Among her legacies, Russian Empress Catherine the Great brought the term "Potemkin Village" into the vernacular. It refers to the elaborate villages erected by Russian minister Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin to impress Catherine with her new Crimean conquests. In today's political parlance, the term has become synonymous with the sophisticated facade and the clever ruse - […]

As expected, the President's commission on pre-war intelligence regarding Iraqi's weapons of mass destruction offers a scathing critique of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. (The full report and other commission background can be found here; other Iraq/WMD documents are also available in the Perrspectives Document Library.) Also as expected, the report essentially absolved […]

For those who have been following Perrspectives' take on the Schiavo affair, my defense of individual liberty and personal autonomy can be found in the March 28th Op Ed section of The Oregonian: "Liberty and the Culture of Living" You can also read the full text below.

In recent days, criticism has unfairly rained down on House majority leader Tom Delay for supposedly comparing himself to Jesus. As Delay put it in his own defense, "people hate the messenger. That's why they killed Christ." On this Easter Sunday, it is worth noting that the similarities between Jesus and Tom Delay are striking: […]

As the Terri Schiavo tragedy continues, we've learned that most Americans believe that these complex, deeply private end-of-life decisions should be made by families, not the government. What we've also learned that is that one of the Americans who apparently feels that way is none other than Tom Delay. The Los Angeles Times reports that […]

The political clash over the tragedy of Terri Schiavo is highlighting once again the Achilles Heel of the conservative movement. Dormant for two presidential elections, the yawning chasm between economic and social conservatives is reemerging, and with it, a serious threat to the Republicans' majority status. As we've noted before, the ascendancy of the Right […]

Three critical points have been almost entirely absent from the media's discussion of the Terri Schiavo affair. I've written about two and others in the blogosphere have done a great job addressing the third: 1. Moral Arguments Favoring the End of Life Support A thorough discussion of the very strong moral arguments in favor of […]

Perrspectives is pleased to announced the expansion of its Resource Center. It offers Democrats, liberals and progressives of all stripes one-stop shopping for political news, polls, columnists, blogs, publications, think tanks, and other organizations. Perrspectives' Resources also include extensive online sources for budget, demographic, economic and electoral data. New additions include: Expanded library of demographic […]

On Monday, San Francisco County Superior Judge Richard Cramer ruled in favor of the city of San Francisco and a dozen same-sex couples, stating that withholding marriage licenses from gays and lesbians is unconstitutional. While this is but one positive step forward in the struggle for equal marriage rights for all Americans, it is clear […]

These are pretty heady days for the White House and its fellow travelers. In Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Ukraine, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia, movements for popular, democratic change seem to rule the day. The wisdom, rightness and prescience of the Bush Doctrine, they say, have been vindicated. In triumphant and self-congratulatory tones, the President and […]