No, this is not The Onion. No, this is not a rip-off of The Onion. This is not satire. This is the plea from Iraq’s Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior, Minister of Defense and the Minister of National Security Affairs. All of whom happen to be the same person: Nouri al-Maliki. Iraq is what… Continue reading →

If you’ve fallen into the Internet Age tendency of skimming headlines and tweets instead of reading the entire article, you’d understandably think the new pope is a hippie and the new president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, is a peacenik. (Also: chocolate detects cancer, Oreos are akin to cocaine, and Elizabeth Warren has plans to make… Continue reading →

The President of the United States signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also referred to as ObamaCare, on March 23, 2010. It then became a law. In March 2012, the Supreme Court heard a challenge to ObamaCare, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. On June 28, 2012, in a 5-4 decision, the court upheld… Continue reading →

“[The Bush Tax Cuts] produced a more growth-oriented tax policy for the long term, helping the economy to weather current storms arising in the housing and capital markets,” wrote J.D. Foster Ph.D. for the Heritage Foundation’s site under the title “Make the Tax Cuts Permanent.” That was June, 2008. As Dr. Foster was penning that… Continue reading →

My in-laws, whom I’ve written about in the past, are emblematic of the economic meltdown: They’re both 57 years old””in the doughnut hole of being too young for Medicare, too old for the job market. They worked as middle management in businesses tangentially related to the housing industry. After the crash they were both laid… Continue reading →

I am a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist. My column runs, I’m told, in nearly 90 newspapers each week and it just turned two years old. You might assume this means I went to j-school, started at a paper and worked my way up. You might assume I’m a product of a Washington Think Tank. You… Continue reading →

Are we a nation with a food shortage? No. Are we a nation with hungry people? Yes. Why? Good question. Conservatives used to admit amongst themselves””behind closed doors””that food stamps were a way to keep crime down; a cost-cutting alternative to incarceration which would pacify the hungry masses. That was when conservatives cared about costs,… Continue reading →

In the 2013 New York City Democratic mayoral race, the primary didn’t only look like New York, it looked a lot like America: There was an openly gay woman, an Asian-American, an African-American, a Jewish man and a former activist with a mixed-race family (he’s a 6’5″ white guy). Was it parity with the population?… Continue reading →

Americans believe in science. Generally, most of us have faith in medicine. A majority of Americans, though ever-thinning, tell pollsters they’re religious and yet we’ve reached virtual consensus about going to the hospital when we’re sick. We are, in some cases, obligated by law to seek medical care. Courts have found the denial of medical… Continue reading →

House Speaker John Boehner says Republicans should be judged not on what laws they’ve made but by what laws they’ve repealed. I’d like to offer a brief list of the fallout of the GOP’s existential crisis: 1. “Hitler” The first time I heard someone call the first black president of the United States “Hitler,” I… Continue reading →

You’ve heard the term “slut-shaming.” It’s a tactic used by those fighting to repeal the 20th century. As women make strides for equality, a chorus of antiquities pronounces women who want to work outside the home as promiscuous. Only wanton women would want abortion rights. Loose ladies demand day care. Slut-shaming is even prevalent when… Continue reading →