While the world (Israel and the U.S. in particular) waits to see if Tehran is sincere in its overtures regarding nuclear weapons, let’s take a moment to recall that we won this war 10 years ago until Dick Cheney decided that the victory was unacceptable. Jake Bernstein and I turned this up while working […]

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The federal income tax this week turns a century old. On October 3, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the first modern federal tax on income. John Buenker has been writing about the events—and attitudes—that led to that signing for a good bit of the last 50 years. His 1985 book, The Income Tax […]

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  A year after superstorm sandy crashed into the heart of the Northeast, two things are clear. One, climate change is here, its costs are already high, and they are likely to climb higher soon. Two, political leaders in the region have shown that there is an alternative to head-in-the-sand denialism—namely, taking forward-looking steps to […]

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Much of the American Southwest is in its second decade of a sustained drought, accompanied by declining water supplies, intense forest fires, and heat waves. Scientists and citizens are increasingly concerned that this is the onset of global warming in the region. Our recent Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States brought together […]

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Republican strategists have warned members of Congress to avoid anti-science statements on climate change. Denying the near-universal conclusion in the scientific community—that human activity is altering the climate—plays well in red states and conservative House districts. But at the national level it’s toxic, and Republicans risk losing a generation of voters. Yet the Republicans California […]

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