One of the problems with coverage of terrorism and anti-terrorist stings today is that there’s never enough attention given to the Muslim groups that denounce the attacks. When someone of Muslim descent is arrested for terrorism the reporting rarely includes Muslim advocacy groups (which, alas, I fear I need to stress have no link to [...]

It’s incredibly hard to write about gender in a way that causes people not only to reexamine their assumptions in an intellectual sense, but how take a hard look at how those assumptions shape their behavior in their personal lives. If my conversations with friends are any indication, this post from Tiger Beatdown, called “13 [...]

I’m late to the party on this, but as you can probably guess from my earlier litblogging it’s really difficult for me to pass up an opportunity to be a tremendous book nerd. With that in mind, here are ten books that had an enormous influence on me, presented in the order in which I [...]

Imagine I’m a contractor at Boeing or Lockheed Martin. (This might be easier if you picture me with a Snidely Whiplash mustache.) My sights, as is traditional, are trained on the DoD. The political landscape looks pretty bad from here: a massive budget deficit, a public pretty well convinced that money needs to be spent [...]

As a secular Jew and red-state refugee — or, if you will, a godless coastal elitist — I tend to value chosen loyalties over unchosen ones. The two biggest exceptions to this are family and sports, and in my case the latter is intertwined with the former. I inherited my Yankees fandom from my New [...]

I’d like everyone to take a moment to savor the fact that the guy who wants to grant the president the power to throw anyone he wants in the Tower of London for absolutely any reason thinks that recess appointments are an unconscionable abuse of power.

Taegen Goddard points to a recent Washington Post/ABC News Poll which found the enthusiasm gap has closed. My question is, will Democrats become more enthusiastic after the much more broadly popular financial reform is passed?

It looks like a handful of Democratic senators finally want to take a shot at reforming the world’s unwieldiest deliberative body. Good luck, guys! Of course, it’s going to be profoundly difficult, and I think the response from Robert Byrd–quoted in the article–is a perfect illustration of why: “Extended deliberation and debate — when employed [...]

Regarding one of my earlier posts, commenter TalkingStick writes: Neither side has a coherent ideology nor particular skill in organizing enduring cohesive groups. That’a the problem. We have become a culture of bowling alone. The first group that comes up with a way to positively engage community will have a winner. This, conveniently, is related [...]

There’s a tendency among iPod or iPhone users to scoff at the notion that a news app might actually be worth paying money for. No reason to spend a few bucks on a subscription each month when you can easily go online on your phone and find the news that way. On the other side [...]