made it as far as the Supreme Court decision in his favor if Read »

  • How Voter ID Laws Suppress Registration Drives and Block Democratic Votes

    by Lou Dubose
    The movement to save electoral democracy by requiring states to enact voter-identification laws began with a whimper. In 2005, Mark “Thor” Hearne, a lawyer who had worked for the Bush-Cheney political campaign, founded the American Center for Voting R Read »
    • February 1, 2012

  • It’s a Dry Heat (and Getting Hotter)

    by Osha Gray Davidson
    Reviewed: A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest, by William deBuys (Oxford, 384 pp., $27.95). The old saying about Southwestern weather — that it’s a dry heat — describes both a blessing and a curse, Read »

  • Will a Perrymandered State Determine Who Controls the Next Congress?

    by Lou Dubose
    Redistricting is always a blood sport. In 2011, the decennial redrawing of political boundaries in Texas was bloodier than usual. After the 2010 census, the state was awarded four new Congressional seats, to reflect an increase in population. How those se Read »

  • Texas Metastatic

    by Lou Dubose
    The state of Texas has failed in its collateral attack on the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But decisions in three federal courts sorting through redistricting the bills the state’s Republican Legislature passed last year could determine how much protection t Read »
    • January 1, 2012

  • General David Petraeus Said: "Tell Me How This Ends." Now We Have an Answer.

    by Nick Turse
    The only true accomplishment of the entire Iraq mission, it seems, was an exercise in construction and deconstruction unlike any the world has seen In less than nine years, the United States built hundreds and hundreds of self-contained American cities, t Read »

  • Idiot Wind

    by Lou Dubose
    The Republican primary process has served the purpose of winnowing out the Republican party's sideshow candidates. But not before they succeeded in inflicting real harm on the country — in small ways and in much larger ones, such as convincing a segment Read »

Current Issue

Editorial: The Fight for Voting Rights Has Just Begun
By Michael Waldman

As is well known, the 2012 election saw a national drive to restrict the ability to vote. Citizens fought back. By Election Day, almost every harsh new law was blocked, blunted, postponed, or repealed. Count that a true win for democracy. But let’s not be satisfied with just winning defensive f 

Preview »
Letters: 'The earth is doomed'
By Washington Spectator

Warning Ignored Re: “Environmentalism on the Offense for a Change,” The Washington Spectator, March 1. I was a supporter of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for many years. I can no longer support it since I’m now on Social Security. These scientists have been warning u 

Preview »
Inbox: The Leveretts’ Brave Book
By Washington Spectator

The authors of Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, support the Islamic Republic of Iran, a fundamentalist totalitarian regime. Their book (reviewed by Chase Madar in “Obama in Tehran,” March 2013 

Preview »
For Bobby Jindal, April Was the Cruelest Month
By Stephanie Grace

It’s become an article of faith in louisiana that Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal has his eye on a bigger prize. Jindal consistently, if winkingly, denies it. But in Baton Rouge, his national ambition is part of the landscape. That’s worked out fine for the one-time Rhodes Scholar and precocious 

Preview »

Subscribe now for full access to washingtonspectator.org.
Already a subscriber? Log in for full access.

SUBSCRIBE

or

LOG IN

Join the conversation

By A Web Design

Subscribe

83¢ per issue

Our unconscionably low introductory rate includes unlimited access to everything on our site.

Subscribe

Donate

Become a Spectator advocate!

Our independent, in-depth, and principled reporting is 100% reader-supported. We depend on you!

Donate now

 

E-Newsletter

Be current

Enter your e-mail address to be the first to hear about new features, multimedia, events, and Spectator news.

Call to Action

Your Voice Is Needed. 

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence needs your support to help make us a safer nation. 

Get Involved

  • Create an account
    *
    *
    *
    *
    *
    Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required.