Over furious Republican objections, the House of Representatives passed contempt citations against Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten for their refusal to testify in front of House committees. Republicans threw every procedural tactic in the book to stop the vote, including finally walking out in protest. But tempers really flared when a GOP representative called for a dilatory procedural vote in the middle of a memorial service for Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA). Apparently, House Democrats had called the chamber...

Tennessee State Senator Doug Henry’s lamentation about the state of rape law wins him my “Creeper of the Day” award.

Back in the day, I noted the absurdity of anyone railing on Obama’s “lack of experience” while giving anything but scorn to Rudy Giuliani. Alas, Hizzoner’s brilliant campaign strategy (“1.Lose state after state by resounding margins. 2. ? 3. Victory!”) somehow foundered, so that rule is now moot. However, we have a replacement: neither John McCain nor his supporters get to complain about Obama’s supposed lack of specificity, or his supposed lack of policy...

I don’t think anyone could have foreseen that the Democratic race would remain this close after Super Tuesday. Even with MSNBC calling California for Clinton (with only 15% counted — did we not learn something from Missouri?), it’s difficult to say that anyone truly “won” the day. Clinton, to be sure, won some big-ticket blue states tonight: New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and probably California, plus Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. But even though...

A bill has been introduced in the Maryland legislature to legalize gay marriage. Its passage is hardly-ensured, but it isn’t dead in the water either. If it gets through, Maryland will be the first state to legalize gay marriage strictly through the democratic process — a massive symbolic victory and an important step in the fight for equal rights. Here’s hoping my state comes through.

After delivering the State of the Union response, Kansas Governor and Democratic rising star Kathleen Sebelius will endorse Barack Obama for President. It’s part of an overall good swing of endorsements for Obama, including Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), the highest ranking Latino House member. The latter is particularly significant because Obama has shown some weakness among the Latino vote. But Sebelius is not just a particularly talented Democratic governor, or...

Apropos Suharto’s death, I wish to point again to the post I wrote on the occasion of Augusto Pinochet’s very timely demise. Suharto was a practitioner of genocide. A genocide, it is worth noting, that occurred with the tacit sanction and support of the United States. He was a thug, a dictator, and a criminal, and deserves to be remembered as nothing more.

No immediate link to anything currently in the news, though it does remind me of my Dartmouth L.J. paper. I just wanted to save it for later: The question of how Jews would fit in when cultural and linguistic identity became the basis of citizenship, and the Volksgeist was embodied in a Volksstaat, could be answered in only one of two ways. Either the Jews had to surrender their Jewishness and become good Germans or there would be no place for them. At the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning...

This time, it’s from someone with deep, deep party roots.

The easy response to calls for more “diversity” is to attack it conceptually. But even defenders of diversification have often struggled to precisely articulate what, precisely, their commitment means. What counts as diversity? Do we want make sure we adequately represent everyone’s favorite color? Why are certain types of diversity seemingly more important to its advocates than others? I explore these themes and more in Two Models of Diversity. This is an academic interest of mine,...

Note to CNN: Contrary to popular belief, when faced with a choice between a Black man and a White woman, Black women do not behave like a science-fiction robot and self-destruct due to irresolvable paradox. Rather, just as I am capable of making a rational decision about who I am voting for even though I have so many White boys to choose from (even though I ended up not selecting any of them), Black women are likewise capable of making rational decisions as to their political preferences even though...

On the eve of Martin Luther King Day, Barack Obama spoke on King’s old pulpit at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. His speech was bold, progressive, and necessary: For most of this country’s history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays – on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system. And...

What’s on the browser of yours truly.

A timely reminder from Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez.

Not to get ahead of ourselves, but Obama should seriously consider the Kansas governor as his VP nominee.

Co-blogger T-Steel already offered his take on this subject today, but I wanted to give my own musings on whether and what Obama needs to see regarding his pastor’s praise for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. I do want to briefly digress to note that I think T-Steel’s example of his ex-murderer friend is somewhat in-apt. I certainly agree that T should not be forced to throw his friend under a bus if he ran for office. After all, his friend has rehabilitated, paid his debts, and...

Some recent polling demonstrates what many of us have suspected: it’s the leadership, not the people, who are the barriers to lasting peace with Israel.

When a Republican Governor of South Carolina writes an editorial on race and the Obama campaign that I find stirring, you know you’ve got something good.

Political observers were as stunned as everyone else by Hillary Clinton’s win in New Hampshire, and are struggling the re-establish the frame for the race. Many people thought that Clinton would get major momentum out of New Hampshire, and it certainly didn’t hurt her. She narrowly edged out Obama in Q4 fundraising, got a bevy of positive media coverage (ironically enough, most of which related to voter backlash against the media’s prior sexist coverage), and is looking to reestablish...

(How) can voters legitimately (and illegitimately) take gender issues into account when deciding whether to vote for Hillary Clinton?

The conventional wisdom regarding GOP primaries is that what the establishment wants, the establishment gets. It’s part of what makes it so difficult to believe Mike Huckabee is going anywhere in the primary process, despite his impressive victory in Iowa and his meets-expectations third place in New Hampshire. After all, if there is one candidate this side of Ron Paul the establishment is lined up against, it’s Huckabee. But there’s a kink, as DJW of Lawyers, Guns, and Money points...

I wrote three relatively brief posts so far on the New Hampshire primaries, which I didn’t put up over here. Wasn’t Obama supposed to have a bounce or something? Then why is he locked in a dogfight with Hillary Clinton (and losing it)? Meanwhile, aside from pulling for Obama, I’m rooting for Ron Paul to beat Rudy Giuliani for fourth place on sheer humiliation grounds. And finally, lest the Clintonistas get too excited, be advised that New Hampshire’s college towns have yet...

Cross-Posted to The Debate Link Over at The Plank, Michelle Cottle reports that John McCain is establishing a “truth squad” specifically to counter negative attacks in South Carolina. Can’t say I blame him. Say what you will about McCain, but he was brutally smeared in South Carolina 2000, the worst being “Black baby” calls (McCain has an adopted child from Bangladesh, “unknown” operatives implied that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child). I find...

Cross-posted to The Debate Link I’ve always kind of assumed the deep divisions between (conservative) American Catholics and Evangelicals had mostly healed by now. But maybe that’s due to my stance as an outsider: as a liberal Jew, it’s difficult for me to differentiate between various conservative Christian sects from each other. This also might lead me to pervasively underestimate the amount of anti-Mormon sentiment Mitt Romney faces. He’s conservative (today, anyway)! He’s...

Cross-posted to the Debate Link I like Hillary Clinton. She’s not my favorite candidate, but I’d be quite pleased with her as President. And even when she annoys me (as, like any politician, she does from time to time), I respect her talent, drive and abilities. But the one thing that really pushes me towards Hillary more than anything else is the blind, frothing hatred that is directed at her. It viscerally offends me, and makes me want to stand in her corner on fairness grounds alone....