White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs showed poor press management skills in handling the whole Shirley Sherrod saga. He allowed the media frame to shift quickly to the missteps of the administration rather than emphasizing the underhanded, contrived, and racist actions of Andrew Breitbart and his fellow travelers at Fox News.
Instead of explaining to the… »
In an article in today’s New York Times, “Senate Records Show Doubts on ‘64 Vietnam War Crisis,” senior national security correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller writes: “Even at the time, there was widespread skepticism about the Gulf of Tonkin incident . . . ”
Wait a minute! … »
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently submitted a “budget” to the legislature that eliminates CalWORKS, the state’s highly successful welfare-to-work program that is needed now more than ever. This move would make California the only state in the nation to dismantle its safety net. He’s even… »
In her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, Diane Ravitch, who was a devotee of No Child… »
After nine years of war the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan lacks support at home and is widely recognized as a drain on the domestic economy in a time of severe… »
In a recent piece in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, titled “Against Despair: How Our Misreading of History Harms Progressivism Today,” Michael Tomasky notes how The Huffington Post sometimes evokes… »