Salon.com > The American Prospect http://www.salon.com Fri, 04 Jan 2013 12:45:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Give Obama a break on the “fiscal cliff” http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/give_obama_a_break_on_the_fiscal_cliff/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/give_obama_a_break_on_the_fiscal_cliff/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:58:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13160828 The American Prospect When President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in 1862 (a couple of times, actually), he conceded the possible unconstitutionality of what he had done but concluded that since the move was necessary in a time when half the country was at war with the other half, he would take his chances with Congress, the courts, and history. The country’s current chief executive finds Lincoln comparisons disconcerting, but this is a case where he might pay attention, because his legal grounds for unilaterally raising the ceiling on the national debt in a time of congressionally inflicted crisis are no weaker than Lincoln’s and probably stronger.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/give_obama_a_break_on_the_fiscal_cliff/feed/ 16 The Republican Party is the problem http://www.salon.com/2013/01/02/the_republican_party_is_the_problem/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/02/the_republican_party_is_the_problem/#comments Wed, 02 Jan 2013 19:21:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13159839 The American Prospect After weeks of negotiating, we have a deal on the fiscal cliff, which — in true, congressional fashion — passed hours after the government went “over” the cliff.

The details of the deal are straightforward: Tax rates will rise permanently to Clinton-era levels for families with income over $450,000 and individuals with income over $400,000. For everyone below that ceiling, taxes will remain at Bush-era levels. Likewise, for families and individuals at that income threshold, the taxes on capital gains will rise to 20 percent, while staying at 15 percent for everyone else. Given the financial situation of most Americans — who don’t earn much, if anything, from investments — this is a good move, considering the circumstances.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/02/the_republican_party_is_the_problem/feed/ 11 What happens to a DREAM Act deferred? http://www.salon.com/2012/12/30/what_happens_to_a_dream_act_deferred/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/30/what_happens_to_a_dream_act_deferred/#comments Sun, 30 Dec 2012 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13157374 The American Prospect At first, it looked like 2012 would be another terrible year for immigration reform advocates. Mitt Romney won the Republican presidential primary by adopting a xenophobic, right-wing platform, advocating for policies against immigrants so terrible they led to self-deportation. Meanwhile Barack Obama continued to deport undocumented workers at an unprecedented pace—he’s sent 1.4 million people out of the country through July of this year—and failed to introduce comprehensive legislation, as he’d promised.

A brighter picture is emerging, however. In June, Obama signed an executive order called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which operates like the failed DREAM Act would have. Obama ordered Homeland Security to lay off deportation proceedings against immigrants who came into the country as children and who have completed high school or served in the military. Immigrants who meet those qualifications can now request a reprieve to remain in the country.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/30/what_happens_to_a_dream_act_deferred/feed/ 0 Why are neocons so down on Chuck Hagel? http://www.salon.com/2012/12/29/why_are_neocons_so_down_on_chuck_hagel/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/29/why_are_neocons_so_down_on_chuck_hagel/#comments Sat, 29 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13157197 The American Prospect Back in 1998, Chuck Hagel, who had been Senator from Nebraska for two years, made news by criticizing the tactics of the Republican candidate for governor, Jon Christensen, who was running a negative ad campaign. The biggest threat to the American political system, Hagel said, were those who “debase and degrade the political process by straight-out lies and misleading spots on television. It’s a cancer to our system.” It’s darkly ironic that Hagel himself has faced very similar attacks from hawkish neoconservatives in the weeks since he was named as a likely nominee for secretary of Defense. But while these attacks represent an extremely distasteful side of Washington, it’s worth considering what they intended to achieve, and what they say about the current era of U.S. foreign policy.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/29/why_are_neocons_so_down_on_chuck_hagel/feed/ 26 Prostitution for the price of a happy meal http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/prostitution_for_the_price_of_a_happy_meal/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/prostitution_for_the_price_of_a_happy_meal/#comments Thu, 27 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13155674 The American Prospect Carla walked into my office with despair in her eyes. I was surprised. Carla has been doing well in her four months out of prison; she got off drugs, regained custody of her kids, and even enrolled in a local community college.

Without much prodding she admitted to me that she had retuned to prostitution: “I am putting myself at risk for HIV to get my kids a f---ing happy meal.”

Despite looking high and low for a job, Carla explained, she was still unemployed. Most entry-level jobs felt out of reach with her drug record, but what’s worse, even the state wasn’t willing to throw her a temporary life preserver.

You see, Carla is from one of the 32 states in the country that ban anyone convicted of a drug felony from collecting food stamps. With the release of the Global Burden of Disease Study last week, it bears looking at how we are perpetuating burdens among the most vulnerable Americans with our outdated laws.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/prostitution_for_the_price_of_a_happy_meal/feed/ 14 Is Hollywood stronger than ever? http://www.salon.com/2012/12/26/is_hollywood_stronger_than_ever/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/26/is_hollywood_stronger_than_ever/#comments Wed, 26 Dec 2012 16:47:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13154876 The American Prospect This has been a fertile year for people to lament the decline of movies. In fact, two of the most distinguished critics around—Davids Denby and Thomson—more or less proclaimed in 2012 that the jig was up for film as an art form. Since one of them is 69 and the other is 71,  the "Après nous, le déluge" side of this might strike skeptical readers as a mite self-involved.

Nonetheless, if they're talking about Hollywood's output as opposed to very-much-alive-and-well world cinema, they don't lack for circumstantial evidence. Between endless iterations of durable comic-book franchises and ever dumber, more ineptly made comedies, no wonder lots of people who used to love movies now prefer HBO and Showtime when they want their intelligence massaged. All but the worst hack reviewers dread the paucity of recommendable commercial movies for grown-ups until Thanksgiving's arrival starts coughing up the usual Oscar fodder. And then a lot of the Oscar fodder—e.g., Silver Linings Playbook—just hopes we'll mistake corn for cornsilk.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/26/is_hollywood_stronger_than_ever/feed/ 3 Don’t count Boehner out just yet http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/dont_count_boehner_out_just_yet/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/dont_count_boehner_out_just_yet/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2012 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13152821 The American Prospect The side of John Boehner we understand most is the one that offers a distant sense of comfort — the one who'll pander to the conservative movement during these fiscal-cliff talks but understands a compromise must come through at the end. This is the John Boehner we dub the "dealmaker," the leader who must "stand up” to the Tea Party — and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the rival who would do him in. His “dealmaker” persona stems from the assumption he isn’t a true believer or an aggressively ideological Republican, which is correct.

But it's his other side, the deeply ambitious one, that clouds our ability to predict where the fiscal saga ends. This is the Boehner who clawed his way to the House speakership for over 20 years, a position that his conference may force him out of if he "surrenders" to President Obama in private negotiations.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/dont_count_boehner_out_just_yet/feed/ 5 Wayne LaPierre’s bizarre pop culture references http://www.salon.com/2012/12/21/wayne_lapierres_bizarre_pop_culture_references/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/21/wayne_lapierres_bizarre_pop_culture_references/#comments Fri, 21 Dec 2012 21:48:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13152686 The American Prospect The National Rifle Association has been in a tough spot since the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. As an advocacy group for gun manufacturers and a particular set of gun enthusiasts, it has no interest in new gun-control regulations. But as a powerful political force, it has to say something — otherwise, it’s vulnerable to continued criticism.

This morning, NRA president Wayne LaPierre held a press conference — occasionally interrupted by protesters — in which he explained where the organization stood in light of last week’s violence. But rather than stand behind the modest gun-regulation efforts brewing in Congress or even offer a simple message of condolence, LaPierre decided to go on the offensive, blaming everything from video games, movies, and music — "Natural Born Killers," a 20-year-old film, received a shout out — to Obama’s budget for the proliferation of mass shooters.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/21/wayne_lapierres_bizarre_pop_culture_references/feed/ 46 Better gun control’s biggest obstacle http://www.salon.com/2012/12/19/better_gun_controls_biggest_obstacle/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/19/better_gun_controls_biggest_obstacle/#comments Wed, 19 Dec 2012 14:51:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13149590 The American Prospect The horrific mass killing of elementary schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut has served as another reminded that the United States is an unusually violent country. And the evidence is overwhelming that lax regulations of private firearms plays a major role in this unnecessarily high rate of violent death. And yet, it is very unlikely that any federal legislation will be passed in response to the Newtown killings, let alone regulations comparable to those in other liberal democracies. To many progressives, the reason for this is clear: the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which must be repealed for any real progress to gun control to take place. But to blame the Second Amendment for terrible American gun control policies is highly misleading. The Bill of Rights is not the primary political barrier to better gun control policies, and in any political universe in which repealing the Second Amendment was even thinkable such a repeal would be superfluous.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/19/better_gun_controls_biggest_obstacle/feed/ 31 It’s not the guns, it’s the culture http://www.salon.com/2012/12/18/its_not_the_guns_its_the_culture/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/18/its_not_the_guns_its_the_culture/#comments Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:03:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13148516 The American Prospect Every mass shooting, there’s a brief flare-up of discussion about gun control, followed by an inevitable dropping of the subject as liberals give up hope that anything can be done about guns when conservatives control the discourse so thoroughly. It’s become so predictable that even lamenting the process has in itself become a cliché. The notion that owning semi-automatic assault rifles that can shoot off six rounds a second is a “right” has become so embedded that many people, including our president, have calculated that it’s fruitless to even try to start drafting legislation that would restrict the sale of such weapons. Facing this stalemate, it’s time for gun control advocates to start changing the conversation.

I propose we do this by starting attacking not the guns themselves, but gun culture. And we can start by calling for restrictions on the advertising of guns.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/18/its_not_the_guns_its_the_culture/feed/ 35 Gun owners can’t hurt Democrats http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/gun_owners_cant_hurt_democrats/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/gun_owners_cant_hurt_democrats/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:04:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13147367 The American Prospect The most notable thing to come out of President Obama’s speech last night—eulogizing the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut—was his unambiguous commitment to pursuing new gun regulations in the coming weeks. Granted, he didn’t use the word “gun,” but the implications were clear:

If there’s even one step we can take to save another child or another parent or another town from the grief that’s visited Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek and Newtown and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that, then surely we have an obligation to try.

In the coming weeks, I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens, from law enforcement, to mental health professionals, to parents and educators, in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this, because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine.

Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?

Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/gun_owners_cant_hurt_democrats/feed/ 3 No justice for congressman’s girlfriend-abusing son http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/no_justice_for_congressmans_girlfriend_abusing_son/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/no_justice_for_congressmans_girlfriend_abusing_son/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:07:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13124008 The American Prospect Wednesday afternoon, the news broke across D.C. media and disconcertingly excited right-wing blogs that Patrick Moran, the son of Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, had pled guilty to assaulting his girlfriend of six months. The police report stated that two officers saw Moran grab his girlfriend by the back of the head and smash her head into a metal trash can, breaking her nose and fracturing her skull.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/no_justice_for_congressmans_girlfriend_abusing_son/feed/ 7 Michigan unions won’t lie down http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/michigan_unions_wont_lie_down/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/michigan_unions_wont_lie_down/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:17:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13122713 The American Prospect In Michigan, the birthplace of the labor movement, this week’s abrupt passage of a “right-to-work” law incited the largest protest in Lansing’s history: at least 12,500 people, wearing red, chanting, singing, drumming, committing civil disobedience, and otherwise battling to be heard as lawmakers in a lame-duck session overhauled the state’s labor laws without public input or committee meetings. State house Democrats’ attempts to pass amendments that would, for example, put right-to-work up for a public vote or eliminate the $1 million appropriation seemingly designed so that the law withstands the threat of voter referendum, all failed. That $1 million appropriation is supposed to go toward educating workers and union about life under right-to-work, and, in the budget-strained state, it’s not clear what the source of the money will be.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/michigan_unions_wont_lie_down/feed/ 7 “Zero Dark Thirty” doesn’t celebrate torture! http://www.salon.com/2012/12/11/zero_dark_thirty_doesnt_celebrate_torture/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/11/zero_dark_thirty_doesnt_celebrate_torture/#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2012 21:09:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13121815 The American Prospect Zero Dark Thirty doesn't even come out until next week, but Kathryn Bigelow's much-hailed movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden is already provoking outrage in some quarters for allegedly "glorifying" — OK, sometimes "celebrating" — torture. As all too bloody usual, the loudest howls are coming from people who haven't actually seen ZD30, some of whom — yes, Andrew Sullivan, I mean you — really ought to know better. Ginning up controversies about movies without bothering to watch them first is really more Bill Donohue and the Catholic League's sort of thing, and does Sullivan want to be in that company?

Since plenty of other folks apparently do, I hope you won't mind two cents from a lowly movie critic who admires the hell out of Zero Dark Thirty and isn't exactly big on vindicating Dick Cheney's worldview. There are really two separate arguments here, and people shouldn't confuse the two — though they already have. One is about factual accuracy, and worth taking seriously. The other's about Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal's attitude toward the very grim stuff they show us, which is an appalling thing to just guess at sight unseen.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/11/zero_dark_thirty_doesnt_celebrate_torture/feed/ 13 Split decision on gay marriage? http://www.salon.com/2012/12/10/split_decision_on_gay_marriage/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/10/split_decision_on_gay_marriage/#comments Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:58:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13120375 The American Prospect A shrinking violet the Roberts Court is not. Since the chief justice was confirmed in 2005 promising to call “balls and strikes,” the Court unleashed super PACs in its 2010 Citizens United decision, injected itself into the middle of a presidential campaign by taking on Obamacare earlier this year, and recently heard a case giving it the chance to cut back or end affirmative action. Under Roberts, the Court has a bit of a swagger. Bill Clinton might say they have some brass.

True to form, last Friday the Court agreed to hear two cases that could decide the central civil rights issue of our day: gay marriage. One of the cases concerns the constitutionality of Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for purposes of federal law as between one man and one woman. The second focuses on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the 2008 California referendum that banned gay marriage in that state.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/10/split_decision_on_gay_marriage/feed/ 6 In defense of 2016 speculation http://www.salon.com/2012/12/08/in_defense_of_2016_speculation/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/08/in_defense_of_2016_speculation/#comments Sat, 08 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13119074 The American Prospect Over at The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf mocks the breathless 2016 speculation with a post "gearing up for the 2048 presidential election." It's genuinely funny:

Although it is still early, Mitt Romney, who has 16 grandchildren, is leading among the patriarchs of America's dynastic political families, in part due to the present childlessness of George P. Bush and Chelsea Clinton, whose presence in articles on this subject is an apparent journalistic convention. Starting families now could give the hypothetical grandchildren of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton a head start on the theoretical grandchildren of Barack Obama, whose daughters are years away from having children if they decide to procreate at all.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/08/in_defense_of_2016_speculation/feed/ 10 Will filibuster reform turn the Senate into the House? http://www.salon.com/2012/12/07/will_filibuster_reform_turn_the_senate_into_the_house/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/07/will_filibuster_reform_turn_the_senate_into_the_house/#comments Fri, 07 Dec 2012 15:44:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13118088 The American Prospect Given current proposals for reform, it seems clear the filibuster in some form will survive—at least in the upcoming session of Congress. What the Senate looks like in the long term, however, is still very much up for grabs. One thing is for sure: It can’t continue in its current dysfunction.

The first step in thinking about the fate of the filibuster is to place it in historical context. Filibusters were once a rare occurrence, but as University of Miami professor Greg Koger explains in Filibustering, they increased in two major and important spikes. First, Republicans reacted to the election of Bill Clinton and a unified Democratic government in 1993 by filibustering all major initiatives. Then, Republicans reacted to the election of Barack Obama and another period of unified Democratic government in 2009 by establishing a true 60-vote requirement; passing virtually any bill (and even amendments to those bills) and every nomination now requires a supermajority.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/07/will_filibuster_reform_turn_the_senate_into_the_house/feed/ 11 I was a teenage conservative http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/i_was_a_teenage_conservative/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/i_was_a_teenage_conservative/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:38:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13116973 The American Prospect Barry Goldwater was my first political hero. The most antiauthoritarian figure in mainstream American politics, who said what he thought without giving a damn, he looked and sounded as Western as Arizona, the state he represented in the Senate. Goldwater and John Kennedy hatched plans in the White House—for what they assumed would be their upcoming presidential campaign against each other in 1964—to travel the country in the Arizonan’s small plane that he flew himself, stopping off at airports in the middle of nowhere to debate one issue or another before taking off again. This two-fisted, free-flying persona made Goldwater the kind of politician that film director Howard Hawks might have come up with; by comparison, government couldn’t help appearing soullessly oppressive. Great Society liberalism had become the norm by the mid-1960s, and this reinforced Goldwater’s iconoclasm, striking a politically attuned, insistently nonconformist teenager as utopian, in the same way that Kennedy embodied idealism for so many others of my generation.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/i_was_a_teenage_conservative/feed/ 14 Benjamin Netanyahu: More radical than ever http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/benjamin_netanyahu_more_radical_than_ever/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/benjamin_netanyahu_more_radical_than_ever/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2012 15:55:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13116926 The American Prospect If you haven't seen Moshe Feiglin's satisfied smile or Ze'ev Elkin's scowl in news coverage of Israel over the past week, you have evidence that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be grateful for the U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood: It has diverted attention from his Likud Party's choice of far-right candidates for parliament.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/benjamin_netanyahu_more_radical_than_ever/feed/ 13 More babies won’t save the economy http://www.salon.com/2012/12/05/more_babies_wont_save_the_economy/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/05/more_babies_wont_save_the_economy/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:54:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13115817 The American Prospect Ross Douthat, whose enthusiasm for 19th-century views on sexuality can always be counted on, struck again this weekend with another column addressing his favorite concern, the sadly empty uteruses of America. He was roundly criticized by feminists, including the Prospect's E.J. Graff. He outlined a belief that foolishly letting women decide how many babies they have will lead to American decline. The argument, always claimed to be made more in sorrow than in anger, is that women will simply have to give up on the advantages of limiting child-bearing so that we have enough young people around to take care of us when we’re old.

Douthat calls for an end to our modern, feminist ways, which he calls "decadent." But I would like to offer a better, more humane solution to the problem of a declining future workforce: Instead of simply flooding the market with babies to buoy the economy, why not invest—with public funds, as a community—in the ones we have to get the same results?

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