Latest posts
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Democrats End a 43-Day Shutdown by Arguing Over the Debris

There are many ways to end a government shutdown. You can compromise. You can capitulate. Or, if you are the Democratic Party, you can split into factions and hold a family intervention in the middle of a burning building. The forty-three-day shutdown ended the way every American civics textbook secretly dreams: not with a unifying
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Islam Isn’t Violent: State Sponsored Religion Is Violent

THE GOSPEL OF SELECTIVE OUTRAGE AND OTHER HOLY TRADITIONS WE PRETEND NOT TO NOTICE Religious superiority is the type of moral panic that spreads through America like pollen in spring, coating every surface, irritating every conversation, and triggering sneezes of self righteousness that echo for miles. The current strain is Islamophobia, a recycled political contagion
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BBC Without a Head: A Public Broadcaster Tries to Walk a Tightrope While the Rope Is on Fire

There is a particular sound the British establishment makes when something goes wrong. It is not a gasp, or a groan, or even the gentle clatter of a teacup as it trembles in the saucer of constitutional decorum. It is the muffled thud of two top executives leaping overboard at the same time, followed by
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Health Accounts Are Not Health Care, They Are Just Thoughts And Prayers If You Get Sick

When politicians hand you a debit card instead of a health system, and call it innovation There is a special place in the American imagination where problems do not need solutions, they only need branding. Bridges do not need maintenance, they need ribbon cuttings. Schools do not need funding, they need mascots. And health care
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The Parliamentarian of My Heart: Crying at the AIDS Memorial While Nancy Pelosi Retires from Saving the Republic

A farewell love letter to the woman who governed like a mother of five who never had time for your nonsense I start this story the way all sensible political elegies should start: on my knees at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco, crying hard enough that a tourist couple asked whether I
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Democrats Tuesday Night Lesson: The Cure For Whisper Politics

If Democrats want to govern, they have to stop apologizing for oxygen, pick fights they can win in public, scrap the procedural choke points on purpose, and brag until the story sticks. There is a certain sound to a party that does not trust itself. It is crisp, consultative, and terrified of verbs. You can



