Politico

The signers include the New America Foundation's Steve Clemons and the Cato Institute's Christopher Preble, political scientists Stephen Walt and John ...

Today, nearly 50 million Americans lack health care coverage, the average American is often one serious illness away from financial ruin and every year nearly 20,000 Americans die because they don't have health insurance.

Yet last week, when President Barack Obama gave a nationally televised news conference to explain his health care policies, he focused on two narrow questions that are defining the health care debate in Washington: "What's in this for me?" and "How does my family stand to benefit from health insurance reform?"… more

As a recent New America Foundation report makes clear, precious little has gone to the productive side of the economy that determines the country's ...

Clinton's speechwriter that day, Ted Widmer, recalled a feeling of sensory overload.

"It was surreal in many ways - just one sensation after the next," he said. "Sweat was pouring out of every pore in my body. ... I was seeing these people do a lion dance with deafening drums. ... I've been at plenty of unmemorable political speeches. This one was carnival-esque and fun."

Although bloody images continue to be replayed on American television, the protests that broke out in Tehran following Iran's presidential election on June 12 are, predictably, dwindling. They are fading because further demonstrations would no longer be about alleged election irregularities but, rather, would be a challenge to the Islamic Republic itself --something only a small minority of the initial protesters support.

Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, the one criticism heard perhaps more than any other from Republicans was about the cult of veneration that had developed around Barack Obama. He was the “second coming,” the Democrats’ “messiah,” a preening “celebrity,” the political ads joked. But the GOP might have been on to something. For Democrats and their ambitious domestic agenda, it’s all about Obama.

Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and “Iran experts” have dismissed Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s reelection Friday, with 62.6 percent of the vote, as fraud.

"We're on the path to socialism in America," or so says the Republican National Committee, which in a special emergency session Wednesday wrestled with a resolution condemning the Democrats' "march to socialism." On the bright side, Republicans backed off a move to rebrand Democrats as a "socialist" party. But it seems the damage has already been done.

However, even the seeming prospect of punch-line status cannot divert Republicans from their current path of political marginalization and self-parody.

He sat down with Len Nichols, an economist at the New America Foundation who is the intellectual force behind the proposal. He met with Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) -- all members who have been passionate in their support of a liberal public plan. He pushed the idea with moderates such as Specter, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Cooper, a sponsor of a bipartisan health care bill that doesn’t include a public plan.