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For the first time, according to Gallup's latest tracking poll, less than fifty percent of Americans approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as President. That's down from 60% in July. As Greg Sargent says, this just confirms what Quinnipiac and Fox polls showed earlier in the week. And Obama's approval ratings have been hovering just over 50% for a while now. While there is not… Read More
November 20, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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In the 1960s, the world seemed on the verge of a global food crisis, as the population grew faster than the food supply. As I wrote last week, thanks largely to a suite of technologies known as "the Green Revolution"—which combined high-yielding varieties of wheat, rice, and corn with the intensive use of irrigation, fertilizer, and pesticides—grain production more than doubled in the developing world and the global food crisis never materialized. But the prospect of worldwide food shorta… Read More
November 18, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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The Problem of the Guantanamo Detainees
The Obama administration is finally getting serious about closing Guantanamo. The main obstacle to closing the military prison has always been that it wasn't clear where to put the approximately 200 detainees still being held there. But now the administration has floated the possibility that it might move them to American soil. Last week, a delegation from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons inspected a state-of-the-art maximum security prison in Thomson, Illinois, a depressed town of 600 near the Iowa b… Read More
November 18, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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Don't Count on Technology to Save Us
In 1968, a highly-respected population biologist at Stanford named Paul Ehrlich published a best-selling book called "The Population Bomb," warning of global famine as the global population grew faster than the world's food supply. The growing population, he argued, would put such a strain on the world's resources that we were on the verge of "a genuine age of scarcity." He was famously challenged by a professor at a business school named Julian Simon, who bet him that not only were we not on the verge of an age of scarcity, but that over the course of a decade, commodity prices would a… Read More
November 14, 2009 | In Environment
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The Downside of the Public Option
In what was a remarkable turnaround—and a huge victory for progressives—last week, the House of Representatives passed a health care reform bill that includes a provision for a government-run program, which would compete with private health insurance plans. The Democrats managed to include the provision for a "public option" in spite of the fact that 39 Democrats and all but one Republican voted against it. President Obama ultimately campaigned hard for the provision, telling Democratic lawmakers tha… Read More
November 13, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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The Myth of a Post-Racial Society
There's no question that we've come along way in the way we perceive race. So far, in fact, that we elected a black man to the highest office in the country last November—something that would have been unthinkable just thirty years earlier. Perhaps nothing captures the distance we've come better than the indelible image of Jesse Jackson—himself once a candidate for the Presidency—shedding a tear during Barack Obama's acceptance speech. Read More
November 13, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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Better Safe Than Sorry When It Comes to BPA
Last week, I wrote about the dangers of waiting until the chemicals we are exposed to are conclusively proven to be dangerous before regulating them, especially when most studies on their effects are sponsored by the industries that use them. This is particularly important in light of a new study that found a chemical called bisphenol A (BPA)—which has been provisionally link… Read More
November 11, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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But the Chemical Industry Says It's Safe
Bisphenol A—generally known as BPA—is an organic compound used in the manufacture of plastics. It's also what's known as an endocrine disruptor. Because it's chemically similar to our own hormones, it can interfere with our bodies' development and metabolism, potentially with serious consequences. In particular, BPA appears to function as a xenoestrogen—that is, it acts like estrogen on certain parts of the human body. For that reason, some scientists worry that it may affect the brain development of fetuses and infants. It may be one factor behind the increasing incid… Read More
November 7, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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Why Calls for Unity Often Fail
In a special election Tuesday, Democrat Bill Owens won a seat in upstate New York that the Republicans had controlled since 1872. And if the Republican party had been able to unite behind a single candidate they would likely still control it. While local officials had nominated a relative moderate in Dede Scozzafava, conservatives in the national party—including, most visibly, Sarah Palin—backed the more conservative Doug Hoffman, Read More
November 6, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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Has the Republican Backlash Begun?
On Tuesday—on the anniversary of President Obama's election—Republicans won significant victories in a handful of off-year elections around the country. In particular, they won both open governor seats. In Virginia, Republican Bob McConnell beat Democrat Creigh Deeds by a whopping seventeen points. In New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie beat Democrat Jon Corzine by a smaller, but still comfortable margin. Maine voters, meanwhile, passed Question 1, overturning a state law allowing same-sex couples to marry. All of which prompted Charles Krauthammer to Read More
November 5, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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In 2005, The New York Times revealed that under a presidential order signed in 2002, the National Security Agency (NSA) had been monitoring the phone calls, e-mails, and internet traffic of a large number of American citizens without obtaining warrants. With the secret cooperation of AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth—one company, Qwest, refused to cooperate when the government wouldn't produce any legal authorization for the program—the NSA Read More
November 3, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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In 2006 incumbent Connecticut Senator—and former Vice Presidential candidate—Joe Lieberman lost in the Democratic primaries to Ned Lamont, a relative unknown who had challenged Lieberman's support of the Patriot Act and the Iraq war. Unwilling to accept the results, Lieberman ran in the general election as an independent against his old party's own candidate, explaining that he was doing so not out of personal ambition but out of loyalty to his state, to his country, and—implausibly—to the Democratic Party. He managed to win re-election to the Senate in spite of … Read More
October 31, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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Political Contests as Dominance Struggles
Perhaps it's not surprising that people take political results personally. We come to identify with our favored candidate—and sometimes to revile their opponent. When our party wins, we are elated; we it loses, we become dejected. Now a group of researchers has discovered that election results actually have a real physiological effect on us. Analyzing the saliva of voters on election night in 2008, they found that the testosterone levels of men who voted for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) fell by more than 25… Read More
October 31, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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The Only Thing Dumber Than a Republican or a Democrat
Politicians like to brag about having passed their bills with bipartisan support. It shows that they are willing cooperate with their political opponents and that they are—at least superficially—more concerned with the good of the country than with winning partisan victories. And it's a strategy that appeals to those crucial independent swing voters. That's why it was such big news when Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) crossed party lines a couple of weeks ago by voting to approve the Democrats' health-care reform package—even though the Democrats had enough votes to move it … Read More
October 30, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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The New Realism in American Politics
“If someone tells you he is going to make ‘a realistic decision,’” Mary McCarthy wrote, “you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.” Calling a course of action "realistic" is, of course, a rhetorical strategy. Everyone, after all, thinks they're being realistic. You make a point out of how realistic you are being only if you're proposing something others are likely to find objectionable. When you say you're being realistic, what you're really saying is that objecting to your plan—or even imagining that there could be ot… Read More
October 29, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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Who Will Control the Internet?
Federal Communications Commission Chair Julius Genachowski called this week for the agency to formally adopt a set of rules governing access to the Internet. The proposed rules are meant to ensure "net neutrality" by preventing broadband providers from giving preferential access to certain customers or restricting competition. The principle that the everyone should have equal access to communications networks because they are a public good goes back at least to Read More
October 23, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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Is Being a Woman a Pre-Existing Condition?
As I wrote yesterday, momentum continues to build in Washington for a health-care reform that includes a provision for a government-sponsored program which would compete with private insurance companies. Greg Sargent highlights a telling new Rasmussen Read More
October 22, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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Can the Public Option Make a Miracle Recovery?
After hearing for months that the so-called “public option” was dead, it looks like it might yet make a miracle recovery. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid finally seem to be putting pressure on Congressional Democrats to include a public option. The reason is simple: the idea a government-run health-care plan is increasingly popular. Read More
October 21, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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Before arriving in New England in 1630, John Winthrop famously told his shipmates that their colony would be like “a city upon hill.” Evoking a passage from the Sermon on the Mount, Winthrop told them that they must be an example for all to see. The world would be watching to see how the American social experiment would turn out. Whether it succeeded or failed, it would serve as a example for those who would follow. Read More
October 19, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
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Republican Party Ideas 404 Not Found
As part of its effort to reinvent itself, the Republican National Committee launched a completely redesigned website earlier in the week. The problem is not so much that the website is laughably buggy. Although it certainly was buggy. Not only did it crash during the conference call announcing the launch, but when it launched the "Future Leaders" page was blank, pro… Read More
October 17, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
I lecture and write about politics and philosophy. I hold degrees in politics from Harvard and Berkeley, and have studied complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Other interests include theoretical physics, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and the game of go.