Of all of the Republicans' manufactured controversies during the Obama presidency, one less-remembered episode may be the most telling of all. Unable to prevent three-fifths of the Senate from voting to confirm Elena Kagan as the newest Supreme Court Justice, Republican in May 2010 denounced Obama's nominee for declaring that the Founding Fathers' three-fifths of […]

As the Confederate flag is coming down, calls for states to nullify federal laws are going up. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton advised county clerks, magistrates and justices of the peace they may opt-out of performing same-sex marriages the United States Supreme Court legalized nationwide on Friday. As it turns out, Paxton isn't just […]

From its inception, America's history has often been the product of the changing balance between compelling but conflicting national ideals. The federal versus the state, "rugged individualism" versus collective action for the public good, the separation of church and state, and isolationism versus crusading globalism are just some of the pendulum swings that have defined--and […]

If nothing else, the Republican Party is an irony producing machine. In the very week that some GOP leaders reversed course on displaying the Confederate battle flag in the wake of the Charleston slaughter, the party's best and brightest protested that the Supreme Court's decision in the King v. Burwell was its "worst since Dred […]

In April, the Tennessee legislature offered a unique moment of clarity regarding women's access to abortion services. As the Senate debated GOP proposals to institute 48 hour waiting periods and regulate abortion providers like hospitals or ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs), Democrat Sara Kyle asked: "Here you're putting all this burden on a woman. Why don't […]

Over the past several days, two stories have highlighted the critical condition state of American public education. As the New York Times detailed, K12 school budgets in over 30 states have yet to return to their pre-recession, 2008 levels. Of the seven with the deepest reductions, six--Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Wisconsin--made matters […]

From the very beginning of the debate over what would become the Affordable Care Act, the conservative crusade to kill health care reform has been defined by an inescapable irony. For years, health care has been worst in those reddest of states where Republicans poll best. Study after study has shown that red state health […]

As the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination heats up, one name keeps popping up as the GOP's go-to guy on poverty, economic inequality and social policy. "My views on this were shaped a lot on this by Charles Murray's book," Jeb Bush recently proclaimed, adding. "I like Charles Murray books to be honest […]

Over the past few years, two topics have come to dominate the discourse about religion in America. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act and especially the rapid acceptance of marriage equality have prompted social conservatives to decry the supposed threat to "religious liberty." At the same time, the rise of "the Nones"--the growing numbers […]

Tuesday, April 28, 2015 may go down as a watershed moment in the history of American civil rights. At the Supreme Court, the justices heard oral arguments in a set of cases which may decide whether or not all Americans have an equal right to marry. Less than 50 miles away in Baltimore, demonstrators are […]