The Londoner

Birth Control In United States Lost amid the shock and horror of Friday's news was a remarkable op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who should no longer be called a "rising star" of the GOP. He commands attention by virtue of being smart, good at his job, and not a white guy. So it's significant that he chose to use his platform to break ranks with many social conservatives in his party by calling for over-the-counter sales of birth control pills. Of course, Jindal did so by couching his argument in a hyper-partisan defensive posture, lashing out at "Democrats [who] demagogue the contraceptives issue and pretend, during debates about health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth control." Jindal recognizes that the vast majority of Americans support the use of contraception, and that the issue of access to contraception is a loser for Republicans. So he proposes to take the

  S ilence Is Not An Option What will it take? What will it take for a majority of Americans to speak out for a sensible firearms policy in our nation? It will take more than a congresswoman being shot point-blank in the face as she gathers for a town meeting in Arizona. It will take more than a deranged gunman with a hundred-round magazine spraying bullets into a crowded movie theater in Colorado. It will take more t

What the cliff means, and why America’s deficit woes are so intractable WHEN the dust from November 6th’s election settled, the re-elected Barack Obama and the re-elected Republican leaders of Congress had less than two months to avert the “fiscal cliff”, a collection of tax increases and spending cuts scheduled for the beginning of the new year. They proceeded to fritter most of it away by disparaging each other’s offers. When John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, met reporters on December 7th, he moaned, “This isn’t a progress report, because there is no progress to report.” Now, with less than three weeks to go, the pace has at last picked up. Mr Boehner and Mr Obama (pictured above) have talked twice in the past week, and representatives of both have exchanged offers. Publicly they say they are still far apart, but that is to be expected: serious negotiations seldom take place in front of cameras.

Italy’s latest mess has shocked European leaders. But their problems run even deeper THE resignation of Mario Monti as Italy’s prime minister, provoked by Silvio Berlusconi’s attempt to return to power, is worrying Europe’s chancelleries. It again raises questions about Italy’s ability to reform and the capacity of the euro to survive. And it stirs fears of self-serving politicians who incite voters against the European project. Mr Berlusconi’s electoral strategy seems to be to pin Italy’s problems on German-style austerity. Some see hopeful signs amid the dismay. The outcry over Mr Berlusconi’s possible return, they think, demonstrates that Europeans are at last developing an elusive sentiment: a common political consciousness that might serve as the basis for further integration. Just look at the horrified headlines and statements across Europe. “Bunga-bunga comeback” declared Bild , a German tabloid. “The Mummy Returns” shouted the front page

Embattled U.N. envoy Susan Rice is dropping out of the running to be the next secretary of state after months of criticism over her Benghazi comments. “Today, I made the decision that it was the best thing for our country, for the American people that I not continue to be considered by the president for nomination of secretary of state,” Rice told NBC’s Brian Williams. “I didn’t want to see a confirmation process that was very prolonged, very politicized, very distracting and very disruptive because there are so many things we need to get done as a country and the first several months of a second term president’s agenda is really the opportunity to get the crucial things done.” Rice noted that President Obama’s second-term agenda included “comprehensive immigration reform, balanced deficit reduction, job creation.” She added, “And to the extent that my nomination could have delayed or distracted or deflected or maybe even some of these priorities impossible to achieve

Republicans have a major Latino problem, but it didn’t cost them the 2012 election. According to a Fix review of election results, Mitt Romney would have needed to carry as much as 51 percent of the Hispanic vote in order to win the Electoral College — a number no Republican presidential candidate on record has been able to attain and isn’t really within the realm of possibility these days. Latinos did push President Obama over the top in several key states — including Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico and Pennsylvania — that he would have lost without them. (Obama also would have lost the popular vote without Latinos.) But it was a given that Obama was going to win a higher share of their votes; what mattered was the margin. And in order for Romney to have won the presidency, he would have needed to perform far better than any previous Republican presidential candidate. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks to the Hispanic Leadership Network in

AS President Obama approaches his second term, few foreign policies are more in need of reassessment than his stance toward Russia. Recent events have eroded the promise of the “reset” proclaimed in 2009. Its achievements — the New START Treaty, cooperation on Afghanistan and Iran, Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization — have faded, replaced by stubborn differences over Syria, Iran and other high-profile issues amid rising, gratuitously antagonistic rhetoric in both capitals. Obama will now try to reverse this deterioration, perhaps demonstrating some of the “flexibility” he promised Russian leaders earlier this year. Putin, for his part, has talked about giving the relations “a new quality” by adding a strong economic dimension. We may hear talk of a second phase of the reset. There may be more deals of the kind ExxonMobil struck with Rosneft . But glib formulations and major energy projects should not cover up the fundamental cho

It is strange now to recall the jubilation with which the ‘Arab Spring’ was welcomed. Amid all the excitement of dictators toppling, many people here in the West, as well as some over there on the ground, forgot that the test of a revolution is not the overthrow of a tyrant, but what comes next. Though they will never admit it, the Arab revolutions surprised western governments as much as the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe. History is always producing the unexpected, which is why some of us never took it for granted that all this would have a happy ending. Now, almost two years after the Tahrir Square uprising, the fates of the revolutions and the region are at a deadly junction. The West’s swift initial support for the Egyptian rebels was understandable. First, because of the fresh memory of our failure to back the Green reform movement in Iran. But second, because it is just so easy to imagine from a position of comfort that when a dictator falls, a de

Mohammed Morsi may be the president of Egypt, but it's the Muslim Brotherhood that appears to be calling the shots. The Islamist group waited decades for a shot at power in the country and it isn't about to yield without a fight. He calls himself Sharif. He is a young man without a beard who wears a hoodie and athletic shoes. He doesn't look anything like a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but rather like one of those young revolutionaries his men are assaulting with stones, sticks and steel rods. ANZEIGE Sharif says that he hates these liberals and leftists, who began protesting against the Muslim Brotherhood and its president, Mohammed Morsi, after he acquired sweeping new powers through a decree issued in late November. Over the weekend, Morsi moved to rescind that decree, replacing it with a weaker one. But opposition protests have hardly abated as a referendum on the country'

Scarborough says a few things that I almost agree with. I'm a bit astonished at his lack of self-awareness, though. This guy's brand consists almost entirely of being a "bully" (as he terms it) for the northeastern moderate wing of the Republican Party, constantly insulting rivals and millions of voting citizens. I don't begrudge the moderate wing its own bully, but his diagnosis here is so filthy with opportunism and self-interest it's offensive. He got booted off the air because people weren't listening to his radio show and he was losing in the ratings to competitors. And he seems to be doing nothing but trying to get payback for that (for his own failure to connect with an audience) and buffing his own brand. I do not believe all this crap about the Republican Party needing to be more controlled by/influenced by/led by intellectuals to succeed. Let's think about this. Here's what I do believe: I believe Republica

By Steve Benen  -  Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's (R) school voucher scheme has been plagued by a series of problems, culminating in a legal defeat in a state court two weeks ago. But in a Brookings speech yesterday, the Republican governor said he still sees his plan as a national model . "I think there is a moral imperative that it's not right that only wealthy parents get to decide where their kids go to school," Jindal told an audience at Washington's Brookings Institution. [...] "To oppose school choice is to oppose equal opportunity for poor and disadvantaged students in America," he said. "What we are putting in motion in Louisiana can be done across the country." This is certainly standard rhetoric from the right. They're not trying to privatize public schools out of existence, the argument goes, they're simply trying to use tax dollars to provide new opportunities to "poor and dis

I t has largely gone unnoticed amidst the hullabaloo surrounding the fiscal cliff, but regardless of what happens with the cliff negotiations, taxes are going up next year. The president may be calling for $1.6 trillion in tax hikes by 2022 in exchange for not driving the country over the cliff, but that does not count Obamacare, which will impose an additional $1 trillion in new or increased taxes over the next ten years, a big portion of which take effect in 2013. For example, we’ve heard a great deal about President Obama’s demand that taxes go up for individuals earning $200,000 per year or families making more than $250,000. But under Obamacare, those families will already be hit with a 0.9 percent hike in the Medicare payroll tax on earnings over these thresholds starting January 1. Roughly 3 million Americans will end up paying more as a result of this hike, which is projected to raise $86 billion. And while $250,000 per year may seem like a great deal of money t

  Mr. President, it’s unbecoming for a columnist to beg, but since you’ve ruled out “ going constitutional ” on the debt limit, and CEOs won’t flex enough muscle to stop Republicans from using it for blackmail again, I’m down on my knees.  You simply have to enlist the press to generate a roar of protest against GOP hypocrisy and recklessness here — or else doom us to lurching painfully (and pathetically) from “fiscal cliff” to “debt cliff” for months. The good news is this can be done with an investment of a mere five minutes of your time. So here’s a plan. The linchpin of the Republican argument is that the debt limit represents their only leverage to curb your insatiable spending appetites — the only way to deny you a blank check that soaks the nation in debt. “We’re not going to let Obama borrow any more money .... until we fix this country from becoming Greece,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.c) in a typical

Not so many moons ago, President Obama urged us all to "make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds." He Who Heals advocated "a more civil and honest public discourse" in the wake of the January 2011 Tucson massacre. As usual, though, the White House has granted Big Labor bullies a permanent waiver from the lofty edicts it issues to everyone else. This week, menacing union goons unleashed threats, profanity and punches in Michigan, which is now poised to become a "right-to-work" state. Obama met the initial outbreak of violence with the same response he's given to every other union outbreak of violence under his reign: dead silence. On the floor of the Michigan legislature on Tuesday, Democratic state Rep. Douglas Geiss thundered: "We're going to pass something that will undo 100 years of labor relations, and there will be blood. There will be repercussions!" Geiss referenced th