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 […]

George Lakoff's advice for Democrats in Don't Think of An Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate continues to be the focus of much discussion within the left-of-center blogosphere. In the last week, while Perrspectives took Lakoff to task, Matthew Yglesias praised Democratic efforts to stop President Bush on Social Security as an example […]

Sometimes you just have to give credit where credit is due. Like Chauncey Gardner in Being There, right now everything in the Middle East seems to be coming up roses for George W. Bush - and the United States. But like Chauncey, Bush the born-again democratic idealist has a series of happy accidents to thank […]

The grim legacy of Strom Thurmond seems to grow darker every day. A recently released 1965 FBI memo shows that segregationist Thurmond pressed the agency to go after civil rights leader Martin Luther King, who he deemed "controlled by communists." The FBI released the memo and 600 pages of other materials in its Thurmond file […]

In the wake of November?s disaster for Democrats, liberals and progressives of all stripes have been seeking guidance and comfort in the work of cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff. All the rage among Democrats, his book Don?t Think of An Elephant has introduced the term ?framing? into the daily lexicon of political animals. For […]