<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[The New Republic Politics]]></title><link>http://thenewrepublic/politics</link><description><![CDATA[]]></description><language>en-ca</language><copyright>(c) CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.</copyright><managingEditor></managingEditor><lastBuildDate>Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:56:45 GMT</lastBuildDate><category></category><generator></generator><item><title><![CDATA[The Lost Lincoln: Who He Really Was, And Why We Need To Rediscover Him]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2634954a-b287-480e-9fbd-8a4663174031</link><author>Sean Wilentz</author><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The past three generations of historians have agreed that Abraham Lincoln was probably the best president in American history and that Franklin Pierce was one of the worst. Pierce, a New Hampshire Democrat, gave political cover to fractious slaveholders and their violent supporters in the 1850s. His softness on the slavery issue encouraged the southern truculence that later led to secession and the formation of the Confederacy. Apart from their closeness in age--the bicentennial of Pierce's birth passed virtually unnoticed four and a half years ago--about the only things that he and Lincoln had in common were their preoccupation with politics and their success in reaching the White House.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-03:story.html?id=2634954a-b287-480e-9fbd-8a4663174031&amp;k=19040</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNR's Founding Fathers Spectacular: Wood On Washington! Schlesinger On Adams And Hamilton! Wilentz On Jefferson! And Much More…]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2400801b-2f41-40bf-ab1a-6a7cb8c39120</link><author></author><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Throughout its 95-year history, The New Republic has featured the work of countless renowned historians on America's founding fathers. For the Fourth of July, we dug up our best book reviews, historical essays, and mini-biographies on the founders. Here are some of the highlights:]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-03:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2400801b-2f41-40bf-ab1a-6a7cb8c39120</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How The Iraq War Clouded Obama's Judgment On Iran]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f115ae8a-4910-433a-8155-1233c7858ce9</link><author>Nader Mousavizadeh</author><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In the affairs of states, lessons are often learned too late or too well. Faced with unexpected crises and unwelcome demands for prompt decision- making, governments think by analogy. And they are invariably keen to demonstrate that they have learned from their--or, more conveniently, their predecessors'--mistakes.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-03:story.html?id=f115ae8a-4910-433a-8155-1233c7858ce9&amp;k=37384</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Afghanistan's Ambassador On His Country's Big Challenges, From A Thriving Poppy Trade To Legalized Marital Rape]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/07/02/tnrtv-afghan-ambassador-on-his-country-s-big-challenges.aspx</link><author>Said Jawad</author><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In the second part of a TNRtv series on Afghanistan, Ambassador to the United States Said Tayeb Jawad addresses some of his country's most pressing challenges: a thriving poppy trade, the need for a greater Afghan lobbying presence in Washington, and the controversial law signed by President Karzai earlier this year that legalizes marital rape.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-03:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/07/02/tnrtv-afghan-ambassador-on-his-country-s-big-challenges.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Congress 2.0: It's 2009--Isn't It Time We Allow Senators Incapable Of Making It To Washington To Vote From Home?]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2fa5f195-4dd6-44d0-813c-4a2c3dfbeb73</link><author>Jason Zengerle</author><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The news that Al Franken is finally going to the Senate has prompted all sorts of musing about the Democrats' new supermajority. But, in fact, the Democrats don't have 60 votes--and it's not even the fault of Independent Joe Lieberman, who's actually been a relatively loyal Democrat of late. No, the real impediments to Senate Democrats achieving a supermajority are staph infection and brain cancer.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-02:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2fa5f195-4dd6-44d0-813c-4a2c3dfbeb73</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why A Half-Assed Climate Bill Is Probably Worth Supporting]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/07/01/why-even-a-half-ass-climate-bill-worth-supporting.aspx</link><author>Bradford Plumer</author><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Among people who think we need strong, rapid action to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and avoid dangerous climate change—and I'm one of them—there's been a great deal of hand-wringing over whether or not to support the House climate and energy bill, which is now cruising on over to the Senate.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-02:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/07/01/why-even-a-half-ass-climate-bill-worth-supporting.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Resignations, Frustrations, And 180 Degree Changes Of Opinion At DC's Most Controversial Publication]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/07/01/politico-s-darkening-clouds.aspx</link><author>Gabriel Sherman</author><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair, the magazine's media critic Michael Wolff writes a surprisingly positive 3400-word column about Politico. Not everyone shares this glowing assessment of the web-print startup. Last month, Politico’s chief foreign policy writer David Cloud resigned after only six months on the job. “It wasn't a good fit for me,” Cloud told me by phone this afternoon. Cloud joined Politico in January. In making the announcement, Politico’s top editors John Harris and Jim VandeHei stressed that Cloud’s hiring represented Politico’s commitment to broadening its coverage outside the horse race of Beltway politics. “David's hiring is part of our ongoing effort to expand coverage of Washington governance, the new administration and national defense,” they wrote in a staff memo on January 14.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-02:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/07/01/politico-s-darkening-clouds.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[In Praise Of The Congressmen Who Put Their Careers On The Line Last Friday]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=0d607c6e-3246-42f4-8ff3-f29d2c2f8333</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON--Hours before the House passed its cap-and-trade bill last week, freshman Democrats Tom Perriello and Frank Kratovil were pondering the political fallout of the votes they were about to cast in favor of a plan Republicans were denouncing as "cap-and-tax."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-02:story.html?id=0d607c6e-3246-42f4-8ff3-f29d2c2f8333&amp;k=8734</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Should We Expect Even More Adventurism From A Weaker Tehran?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/07/01/tnrtv-even-more-adventurism-from-a-weaker-tehran.aspx</link><author>Afshin Molavi</author><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In the second part of a TNRtv series on Iran, Afshin Molavi, fellow at The New America Foundation and author of The Soul of Iran: A Nation's Journey To Freedom, warns that a weaker Tehran may actually mean a more aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-02:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/07/01/tnrtv-even-more-adventurism-from-a-weaker-tehran.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Getting Hosed: Is The Supreme Court Justifying Discrimination?]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=9397f7b8-cafb-4fff-b420-a64f28b4281d</link><author>Drew Westen</author><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Suppose I were a psychologist charged with helping a city identify the best candidates to lead their fellow firefighters into burning buildings and save lives. It isn't practical to observe every applicant for weeks on the job, so I might try to design some kind of real-life setting analogous to leading a team of firefighters, in which we could gauge people's performance relatively objectively. So suppose I set up a "field day," in which colleagues and I rate all of the candidates for promotion as they perform in a series of demanding tasks that require physical ability, mental flexibility, and leadership skills. I could put them onto teams and watch them play, say, basketball and football, so colleagues and I could observe not only how they move and how well they respond in a physically demanding situation, but most importantly, who shows leadership on the court or the field and commands the respect of the other players. It wouldn't be a perfect proxy for firefighting skill and leadership, but it wouldn't be a bad one, either.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-01:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=9397f7b8-cafb-4fff-b420-a64f28b4281d</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Afraid Of The Public Option? This Is What America's Health Care Will Look Like Without It.]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=766502dd-9970-40e2-bf64-11b05c5577de</link><author>Jacob Hacker and Rahul Rajkumar</author><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The issue sucking up the oxygen in Washington today is whether to have a public health insurance plan compete with private insurers for the business of Americans without secure workplace coverage. Americans overwhelmingly back the idea, President Obama strongly supports it, and House Democratic leaders have drafted legislation that shows how it can be done. But the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies and some medical provider groups have cried foul, and they have found a receptive ear not just among Republicans but also some Democrats who demand that reform be bipartisan, even if they have to cut the heart out of it.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-01:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=766502dd-9970-40e2-bf64-11b05c5577de</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Finding False Comfort In Numbers: The Problem With Ranking Failed States]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/30/failed-states.aspx</link><author>Richard Just</author><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[I spent some time yesterday and today trying to figure out Foreign Policy magazine's ranking of failed states. Somalia, Zimbabwe, and Sudan got first, second, and third place--no surprises there. But what initially piqued my interest was the high ranking given to Kenya, a country where I just spent two weeks (on a trip sponsored by the International Reporting Project, based at Johns Hopkins). Kenya placed 14th in the study--higher than totalitarian states like North Korea and Equatorial Guinea, on the one hand, and also higher than countries like Sri Lanka (which recently concluded a bloody civil war) and Lebanon (which seems to be ever on the brink of another one). And it was just one spot below Burma (which, in addition to being a totalitarian state, is host to an ongoing ethnic insurgency). This struck me as odd.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-01:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/30/failed-states.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Next Month, There's Supposed To Be A Vote On America's Presence In Iraq. Good Thing It's Probably Not Going To Happen.]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/30/out-of-iraq-sort-of.aspx</link><author>Michael Crowley</author><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The official exit of American soldiers from Iraqi cities makes this a happy day for the Iraqis, but I'd call their public jubilation--which has included promises of "feasts and festivals"--a little premature. While the U.S. has withdrawn its troop presence from Iraqi cities, 130,000 American soldiers (plus an untold number of security contractors) still operate in the country. Most of those troops will remain for at least another year, tens of thousands more will probably stay for another 18 months or so. The story isn't over yet, then--particularly, as Tom Ricks notes, because Iraq's political system remains extremely vulnerable.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-01:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/30/out-of-iraq-sort-of.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Why Obama Should Back the Honduran President]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/30/tnrtv-why-i-support-an-authoritarian-honduran-president.aspx</link><author>Alvaro Vargas Llosa</author><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Alvaro Vargas Llosa, senior fellow at the Independent Institute and author of Lessons from the Poor, dishes on the latest news out of Latin America: a precarious situation for Honduras, an opportunistic leader in Venezuela, and a new era for Argentine politics.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-01:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/30/tnrtv-why-i-support-an-authoritarian-honduran-president.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The John Roberts Method: How The Court Is Patiently Bending Law To The Right]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=8a2b426c-7177-475d-b825-ad393652e9cf</link><author>Tom Goldstein</author><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[It's always perilous to try and generalize about a Supreme Court Term. Roughly 80 cases on diverse topics decided by 9 different people don't collectively produce clear themes. When they do appear to, it's often a mirage that reflects the coincidence of cases that happen to fall together by chance within a single term.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-07-01:story.html?id=8a2b426c-7177-475d-b825-ad393652e9cf&amp;k=5151</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Obama's Learning Curve: When Will The Realist Start Getting Real?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=11e5e7d3-e378-4276-928c-3b80132221b3</link><author>Leon Wieseltier</author><pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[On a rainy day in 1993, I sat with my parents at the opening ceremonies of the Holocaust Museum and heard President Clinton, who was doing nothing to stop the genocide in Bosnia, suggest that the genocide in Bosnia must be stopped, because never again can we allow genocide to occur. My mother laconically whispered that "he talks about Bosnia as if he is somebody else." I was reminded of her distinction between the president and the rest of us when I read a piece on this magazine's website by my haver Michael Walzer, who made the same distinction but for the opposite end. He wished to exonerate the president. His subject was President Obama's stony reluctance to condemn the Iranian regime's theft of the election and its repression in the streets. "What Obama says must be guided by what he has to do," Walzer wrote, referring to the challenge of the nuclearization of Iran. "The rest of us are much freer." And so "we need to be clear about who we are and what we stand for and why we oppose the religious zealots and tyrants who have ruled Iran for the last decades." But the president need express, or teach, no such clarity. "Heads of state," who can "defend political principles" if they wish, "have other things to do." This was the stirring slogan of Walzer's exemption of the president from moral leadership in the midst of one of the greatest explosions of democratic energy in our time: "For liberals and leftists--opposition and nothing else; for state diplomats--handshakes and negotiations."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-30:story.html?id=11e5e7d3-e378-4276-928c-3b80132221b3&amp;k=9234</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Are Democrats Sacrificing Too Much In Order To Pass Health Care Reform?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=05f2ef04-1e69-4591-ae4f-6184ef3d8b07</link><author>Jonathan Cohn</author><pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Bill and Hillary Clinton are off saving the world, he through his global foundation and she via the State Department. But their presence looms over the health care debate as surely as if they were running the White House. Their epic failure to pass reform in 1994 has become the defining object lesson in how to botch health care legislation--a lesson President Obama has obviously taken to heart. Push for reform right away; let Congress hash out the details; and, above all, don’t threaten people’s current insurance arrangements. You can sum up Obama's strategy for health reform as "WWCD": What Wouldn't the Clintons Do.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-30:story.html?id=05f2ef04-1e69-4591-ae4f-6184ef3d8b07&amp;k=27413</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The 'Ricci' Ruling Undermines Affirmative Action. It's About Time.]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/mcwhorter/archive/2009/06/29/the-supreme-court-finally-gets-real-on-quot-disparate-impact-quot.aspx</link><author>John McWhorter</author><pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The Supreme Court's decision in favor of the New Haven firefighters whose test results were discounted is welcome news indeed for making our discussions of race and racism clearer and more honest.

It’s high time the Title VII stipulation on "disparate impact," based on a 1971 addendum to the Civil Rights Act's banning of intentional discrimination in 1964, was revised. In itself, it makes sense--but mission creep has led to a distorted sense of what it means, or should mean.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-30:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/mcwhorter/archive/2009/06/29/the-supreme-court-finally-gets-real-on-quot-disparate-impact-quot.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[What The U.S. Could Learn From Europe About Cap-And-Trade (A Lot, Actually)]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/29/carbon-trading-what-europe-can-actually-teach-us.aspx</link><author>Bradford Plumer</author><pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Of all the questions about climate-change policy, one of the biggest is whether a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases will even work. Will it actually and tangibly reduce emissions? The only real-world example we have is the EU's Emissions Trading System, set up in 2005. Conservatives take it as a given that the ETS has failed—see Martin Livermore's Wall Street Journal column last week. But on closer inspection, the ETS seems to be working pretty well after a few early miscues, and there's plenty that American policymakers can learn from Europe's experience.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-30:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/29/carbon-trading-what-europe-can-actually-teach-us.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Geithner's Latest Multi-Billion Dollar Gift To The Banks]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/29/tnrtv-geithner-s-latest-multi-billion-dollar-gift-to-big-banks.aspx</link><author>Simon Johnson</author><pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Simon Johnson, professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and co-founder of BaselineScenario.com, breaks down the rules announced by the Obama administration on Friday for pricing the stock options that banks must buy back from the government to exit the bailout program, warning of an impending political backlash.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-30:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/29/tnrtv-geithner-s-latest-multi-billion-dollar-gift-to-big-banks.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA['We Have No Idea What Is Going On': The Surprising Limits Of Our Iran Intelligence]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=7c1cf6ce-ceeb-4ce8-8e5a-1c7c358dd9fa</link><author>Eli Lake</author><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[About ten days after the start of Iran's insurrection, I asked a senior administration official what, if anything, the White House knew about the people behind the demonstrations. His reply: "I think it is fair to say senior administration officials are busily trying to understand how the opposition is generated and where it came from." In other words, there's a lot about the protesters we still don't know.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-29:story.html?id=7c1cf6ce-ceeb-4ce8-8e5a-1c7c358dd9fa&amp;k=98217</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why Obama Needs To Step Into The Health Care Debate Now--Before It's Too Late]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3f453af7-d6f2-40fe-887c-c3119083c164</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON--Every general studies the mistakes of the last war, and
President Obama's style has been much influenced by the difficulties of
Bill Clinton's presidency.<br><br>In particular, Obama has shied away
from handing Congress his own plans on "stone tablets," a phrase much
loved by senior adviser David Axelrod, and instead allowed it room to
legislate.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-29:story.html?id=3f453af7-d6f2-40fe-887c-c3119083c164&amp;k=40632</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Why Republicans Are Out Of Touch On Health Reform]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/26/tnrtv-teixeira.aspx</link><author>Ruy Teixeira</author><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation, and fellow of the New Politics Institute, breaks down the latest polling data on health reform, arguing that a truly bipartisan proposal would include a public insurance option.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-29:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/26/tnrtv-teixeira.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Public Option Is Important For Health Care Reform--But Can We Live Without It?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/27/the-public-option-is-important-but-how-important.aspx</link><author>Jonathan Cohn</author><pubDate>Sun, 28 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Speaking on Thursday before thousands of activists gathered on Capitol Hill, former Governor Howard Dean made clear his litmus test for health reform: “We expect change,” he told the crowd, “We want a public health insurance option now.”

It’s not the first time he has said that and, among many health care reform advocates, it’s not really a controversial notion. Creating a public insurance plan, into which anybody could enroll voluntarily, has become more than a top priority for liberal activists. It has become the top priority.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-28:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/27/the-public-option-is-important-but-how-important.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Love Actually: In Defense Of Mark Sanford]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=bd91be7a-0382-4c2d-a7b3-7f07ffa33be1</link><author>Cristina Nehring</author><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA["I never figured Sanford for anything like this," mused one of the governor's constituents in The New York Times this week. Mark Sanford's friends are aghast. His neighbors shake their heads. His community simply could not see it coming. The Internet is in convulsions: Who would have thought Sanford capable of this?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-27:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=bd91be7a-0382-4c2d-a7b3-7f07ffa33be1</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How The Never-Ending Dennis Ross Drama Illustrates The Turmoil In Obama's Foreign Policy Team]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/26/again-with-ross.aspx</link><author>Michael Crowley</author><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Ben Smith has a piece today with still more speculation on Dennis Ross, Washington's most speculated-about bureaucrat. What's with the Ross obsession? Part of it, I'd say, based on some reporting this week, is that Ross's portfolio and standing reflects an administration still sorting out its foreign policy decision making process. You have in Jim Jones a national security advisor who doesn't seem to click well with the president (or at least with other senior national security officials who are close to the president). You have several big power centers--Clinton, Gates, Mitchell, Holbrooke--trying to stake out their own policy turf and create their own direct channels to the Oval Office. You have internal disputes within the administration about how tough to be with Iran and, in a different sense, Israel. Dennis Ross is at the crossroads of virtually all those tensions.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-27:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/26/again-with-ross.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[College Grads: Congrats! Just Don't Plan On Getting Sick For A While! Because The Health Care System Totally Screws You!]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/25/young-and-not-so-invincible.aspx</link><author>Anthony Wright</author><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In the last several weeks, in ceremonies across the country, hundreds of thousands of Americans have become uninsured. I’m not talking about plant closings, or court proceedings for divorce or bankruptcy. I’m referring to high school and college graduations.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-27:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/25/young-and-not-so-invincible.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Forgiving Wife Is No Longer The Best Prop For A Cheating Politician. Thank Goodness.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=156fc550-a2fe-4ce9-9148-3e7c0f32d31b</link><author>Michelle Cottle</author><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[After sitting through a YouTube double-header of both Governor Mark Sanford’s and Senator John Ensign’s I’m-so-terribly-sorry-I-screwed-around-on-my-wife solos, I’m persuaded that the absence of said wives dramatically boosted the men’s sympathy quotient--so much so that I’m prepared to recommend this as the new model for politicians delivering similar mea culpas in the future.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-27:story.html?id=156fc550-a2fe-4ce9-9148-3e7c0f32d31b&amp;k=61315</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Don't Be Fooled By Dropping Unemployment Rates--We Need A Second Stimulus]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ff352956-a17d-4d80-895a-8f1c28b6351e</link><author>John B. Judis</author><pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Our country’s unemployment rate, which has risen every month this year, now stands well above the worst case scenario of the Treasury Department’s stress tests. Yet we are inundated each month with reports that, in spite of a rising rate of unemployment, the slump has “bottomed out” or is even over. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve <A href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6e8d042a-60ea-11de-aa12-00144feabdc0.html">announced</A> that “information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in April suggests that the pace of economic contraction is slowing.” If you want even more fanciful predictions, you can hear them on <A href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/30111906">CNBC</A>.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-26:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ff352956-a17d-4d80-895a-8f1c28b6351e</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: How The Iranian Protests Will Change Obama's Policy Of Engagement]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/25/tnrtv-a-new-firm-iran-policy-for-obama.aspx</link><author>Ashfin Molavi</author><pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In the first part of a TNRtv series on Iran, Ashfin Molavi, fellow at The New America Foundation, breaks down how the elections in Iran will alter Obama's policy of engagement.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-26:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/25/tnrtv-a-new-firm-iran-policy-for-obama.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Does Maliki Have The Answer To Gridlock In Iraq?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/25/an-answer-to-the-gridlock-in-iraq.aspx</link><author>Elise Foley</author><pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Legal changes have been slow to come in Iraq, with legislation moving through the parliamentary system at a snail's pace--or not at all. Bills intended to aid the weak economy have been held up in parliament for years, while laws regulating the oil industry and banning official corruption remain notably absent. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki recently began lobbying for a switch to a presidential system of government, which he said would be more efficient and democratic than the current parliamentary system.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-26:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/25/an-answer-to-the-gridlock-in-iraq.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[A History Of Violence: What Previous Protests And Revolutions In Iran Can Teach Us About The Current Crisis]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f21c3ec1-291a-414f-8c4b-4d8d451c50f3</link><author>Steven R. Ward</author><pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[On the eve of the centennial of Iran’s first modern revolution, the country is experiencing the latest in a series of popular eruptions against an oppressive government. It was 100 years ago this month that Iranian freedom fighters were marching on Tehran to depose an autocrat they could no longer abide. By mid-July 1909, this army of varied tribal, ethnic, and secular democratic <em style="">mujahedin</em> would capture the capitol and send the Qajar monarch, Muhammad Ali Shah, packing to Russia, placing his young son on the throne of a revived but still infant constitutional monarchy. Iran’s early democracy, however, expired within two years because of reactionary pressures and the revolutionaries’ inability to live up to their principles, a fact that should instill some caution regarding attempts to discern the many twists and turns such challenges to an existing order in Iran can take.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-26:story.html?id=f21c3ec1-291a-414f-8c4b-4d8d451c50f3&amp;k=64484</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[What Makes David Cameron So Damn Likeable?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5516a87a-4916-4daf-b464-28fd1eebac5f</link><author>Alexandra Starr</author><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[To the unschooled eye, the photograph of the 1987 class of the Oxford University Bullingdon Club could be mistaken for a 100-year-old image. The ten young men crowding the frame are dressed in long tails and blue bowties and pose on marble steps, most of them studiously looking away from the camera. But this is a relatively recent photo of members of the aristocratic, and destructive, drinking club: Participants honor the unofficial motto--"I like the sound of breaking glass"--by getting drunk and trashing private property. It was reportedly taken before a rowdy escapade, which ended when members broke a restaurant window and six were jailed overnight.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-25:story.html?id=5516a87a-4916-4daf-b464-28fd1eebac5f&amp;k=71473</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Big Test]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=20db9eb3-f944-4ce3-b7ef-9a5c5e69a3dc</link><author>Damon Linker</author><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Within days of stepping down as governor of Massachusetts on January 4, Mitt Romney is expected to announce his candidacy for president. Shortly after that, Romney will almost certainly need to deliver a major speech about his Mormon faith--a speech in the mold of John F. Kennedy's 1960 address to the Baptist ministers of Houston, Texas, in which the candidate attempted to reassure voters that they had no reason to fear his Catholicism. Yet Romney's task will be much more complicated. Whereas Kennedy set voters' minds at ease by declaring in unambiguous terms that he considered the separation of church and state to be "absolute," Romney intends to run for president as the candidate of the religious right, which believes in blurring the distinction between politics and religion. Romney thus needs to convince voters that they have nothing to fear from his Mormonism while simultaneously placing that faith at the core of his identity and his quest for the White House.<br>]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-25:story.html?id=20db9eb3-f944-4ce3-b7ef-9a5c5e69a3dc&amp;k=16100</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[A History of Violence: What Previous Protests And Revolutions In Iran Can Teach Us About The Current Crisis.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f21c3ec1-291a-414f-8c4b-4d8d451c50f3</link><author>Steven R. Ward</author><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[On the eve of the centennial of Iran’s first modern revolution, the country is experiencing the latest in a series of popular eruptions against an oppressive government. It was 100 years ago this month that Iranian freedom fighters were marching on Tehran to depose an autocrat they could no longer abide. By mid-July 1909, this army of varied tribal, ethnic, and secular democratic <em style="">mujahedin</em> would capture the capitol and send the Qajar monarch, Muhammad Ali Shah, packing to Russia, placing his young son on the throne of a revived but still infant constitutional monarchy. Iran’s early democracy, however, expired within two years because of reactionary pressures and the revolutionaries’ inability to live up to their principles, a fact that should instill some caution regarding attempts to discern the many twists and turns such challenges to an existing order in Iran can take.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-25:story.html?id=f21c3ec1-291a-414f-8c4b-4d8d451c50f3&amp;k=64484</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Politics Very Much Influence Supreme Court Decisions--And To Pretend Otherwise Is Dangerous]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ef2a3f72-2694-49db-87dd-e9136630b13a</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON--The United States Supreme Court claims to be above politics, and it sometimes even achieves that aspiration.<br><br>The
court has occasionally solved problems that the more conventionally
political branches of government have allowed to fester, and oppressed
minorities have periodically been able to use the court to vindicate
their rights.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-25:story.html?id=ef2a3f72-2694-49db-87dd-e9136630b13a&amp;k=65122</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv Exclusive: Former Health Insurance Insider Wendell Potter Blows The Whistle On The Industry's 'Duplicitous' Lobbying Efforts]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/24/potter-tnrtv.aspx</link><author>Wendell Potter</author><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNRtv Exclusive: Former Health Insurance Insider Wendell Potter Blows The Whistle On The Industry's 'Duplicitous' Lobbying Efforts]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-25:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/24/potter-tnrtv.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA['Our Young Brave People': TNR's Guide To Iran's Most Prominent Dissidents]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/24/tnr-slideshow-prominent-iranian-dissidents.aspx</link><author></author><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Since Iran's presidential elections, Iranian officials say at least 17 demonstrators have been killed, over 200 people jailed, and many more exiled from the country. Many are average Iranian citizens, of the type visible on YouTube, but the jails are also filling with prominent members of Iranian society: journalists, ministers, and even a former vice president.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-25:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/24/tnr-slideshow-prominent-iranian-dissidents.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Moussavi The Architect: What We Can Learn About The Iranian Opposition Leader From His Other Career]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/23/tnr-slideshow-what-kind-of-architect-is-moussavi.aspx</link><author>James Gardner</author><pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Over the past century, not a few powerful men, among them Churchill, Eisenhower, and even Hitler, have fancied themselves painters and have displayed at times a lively interest in architecture. What is different about Mir-Hossein Moussavi, Iran's leading opposition candidate, is that he has actually earned a living through these disciplines, and not in his long ago youth, but as recently as this past year, just before he sought the presidency of Iran. Given that he may soon be running the place, it is not irrelevant to wonder what kind of architect and painter he is and whether his efforts in the fine arts yield any clues to how he might govern the country. Let it be said that the web turns up very few images of his paintings and building projects, and that these images are not always of the best quality. Still, they can help in forming a provisional assessment.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-24:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/23/tnr-slideshow-what-kind-of-architect-is-moussavi.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Don't Let Seven Senators Decide What Health Care Reform Looks Like!]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/23/coalition-of-the-unwilling.aspx</link><author>Harold Pollack</author><pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Among those who favor health reform, commentators seem divided between those who see promise or peril in the search for bipartisan health reform. I am firmly in the "peril" camp. I fear that the pursuit of bipartisanship for its own sake will produce a more costly, less progressive, more rushed, and less carefully-crafted bill. Ted Marmor once pointed out one further irony: The search for politically moderate compromise generates organizationally radical proposed solutions whose very complexity creates further political and policy problems. I do this stuff for a living, and I still don't understand how Senator Conrad's Co-ops would really work. The same goes for many Rube Goldberg compromises now being floated as 11th hour alternatives to a public plan.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-24:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/23/coalition-of-the-unwilling.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Field Guide To How The Iranian Military Can Be Flipped]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/23/how-the-iranian-military-can-be-flipped-a-field-guide.aspx</link><author>Amanda Silverman</author><pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[As the protests in Iran continue and reports of violence in the streets proliferate, we started to wonder what could make members of the Basij and other paramilitary groups abandon their ties to the regime and back the opposition. So, we called founding chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, Peter Ackerman, to see if he had any advice. First, he stressed just how important it is to flip the troops: "If loyalty shifts don't occur, ultimately the movement will sort of dissipate and vanish. With these shifts, the movement's progress will accelerate and it will become an even more potent force than it is currently."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-24:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/23/how-the-iranian-military-can-be-flipped-a-field-guide.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Obama Method: His Rhetoric May Be Conciliatory, But His Strategy Is Ruthless]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=bce35bd2-5d49-4296-893e-c77e9df19938</link><author>Jonathan Chait</author><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The thing that people haven't figured out about President Obama's conduct of foreign policy is that it's the same as his conduct of domestic policy. Obama believes in the power of negotiation and public dialogue to split his adversaries--Republicans at home, Islamists abroad--and strengthen his own position. Obama's speech in Cairo to the Muslim world was simply the foreign analogue of his dealings with the GOP.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-23:story.html?id=bce35bd2-5d49-4296-893e-c77e9df19938&amp;k=52896</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[What The Arab World Is--And Isn’t--Saying About The Protests In Iran]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f744dfa2-20de-4e0b-a2fc-14f9bb78d06a</link><author>Josie Delap and Robert Lane Greene</author><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[What the Arab world is--and isn't--saying about the protests in Iran.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-23:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f744dfa2-20de-4e0b-a2fc-14f9bb78d06a</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[A History Lesson For Obama's Critics: How U.S. Support Has Undermined Reform Movements]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/22/cruel-to-be-kind-in-the-right-measure.aspx</link><author>Dylan Matthews</author><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Over the past few days, many of Obama's critics have argued that he should be speaking out more forcefully in favor of the Iranian opposition. Paul Wolfowitz argued in the Washington Post that Obama should be more forceful, referencing his own experience in urging President Reagan to withdraw support from the Marcos regime in the Philippines, while Charles Krauthammer called the administration's position "absurd." Republican congressman Michael Pence slammed the president, noting, "When Ronald Reagan went to the Brandenburg Gate, he did not say ‘Mr. Gorbachev, that wall is none of our business.'" Dan Senor and Christian Whoton suggested in TIME that the president is historically ignorant. "As for the notion that American action is unhelpful to reformers, this simply contradicts historical experience," they write, "Successful movements to alter authoritarian and totalitarian regimes almost always depend on internal dissent backed by strong international support."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-23:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/22/cruel-to-be-kind-in-the-right-measure.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Afghan Ambassador Said Jawad On Why It's Worth Engaging the Taliban]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/22/afghan-ambassador-jawad-tnrtv.aspx</link><author></author><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In the first part of a TNRtv exclusive, Afghan Ambassador to the United States Said Tayeb Jawad defends President Hamid Karzai's response to the Iranian elections, welcomes the new restrictions on U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan, and explains why some members of the Taliban are worth engaging.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-23:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/22/afghan-ambassador-jawad-tnrtv.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Zeke’s Anatomy: Meet The Nice Emanuel Brother. Well, The Nicest.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=70e01b2f-5c2d-4917-8f65-65a5065ab282</link><author>Noam Scheiber</author><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In 1995, John Gallin, the head of the clinical center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), decided the nation's premier medical research facility should have a vibrant bioethics program. He embarked on a lengthy search, soliciting dozens of resumes and interviewing several candidates, before settling on a Harvard-trained M.D./Ph.D. named Ezekiel Emanuel to lead it. Emanuel, who goes by Zeke, was young (not yet 40) and relatively unknown outside the field of medical ethics. But, with his energy and a combination of clinical and scholarly credentials, he seemed uniquely suited to the task Gallin had set: Building the country's top bioethics department on a shoestring budget.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-22:story.html?id=70e01b2f-5c2d-4917-8f65-65a5065ab282&amp;k=68953</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Ahmedinejad’s Next Big Threat: Egypt?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=53e8d8ef-8faa-4053-95fd-cf9d4f5f6055</link><author>Michael Crowley</author><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Before Barack Obama spoke to the Muslim world from Cairo in June, the president did some sightseeing. His first stop was the Sultan Hassan mosque, a 700-year-old marvel of Islamic architecture, where he and a hijabclad Hillary Clinton gawked at towering arches and intricate carvings. But Obama didn't stop at the mosque next door, known as Al Rifai, which houses a monument that explains much about the politics of the wider Middle East. A few steps past its entrance sits a thick marble slab cordoned off with velvet red rope. The pale green stone bears a coat of arms and an ornate inscription written in Persian: "His Imperial Majesty, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shahanshah of Iran."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-22:story.html?id=53e8d8ef-8faa-4053-95fd-cf9d4f5f6055&amp;k=35651</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Obama's Progressive Path On Iran Is Fraught With Peril]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=886cd1f6-8b99-499e-9670-7bfef237b710</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON--Protesters hit the streets demanding freedom and fair elections. A repressive government strikes back and denounces the dissidents as unpatriotic subversives. Change, even revolution, is in the air.]]></description><enclosure url="http://media.canada.com/24be34eb-ecfe-4969-88c2-5aa898db4139/dionne_protester.jpg" type="image/jpeg"></enclosure><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-22:story.html?id=886cd1f6-8b99-499e-9670-7bfef237b710&amp;k=38146</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Not Just A Photo-Op: How The Sight Of Millions Of People On The Street Can Change A Nation’s Psyche]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=765c105e-8719-4c29-aea0-d240f3af423f</link><author>Jack DuVall</author><pubDate>Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The panoramic view on Thursday of more than a million Iranians filling the streets of Tehran, on the sixth straight day of swelling popular demonstrations against the Iranian regime's mangled election and ensuing street violence, has been an undeniable inspiration to the tens of millions who’ve seen it. But posting a photograph on a wall in an office in New York, or watching a few YouTubes in an apartment in Paris, doesn’t begin to convey what the protesters have accomplished by creating such unprecedented new public space in Iran, and how much they’ve altered the psychological and political reality on the ground.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-20:story.html?id=765c105e-8719-4c29-aea0-d240f3af423f&amp;k=73645</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Paul Krugman Is Wrong On Financial Regulations]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/06/19/scheiber-tnrtv.aspx</link><author>Noam Scheiber</author><pubDate>Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNRtv: Paul Krugman Is Wrong On Financial Regulations]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-20:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/06/19/scheiber-tnrtv.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[After Super Friday, Iran has a Super Saturday]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ef346de0-6e7f-4a96-9196-331833764320</link><author>Andrew Apostolou</author><pubDate>Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Khamenei’s speech]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-19:story.html?id=ef346de0-6e7f-4a96-9196-331833764320&amp;k=37118</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Dealing With The Devil: Why Is The Most Powerful Health Care Lobbyist Playing Nice?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=40020fba-a910-4431-b0ea-8ca8022168db</link><author>Jonathan Cohn</author><pubDate>Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The first time I remember speaking with Karen Ignagni was via a TV satellite, for a debate about health care policy on CNN. It was the summer of 2007, not long after the debut of Michael Moore's <EM>Sicko</EM>, and each of us was playing our usual role. Ignagni is the telegenic president of America's Health Insurance Plans (ahip) and arguably Washington's most influential health- industry lobbyist. She was on the show to explain why her members' business practices weren't nearly as awful as the Michael Moore film suggested, and to assure Americans that ahip would work to make coverage more affordable and accessible. My role, as the author of a new book critical of the insurance industry, was to remind viewers that Ignagni was full of it--that the insurance industry really did do everything it could to avoid covering sick people and to thwart efforts at reform. This was, after all, the same industry that gave us all "Harry and Louise." The discussion got a bit heated, as these things go; I basically accused Ignagni of lying when she said she wanted everybody to have access to insurance; and, by the end, Ignagni was (according to the cameraman) complaining that I'd landed a few low blows.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-19:story.html?id=40020fba-a910-4431-b0ea-8ca8022168db&amp;k=86222</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Europe's Disturbing New Trend Of Celebrating Its Military Deserters]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5e7d422a-0f30-4ec5-aeb7-5fd7f92abaa0</link><author>Michael B. Oren</author><pubDate>Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[About 400,000 people, many of them children, annually tour the battlegrounds of Ypres, near the French border in Western Belgium, the scene of some of history's most savage combat. Millions of troops fought here during World War I; more than 600,000 of them died. Sightseers can view the numerous monuments extolling the bravery of the dead or visit the museum named for John McCrae's haunting threnody, "In Flanders Fields." And now, they can see something else, something unusual for a battlefield turned tourist destination-- a memorial not to those who fought, but, instead, to those who didn't.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-19:story.html?id=5e7d422a-0f30-4ec5-aeb7-5fd7f92abaa0&amp;k=48705</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv Exclusive: Union Leader Andy Stern Slams Grassley's Health Plan]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/18/tnrtv-exclusive-andy-stern-slams-grassley-health-plan.aspx</link><author>Jonathan Cohn</author><pubDate>Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNR senior editor Jonathan Cohn and SEIU president Andy Stern break down the latest on health reform: Should the Grassley and Conrad plans be taken seriously? Is bipartisanship worth a compromise? Will we have a health care bill come December?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-19:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/18/tnrtv-exclusive-andy-stern-slams-grassley-health-plan.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Did Bank Lobbyists Write Obama's Reform Proposal?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/18/did-bank-lobbyists-write-obama-s-reform-proposal.aspx</link><author>Simon Johnson</author><pubDate>Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[What is the essence of the problem with our financial system--what brought us into deep crisis, what scared us most in September/October of last year, and what was the toughest problem in the early days of the Obama administration?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-19:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/18/did-bank-lobbyists-write-obama-s-reform-proposal.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Are The New Polls On Obama As Troubling As They First Appear?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/18/dear-pollsters-you-are-wrong.aspx</link><author>Jonathan Chait and Linda Hirshman</author><pubDate>Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[First off, I do think math is hard. So I am reluctant to question the suits--pollster Peter Hart, the guys at NBC, much less people whose institution is named after Wall Street. When the news filled up with word of their WSJ/NBC News poll showing Americans care more about "keeping the budget deficit down" (58 percent) than "boosting" the economy (35 percent), I was dismayed, but not inclined to doubt. Great, I thought, as the still troubling unemployment numbers followed the polling news, the public are a bunch of deficit hawks. 1937 here we come. Those who do not study history, etc.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-19:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/18/dear-pollsters-you-are-wrong.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Governments Have No Business Getting Involved In Iran’s Ideological Struggle. But We Do.]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=92bf92e8-242d-4924-9e5a-5be5cdb16715</link><author>Michael Walzer</author><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[I am a statist in many ways and in many areas. I believe that government has an important role to play in the economy, in health care, in protecting the environment, and certainly in foreign policy. But reading about the mass demonstrations in Iran, my first thought isn't about what the U.S. government should do or what President Obama should say. It is about what the rest of us should do and say.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-18:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=92bf92e8-242d-4924-9e5a-5be5cdb16715</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Argument Of The Day: Americans Should Spend FEWER Years In School]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/mcwhorter/archive/2009/06/15/graduation-season-why-do-students-have-to-wait-until-21-to-commence.aspx</link><author>John McWhorter</author><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In this commencement season, I myself gave the commencement address for a bunch of high school dropouts. Mind you, the school was Bard College at Simon's Rock, where students enter after tenth grade instead of twelfth, immediately beginning college work and never looking back.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-18:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/mcwhorter/archive/2009/06/15/graduation-season-why-do-students-have-to-wait-until-21-to-commence.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Can Anyone Defend The GOP’s Health Care Policies? Senator Charles Grassley Certainly Tries In This Exclusive TNRtv Interview]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/17/tnrtv-grassley-defends-republicans-on-health-care.aspx</link><author>Suzy Khimm</author><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNR's Suzy Khimm presses Senator Charles Grassley on some of the most controversial questions surrounding comprehensive health care reform.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-18:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/17/tnrtv-grassley-defends-republicans-on-health-care.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why Has Russia Been So Cool Toward The Iranian Opposition?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/17/what-to-make-of-the-russian-media-s-reaction-to-iran.aspx</link><author>Julia Ioffe</author><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[As we continue to pick apart the dubious Iranian election returns, it's worth considering their very different treatment in Russia, which has long sought to play the lion tamer in the nuclear tug-of-war with Tehran. For starters, the mainstream Russian press has taken the official election results largely at face value, referring to Ahmadinejad as the "winner" without the slew of qualifiers that pad the term here. Only Tuesday, when the ayatollahs announced a partial recount, did some Russian papers label the election results "shaky." Today, the fourth day of protests, what coverage there is (many papers have dropped the story) is a bit more urgent, focusing on a growing threat of real upheaval (Kommersant, the main national daily, leads with "Iran Finally Remembers the Revolution"). The tone, though, is still one of strict objectivity: Here's who won, here's who people hoped had won, and here's the official data.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-18:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/17/what-to-make-of-the-russian-media-s-reaction-to-iran.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Difference Between Democratic And Republican Sex Scandals]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e13bb216-4489-4e9c-b123-3fbb8ed3c4c6</link><author>Michael Currie Schaffer</author><pubDate>Thu, 06 Sep 2007 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Forget Iraq, terrorism, and the rickety credit market. This is turning
out to be the best year in a while for political sex
scandals--certainly the best since 9/11 supposedly focused our leaders
on less tawdry pursuits. It's enough to make Gary Condit's head spin:
Only eight months old, 2007 has already featured a Washington madam, a
cruising senator, a cuckolded campaign manager, and a home-wrecking TV
reporter. And while other sorts of recent governmental improprieties
have had a decidedly Republican cast, booty calls appear relatively
bipartisan. The soiled bedsheets of prominent Democrats like Los
Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his San Francisco counterpart
Gavin Newsom are hanging in public view right alongside those of
Republican Senators David Vitter and Larry Craig.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2007-09-06:story.html?id=e13bb216-4489-4e9c-b123-3fbb8ed3c4c6&amp;k=72797</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Learning From Clinton: Why Health Care Reform Could Fail--Again]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=55e79b52-4029-4af5-b08c-acb599d600b7</link><author>Stanley B. Greenberg</author><pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Nothing brings on a headache quite like health care reform. My head has throbbed lately, as Congress has begun to consider a serious overhaul--a debate that forces me to recall the painful last time we embarked on a similar effort some 16 years ago. At the time, I was conducting polls for Bill Clinton and, on the eve of his address to a joint session of Congress in 1993--the prologue to the White House's big push on the issue--I went into the field to gauge the national mood. I returned filled with a great sense of hope about the prospects for reform.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-17:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=55e79b52-4029-4af5-b08c-acb599d600b7</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khamenei's Massive Miscalculation About The Extent Of His Power]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=09524136-aa25-4640-a40d-c8e1729284a5</link><author>Abbas Milani</author><pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The Iranian regime is currently facing one of the greatest challenges of its 30-year history. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei--whose rule has been absolute and whose words have been the law of the land--is facing the most public challenge to his authority. His two decades since succeeding Ayatollah Khamenei have been defined by a tendency to keep his options open, a verbal dexterity that allowed him to skirt tough political positions, and an appearance of impartiality in Iran's fierce factional feuds. His caution has been the key to his success and survival.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-17:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=09524136-aa25-4640-a40d-c8e1729284a5</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Hottest Month Of The Year Is About To Become The Hottest Quarter Of The Year]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/16/big-report-how-climate-change-affects-the-united-states.aspx</link><author>Bradford Plumer</author><pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Earlier this afternoon, the White House held a press conference to talk up a major new NOAA report on likely climate-change impacts in the United States. I don't know if this is a first step in a concerted new push by the Obama administration to build support for action on global warming (the White House has stayed remarkably quiet on this issue so far), but the report vividly illustrates why the country can't just ignore climate change. Impacts are already occuring, right in our backyard, and it's only getting worse.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-17:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/16/big-report-how-climate-change-affects-the-united-states.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why Is Obama Ditching Obamaism On One Of The Most Vital Issues Of His Presidency?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/06/16/why-is-obama-ditching-obamaism.aspx</link><author>Noam Scheiber</author><pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[One of the early hallmarks of the administration's governing style is to make Congress a partner (sometimes even the senior partner) in policy development rather than submitting fully-formed legislation and trying to whip up votes for it. Part of this derives from Obama's personal style, which prizes consensus. And part of it is just shrewd politics and a willingness to learn from past presidential failures, as Matt Bai pointed out in this recent Times magazine piece. But, either way, the legislative approach has been pretty similar from issue to issue, whether it's the stimulus or health care or climate change.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-17:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/06/16/why-is-obama-ditching-obamaism.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Three Things That We KNOW About The Iranian Election]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3bc29baf-d487-4799-90db-ac718477f4ac</link><author>Bernard-Henri Levy</author><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Massive cheating or not?

A new kind of coup d’etat or not?

How do we interpret this strange election whose results were announced by the press affiliated with the secret services and militia--even before the polls were closed?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-16:story.html?id=3bc29baf-d487-4799-90db-ac718477f4ac&amp;k=98197</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Time For Idealism: Debating The Appropriate Response To The Crisis In Iran]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/15/the-return-of-idealism.aspx</link><author>Richard Just and John B. Judis</author><pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The past few years haven't been kind to foreign policy idealism--the belief that when authoritarian states mistreat their own people, it is a matter of concern for all of us. We idealists can largely blame ourselves for this. The biggest reason idealism fell out of favor was Iraq--a disastrous war that many of us foolishly supported in the naive belief that substituting liberalism for totalitarianism in the heart of the Middle East would be a relatively simple thing. We made mistakes beyond Iraq, too. We accepted George Bush's facile faith that holding a vote was the same thing as creating a functioning liberal democracy--then watched as a disastrous election in Palestine made a mockery of this idea. Given such misjudgments, I can understand why people did not want to hear from us when we argued for sending troops to Darfur or threatening the Burmese generals during the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis or taking a harder line on human rights in China. I still think we were right on these three issues, and I think that foreign policy idealism remains a far more compelling, humane way to view geopolitics than the alternative--a cold, calculating realism. But given how many things we got wrong over the past eight years, I do understand why our way of thinking about the world has suffered a hit in popularity. And it was not undeserved.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-17:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/15/the-return-of-idealism.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Can Ukraine's Orange Revolution Teach Us Anything About Today's Protests In Iran?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=6b4dc2b1-6ed2-4544-9095-e59dcf3c4dc0</link><author>Joshua A. Tucker</author><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[As I watched events in Iran unfold at the end of last week, I couldn’t help but note the similarities to the “Colored Revolutions” that swept through the post-communist region in the middle of this decade. <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_presidential_election,_2009#Opinion_polls">Pre-election polls</A> predicted a surprisingly competitive election in an erstwhile authoritarian country. Following the election, both sides claimed victory amid allegations of <A href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8098305.stm">serious electoral fraud</A>. Supporters of the opposition candidate <A href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/14/iran.protests.scene/index.html">took to the streets</A>, and even had a color--green--lined up to give them the moniker of the “<A href="http://u.tv/News/A-devastating-defeat-for-Irans-green-revolution/155b7bc2-fdd3-4560-9e56-96aba0c7e570">green revolution</A>.”]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-16:story.html?id=6b4dc2b1-6ed2-4544-9095-e59dcf3c4dc0&amp;k=60018</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Why Ahmadinejad's Days Are Numbered]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/15/tnrtv-why-ahmadinejad-s-days-are-numbered.aspx</link><author>John B. Judis</author><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNR senior editor John B. Judis breaks down the post-election analysis of the Iranian regime, arguing that Obama should just sit back and watch it self-destruct.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-16:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/15/tnrtv-why-ahmadinejad-s-days-are-numbered.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Is Steven Chu Doing At Revamping The Energy Department?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/15/it-s-not-easy-being-green-in-the-energy-department.aspx</link><author>Bradford Plumer</author><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In this month's Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell has a terrific profile of Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Sadly, it's not online, but Charlie Petit managed to scrounge up a bootleg PDF, so you can go read it over at his site. One of the subplots of the piece is that Chu came into office with the incredibly daunting aim of remaking the country's trillion-dollar energy economy—trying to ramp up the clean-tech sector and cutting U.S. emissions in order to help avert dangerous climate change. But he's also doing so as head of the Energy Department, which has historically devoted about half its $65 billion budget to managing (and cleaning up after) the nation's sprawling nuclear-weapons stockpile.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-16:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/15/it-s-not-easy-being-green-in-the-energy-department.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Single Most Important Housing Market Reform]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/06/15/the-single-most-important-housing-market-reform.aspx</link><author>Noam Scheiber</author><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The Single Most Important Housing Market Reform 

...is this, which Tim Geithner and Larry Summers propose in their Washington Post op-ed today:

The administration's plan will impose robust reporting requirements on the issuers of asset-backed securities; reduce investors' and regulators' reliance on credit-rating agencies; and, perhaps most significant, require the originator, sponsor or broker of a securitization to retain a financial interest in its performance.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-16:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/06/15/the-single-most-important-housing-market-reform.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Sotto Voce: The Sonia Sotomayor You Don't Know]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=0492d15c-69bc-4b2a-9d25-c6a641ee6485</link><author>Jeffrey Rosen</author><pubDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[A tip from an informant led Detective Amando Rodriguez and Sergeant Diane Contreras to the stash house--actually a New York City apartment--which they had good reason to think contained a substantial haul of drugs. The suspicion was confirmed when they busted a man leaving the building with a kilo of cocaine in a black bag. The officers entered the building to stake out the apartment. That's when the carryout delivery woman arrived with an order for the stash house. Worried that she might inadvertently draw attention to their presence, the cops made a hasty decision to enlist her help. The officers told her to knock on the door and announce the arrival of food. When the door swung open, the cops ordered all six inhabitants into the hallway and then searched the apartment. There they found five kilos of coke and $15,000.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-15:story.html?id=0492d15c-69bc-4b2a-9d25-c6a641ee6485&amp;k=12407</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Health Care Reform Doesn't Require a Government-Run Program--But It Would Be A Good Idea.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=c463e267-bbb2-4cff-b028-980b0bf7e852</link><author>The Editors</author><pubDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The debate over health care reform is full of controversies, but none has received as much attention as the call to create a public insurance option. The idea, in a nutshell, is to create a true government-run insurance program--something that looks vaguely like Medicare--in which people can enroll voluntarily. The proposal found its way into the platforms of the leading Democratic candidates, including Barack Obama, and eventually into memos circulating on Capitol Hill. Along the way, it's somehow become the litmus test for reform on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Liberals see it as an essential element of any package, the very definition of "real" health care reform. Conservatives are equally adamant that a public plan would be disastrous--enough to make reform itself worth opposing.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-13:story.html?id=c463e267-bbb2-4cff-b028-980b0bf7e852&amp;k=30679</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why Business Leaders Should Scare Obama More Than The Republican Party]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2864484a-7585-4f4b-8388-4aca928e5c74</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON--Business has been on the ropes since last fall's financial collapse, but the first glimmerings of recovery are calling forth a capitalist counteroffensive.]]></description><enclosure url="http://media.canada.com/24be34eb-ecfe-4969-88c2-5aa898db4139/Obama Article Pic.jpg" type="image/jpeg"></enclosure><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-15:story.html?id=2864484a-7585-4f4b-8388-4aca928e5c74&amp;k=93934</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[A TNR Debate: Is It Fair To Classify The Holocaust Museum Shooter As A Right-Winger?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/11/was-james-von-brunn-a-right-winger.aspx</link><author>Jonathan Chait, James Kirchick, and Damon Linker</author><pubDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Ben Smith, noting that James Von Brunn might potentially have considered targeting The Weekly Standard, writes:

The suggestion that the Standard may have been a target complicates any view of the racist shooter in contemporary left-right terms. Von Brunn's white supremacist roots put him under the rubric of a "right-wing extremist," but the substance of his views -- which included everything from believing that President Bush may have been in on the September 11 attacks to denying that President Obama is an American citizen -- are too far on the fringe to fit into conventional political classification.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-13:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/11/was-james-von-brunn-a-right-winger.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Health Care Reform Helps The American Economy]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f6a23f-64ab-4f11-9c44-efc9d6e0bbb1</link><author>Jonathan Cohn</author><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[One of the more promising signs for health care reform over the past two years has been the apparent support of the business community. Corporate executives and trade groups have repeatedly spoken out about the problems of our health care system. Even more remarkably, they have joined coalitions pledged to finding comprehensive solutions--the sorts of plans that would bring affordable insurance to all Americans while easing the financial burden many companies now face. The lack of business support helped doom the Clinton administration’s effort in 1994, but this time, it seemed, would be different.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-12:story.html?id=e2f6a23f-64ab-4f11-9c44-efc9d6e0bbb1&amp;k=31820</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Verdict Is In … And Clark Rockefeller Is Off To The Clink]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=8efcfbbd-dd85-4482-a7c9-a2b6eaeaf27c</link><author>Margo Howard</author><pubDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Coming into today, the defense had high hopes for victory. In addition to the jury’s taking its sweet time with the verdict, during day three of deliberations, it also sent up a question for clarification. The jury asked for the exact definition of criminal responsibility. The answer the judge provided placed the bar higher for a guilty charge in that the jury would need to find that Grock appreciated both the criminality of his conduct <I>and</I> the wrongfulness.]]></description><enclosure url="http://media.canada.com/24be34eb-ecfe-4969-88c2-5aa898db4139/rockefeller pic for article.jpg" type="image/jpeg"></enclosure><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-13:story.html?id=8efcfbbd-dd85-4482-a7c9-a2b6eaeaf27c&amp;k=98323</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[If You Thought Raising Money For Your Failing State Was Hard, Meet Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=1f9c65bc-587c-4585-932d-e54b3bd94aa9</link><author>James Kirchick</author><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[As if being the prime minister of Zimbabwe--a nation wracked by economic devastation, starvation, and political oppression for the past decade--was not a difficult enough job, Morgan Tsvangirai must also share power with President Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai, who has led the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) since its inception in 1999, became prime minister in a <a style="" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0225/p04s02-woaf.html">power-sharing accord</a> brokered with Mugabe in early February, almost a year after he and the MDC defeated Mugabe and his ZANU-PF in <a style="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwean_presidential_election,_2008">an election</a> fraught with irregularities. He is now on a three-week tour of Western capitals, asking governments that once branded Zimbabwe a pariah state to funnel much-needed aid to his devastated country. Today, he meets with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office.<br>]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-12:story.html?id=1f9c65bc-587c-4585-932d-e54b3bd94aa9&amp;k=36494</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Daddy Dearest: Is Kim Jong Il's Son Any Less Insane?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5e2c9e1e-acbe-4785-b9c2-8881c7d0e079</link><author>Joshua Kurlantzick</author><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[For years, a prime method for decoding the impenetrable North Korean regime has been the Dear Leader’s sushi chef, a defector named Kenji Fujimoto. When I met him in Tokyo several years ago, he looked as if he had just stepped off a construction site. His body was squat, his face rough. From his vantage in the kitchen, Fujimoto had been an astute observer of Kim Jong Il’s court—and the struggle within that court to win favor.<br>]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-12:story.html?id=5e2c9e1e-acbe-4785-b9c2-8881c7d0e079&amp;k=62956</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Truth About Obama And The Deficit]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/11/the-truth-about-obama-and-the-deficit.aspx</link><author>Jonathan Chait</author><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[A few weeks ago, I wrote a column pointing out how strange it is that President Obama is being blamed forhuge budget deficits, when the projected deficits we face are entirely due topolicies he inherited. In my column, I cited this paper by the Center on Budget and Policy priorities, which found that Obama's budget would reduce the budget by $900 billion over ten years cmpared with keeping current policies in place.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-12:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/11/the-truth-about-obama-and-the-deficit.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Why We’ll Have Immigration Reform Sooner Than You Think]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/tnrtv link tk</link><author>TK</author><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[abs tk]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-12:TNRTV LINK TK</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Jonathan Chait Vs. James Kirchick: Was The Holocaust Museum Shooter A Right-Winger?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/11/was-james-von-brunn-a-right-winger.aspx</link><author></author><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Ben Smith, noting that James Von Brunn might potentially have considered targeting The Weekly Standard, writes:

"The suggestion that the Standard may have been a target complicates any view of the racist shooter in contemporary left-right terms. Von Brunn's white supremacist roots put him under the rubric of a "right-wing extremist," but the substance of his views -- which included everything from believing that President Bush may have been in on the September 11 attacks to denying that President Obama is an American citizen -- are too far on the fringe to fit into conventional political classification."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-12:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/11/was-james-von-brunn-a-right-winger.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[After Consumerism: Why Americans Will Only Be Happy When They Stop Spending So Much Money]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=80661c9c-9c63-4c9e-a293-6888fc845351</link><author>Amitai Etzioni</author><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Much of the debate over how to address the economic crisis has focused on a single word: regulation. And it's easy to understand why. Bad behavior by a variety of businesses landed us in this mess--so it seems rather obvious that the way to avoid future economic meltdowns is to create, and vigorously enforce, new rules proscribing such behavior. But the truth is quite a bit more complicated. The world economy consists of billions of transactions every day. There can never be enough inspectors, accountants, customs officers, and police to ensure that all or even most of these transactions are properly carried out. Moreover, those charged with enforcing regulations are themselves not immune to corruption, and, hence, they too must be supervised and held accountable to others--who also have to be somehow regulated. The upshot is that regulation cannot be the linchpin of attempts to reform our economy. What is needed instead is something far more sweeping: for people to internalize a different sense of how one ought to behave, and act on it because they believe it is right.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-11:story.html?id=80661c9c-9c63-4c9e-a293-6888fc845351&amp;k=66438</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Washington Diarist: Obama's National Security Policy Could Use A Little Bit Of Fear-Mongering]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=7ce154a3-46ab-479a-9604-f146d9bd80c7</link><author>Leon Wieseltier</author><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA['The thing I fear most is fear." This was Montaigne, in an early essay, many centuries before Roosevelt. "It exceeds all other disorders in intensity." He was endorsing an ancient fear of fear, according to which it is a disgrace, and the most formidable enemy of reason, and therefore an impediment to self-control, and to thoughtful action. The mastery of fear, in this tradition, is one of the signs of the attainment of wisdom. I am being a little bookish, but I heard echoes of this delegitimation of fear in Barack Obama's speech on national security at the National Archives. He always referred to fear derisively--"all too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight"; "we will be ill-served by ... fear-mongering" and by words that "are calculated to scare people rather than educate them," and so on. He warned against "fodder for 30-second commercials" and "direct mail pieces ... designed to frighten the population." It did not hurt Obama's argument that even as he was rising above alarmism Cheney was making a commercial for it across town. In the disputation between Vice-President Dracula and President van Helsing, the choice seemed easy. A little too easy, actually. So I would like to say a few words on behalf of fear, before our national security policy settles into a misplaced stoicism.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-11:story.html?id=7ce154a3-46ab-479a-9604-f146d9bd80c7&amp;k=21030</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: How the GOP Lost Its Edge On National Security]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/10/ruy-tnrtv.aspx</link><author>Ruy Teixeira</author><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNRtv: How the GOP Lost Its Edge On National Security]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-11:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/10/ruy-tnrtv.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Can Google Help You Game The Stock Market?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/06/10/searching-for-profits.aspx</link><author>Zubin Jelveh</author><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Yesterday, I wrote about some new research showing how tracking search trends on Google can improve forecasts of economic activity. Doing a little more digging after the post, I realized that Google had made the same point back in April.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-11:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/06/10/searching-for-profits.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The End Of Clintonism? What McAuliffe's Defeat Does And Doesn't Say About Obama's New Brand Of Politics]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/10/end-of-the-clinton-era.aspx</link><author>John Judis</author><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Terry McAuliffe's crushing defeat in yesterday's Virginia Democratic primary for governor is being hailed as a loss for Bill Clinton, the end of Clintonism and the Clinton era, and a triumph for Barack Obama and his politics. "The McAuliffe loss will be seen (rightly, mostly) as an echo of the Clinton loss and another blow to the Clinton brand," declared Politico's Ben Smith, while Hotline trumpeted, "McAuliffe Loss Wraps Clinton Era." That may be true in a very, very narrow sense--but it is for the most part false and misleading.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-10:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/10/end-of-the-clinton-era.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Divided We Fall: A Leading British Politician Explains How Europe Can Stem The Rising Power Of Far-Right Parties]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=67989eb0-33b8-44b4-82f4-42ec31200d72</link><author>David Lammy</author><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The successful nations in the twenty-first century will be those that come to terms quickest with the implications of globalization--of unprecedented flows of people, money, information and ideas. As a minister in the British government, representing a London constituency that is the most diverse in Europe, I have long been convinced of this. So when I attended the inauguration of President Obama in January this year, I couldn’t help feeling that America had stolen a march on Britain.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-10:story.html?id=67989eb0-33b8-44b4-82f4-42ec31200d72&amp;k=74450</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[I Thought Democrats Were The Ones Who Were Supposed To See Racism Everywhere]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/mcwhorter/archive/2009/06/09/the-wise-latina-racist-please.aspx</link><author>John McWhorter</author><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[This idea that Sonia Sotomayor's line that a "wise Latina woman" has an advantage in judging over a white man is racist can be taken in two ways.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-10:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/mcwhorter/archive/2009/06/09/the-wise-latina-racist-please.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Zeroing In On The Most Important Part Of The Climate Bill You Haven’t Heard Anything About]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/09/a-look-at-the-guts-of-the-climate-bill.aspx</link><author>Bradford Plumer</author><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Here's something I never would have predicted: When the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing this morning on permit allocations, of all topics, the room was totally packed—hardly an empty seat to be found. It's not that a herd of people accidentally stumbled into the wrong room. ("Uh, sorry, we thought this was the hearing on regulating derivatives...") No, as dreary as it may sound, the question of how pollution permits are divvied up under a cap-and-trade regime has become of the hottest environmental issues of the day.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-10:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/09/a-look-at-the-guts-of-the-climate-bill.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[It's Closing Argument Time In The Rockefeller Case--And There Aren't That Many Open Questions]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=d03d1008-17a0-4879-9681-3f3f6460da18</link><author>Margo Howard</author><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[It’s Closing Argument Time In The Rockefeller Case--And There Were Some Real Howlers]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-10:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=d03d1008-17a0-4879-9681-3f3f6460da18</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Meet The Poor State Department Diplomat Who Has To Move All The Gitmo Detainees]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=60a24a12-9c59-44a3-ade9-db3c55d97e80</link><author>Michael Crowley</author><pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Daniel Fried may have the most thankless job in Washington. While Barack Obama got to deliver the dazzling promise that he would close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and turn the page on America's global image, Fried has been left to handle the hardest part of that task: finding new homes for the Guantanamo detainees who, for political or legal reasons, can neither be tried nor imprisoned in the United States. Perhaps half the 240 detainees now in custody will have to be relocated to countries other than their native lands because they risk being tortured there (or worse) upon their return. For Fried, that means shuttling endlessly between foreign capitals to plead for help, and often to be met by extortionist demands and haughty lectures from foreign diplomats. It is grueling work, making the respected career diplomat something like a door-to-door salesman peddling the human equivalent of radioactive waste.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-09:story.html?id=60a24a12-9c59-44a3-ade9-db3c55d97e80&amp;k=16488</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Drone War: Questioning Our Highly Effective Yet Ethically Dubious Tactic Against Terrorism]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=b951d70b-db5e-4875-a5b9-4501e713943d&amp;p=2</link><author>Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann</author><pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The relatively slow pace of drone attacks against Al Qaeda's leaders quickened dramatically in the waning months of the Bush administration after it had become clear that the terror group was reconstituting itself in Pakistan's tribal regions. In July 2007, the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community released a National Intelligence Estimate assessing that Al Qaeda was resurging and warning that it "has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including a safe haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-09:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=b951d70b-db5e-4875-a5b9-4501e713943d&amp;p=2</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Fake Rockefeller Trial Continues: Is He Lying Or Just Insane?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4717c257-8ee6-408f-9d86-e3293028f74e</link><author>Margo Howard</author><pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The witnesses today are mental health experts, hired by the defense, to convince the jury--aka “the kids”--that Grock is certifiably insane. An interesting sidelight about this incredibly young jury: Courthouse scuttlebutt has it that the defense was pleased with young jurors because they would be unlikely to have children … this being a kidnapping case and all.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-09:story.html?id=4717c257-8ee6-408f-9d86-e3293028f74e&amp;k=99442</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Obama's Misguided Plan To Limit Bank Bonuses]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/08/tnrtv-obama-s-misguided-plan-to-limit-bank-bonuses.aspx</link><author>Simon Johnson</author><pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Simon Johnson, professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and co-founder of BaselineScenario.com, argues that the Obama administration's plan to regulate executive compensation does not pair the toughest regulations with the banks that need them most.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-09:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/08/tnrtv-obama-s-misguided-plan-to-limit-bank-bonuses.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Week Two Of The 'Grock' Trial: The Fake Rockefeller's Ex-Wife Tells All]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f688661b-49d5-42b0-ae52-34fc2a4b9a69</link><author>Margo Howard</author><pubDate>Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[There is great anticipation about Sandra Boss's appearance. A larger than usual number of still photographers are hanging around on the courthouse steps, since only one pool photographer is allowed in the courtroom. Grock (my name, as you'll recall, for Clark Rockefeller/Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter) has arrived, as he does every day, wearing handcuffs and no socks.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-08:story.html?id=f688661b-49d5-42b0-ae52-34fc2a4b9a69&amp;k=2921</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Not Just For Harry And Louise--Health Care Reform Is Just As Vital To The Drug And Insurance Companies As It Is The Middle-Class]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=50fb8ed6-6f22-4d2e-b012-c78ebf789659</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Fifty million new customers.Those may be the most important words to remember as the health care reform effort hits its stride this week.Many have expressed amazement that the interest groups historically opposed to fixing the health system seem ready to work with the reformers. Their public-spiritedness reflects enlightened self-interest: The health system is so unstable that even the drug industry and the insurance companies are worried that it will crash on top of them.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-08:story.html?id=50fb8ed6-6f22-4d2e-b012-c78ebf789659&amp;k=38556</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: The Bank Lobby's 'Fight To The Death']]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/06/05/tnrtv-power-of-banks.aspx</link><author>Noam Scheiber</author><pubDate>Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNRtv: The Bank Lobby's 'Fight To The Death']]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-08:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/06/05/tnrtv-power-of-banks.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Do We Need A Technological Breakthrough To Avert The Climate Crisis?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=532df6a0-27db-420d-8480-25e229618117</link><author>Bradford Plumer</author><pubDate>Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In the winter of 1984, a young scientist named Steven Chu was working as the new head of the quantum electronics division at AT&amp;T's Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. For months, he'd been struggling to find ways to trap atoms with light so that he could hold them in place and study them better. It was an idea he'd picked up from an older colleague, Arthur Ashkin, who had wrangled with the problem all through the 1970s before finally being told to shut the project down--which he did, until Chu came along. ("I was this new, young person who he could corrupt," Chu later joked.) Now Chu, too, had hit an impasse until, one night, a fierce snowstorm swirled through New Jersey. Everyone at Bell had left early except for Chu, who lived nearby and decided to stay a bit longer. As he watched the snow drift outside, he realized they'd been approaching the problem incorrectly: He first needed to cool the atoms, so that they were moving only as fast as ants, rather than fighter jets; only then could he predict their movements and trap them with lasers. It was a key insight, and Chu's subsequent work on cooling atoms eventually earned him a share of the Nobel Prize in physics.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-07:story.html?id=532df6a0-27db-420d-8480-25e229618117&amp;k=35807</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Obama Can't Hide From Human Rights]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/05/tnrtv-obama-can-t-hide-from-human-rights.aspx</link><author>Michele Dunne</author><pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Michele Dunne, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin, responds to Obama's address to the Muslim world, arguing that sooner rather than later, the administration will have to choose between offering real support for democracies throughout the region, and just talking about it.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-06:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/05/tnrtv-obama-can-t-hide-from-human-rights.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Dissent: The Trouble With Obama's Cairo Speech]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=125f15b4-db73-44cd-9d5a-e1fdf4a432d1</link><author>Jamie Kirchick</author><pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Even if you didn’t like the president’s speech, there were certainly elements to applaud. He did not shy away from defending the American-led mission in Afghanistan. His moving commentary about the Holocaust was absolutely necessary in a part of the world where so many people deny its existence. Those were the good parts. Unfortunately, these noble sentiments were accompanied by a series of worrisome ones.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-05:story.html?id=125f15b4-db73-44cd-9d5a-e1fdf4a432d1&amp;k=27207</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Middle East's Uncertain Future: What's More Revealing--What Obama Said In Cairo, Or What He Didn't?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=6f145c1e-6de6-4d63-bbc1-bd750e1953e8</link><author>Robert Satloff</author><pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Combining the roles of bridge builder and strategist, President Barack Obama delivered a wide-ranging 55-minute speech to the world's Muslims today, designed to put flesh on the bones of his signature concept of "mutual interests and mutual respect" and to launch a "new beginning" in U.S.-Muslim relations.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-05:story.html?id=6f145c1e-6de6-4d63-bbc1-bd750e1953e8&amp;k=17981</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[As If There Weren't Enough Problems, The Middle East Is Literally Heating Up. Oy.]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/03/the-middle-east-40-years-out.aspx</link><author>Bradford Plumer</author><pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Does the world really need more headaches in the Middle East? No, of course not, but rising global temperatures are likely to create a few more regardless. According to a new report from the Institute for Sustainable Development, the Levant is currently on pace to get hotter and drier in the next four decades, and climate change threatens to "reduce the availability of scarce water resources, increase food insecurity, hinder economic growth, and lead to large-scale population movements" in the area that spans Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Syria. An area, mind you, where, "in many places, demand for water already outstrips supply."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-05:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/03/the-middle-east-40-years-out.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Why China Has Only Gotten Worse Since Tiananmen]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/04/tnrtv-what-s-really-changed-since-tiananmen.aspx</link><author>James Mann</author><pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In part two of a TNRtv series on China, James Mann, author-in-residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of The China Fantasy, reflects on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, arguing that over the past two decades, authoritarianism in China has only grown stronger.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-05:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/04/tnrtv-what-s-really-changed-since-tiananmen.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Barack Talks Like Bush, Why Egypt May Have Been A Bad Choice Of Venue, And More: TNR's Complete Coverage Of Obama's Speech In Cairo]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/04/tnr-s-cairo-coverage.aspx</link><author></author><pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNR's complete Cairo coverage]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-05:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/04/tnr-s-cairo-coverage.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Just Like Bush: Obama Used The Same Rhetoric As His Predecessor. So Why Was He So Much More Effective?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=770a874d-9279-4cda-b0e4-2fd0533b07b6</link><author>Michael Crowley</author><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[One year ago today, Barack Obama clinched the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. In doing so, he defied Hillary Clinton’s criticism that his candidacy amounted to little more than shallow and flowery speeches. Change, Clinton argued, comes from hard work--not pretty words. Today, in the Grand Hall of Cairo University, Clinton listened from the front row as Obama gave his most elegant speech yet. Perhaps it dawned on Clinton, if it hadn’t already, that a great speech can do a lot of the hard work for you.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-04:story.html?id=770a874d-9279-4cda-b0e4-2fd0533b07b6&amp;k=89621</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[More Than Words: Can Obama AccomplishTthe Ambitious Goals He Laid Out In Today's Speech?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=76950b5d-ffc9-4033-ae73-c588ad2111b1</link><author>Shmuel Rosner</author><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Barack Obama has two imminent opportunities to test the effectiveness of his speech in Cairo today: Will it help the more moderate candidates win in next week's Lebanon election? The week after, will it help in transforming Iranian public opinion and make Iranians more prone to oust their radical president? Speeches, unlike literature, should not be judged as prose or poetry--but with Obama, we sometimes tend to forget that. The eloquence with which he conveys his message is almost always numbingly beautiful. Words, however, will not suffice; they will only be remembered as significant if they have consequences. Ronald Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech was remarkable when it was delivered, and was much more so when the wall was indeed torn down.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-04:story.html?id=76950b5d-ffc9-4033-ae73-c588ad2111b1&amp;k=55264</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Unsettled: What Exactly Is Obama Trying To Accomplish In The Middle East?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/archive/2009/06/02/an-inconvenient-truth.aspx</link><author>Marty Peretz</author><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[What dismays me most about Barack Obama's Middle East initiative is that the only country in the area he seems to be pressing is Israel. He is not pressing Egypt and perhaps that's because there is nothing that Cairo can give. Maybe I'll be surprised by the presidential visit to Riyadh, but he is, thus far, also not pressing Saudi Arabia and its king to whom he offered at the G-20 meeting rather curious and extravagant homage.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-04:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/archive/2009/06/02/an-inconvenient-truth.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Underappreciated Storyline: How Obama’s Cairo Visit Can Help Darfur]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/03/how-obama-can-save-darfur-in-egypt.aspx</link><author>Barron YoungSmith</author><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Barack Obama's trip to the Middle East is one from which few concrete results are expected. If news reports are to be believed, his speech in Cairo will largely be symbolic. In practical terms, Obama is unlikely to make much progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran's nuclear program, or even human rights in Egypt. Yet there is one major issue on which Obama could make serious, substantive strides if he devotes attention to it while he is in Cairo: Darfur. Ironically, this is also the one issue that Obama may not mention at all.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-04:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/03/how-obama-can-save-darfur-in-egypt.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Barack Isn't Talking About The Cost Of Health Care Reform. This Is Dangerous.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=c7996d97-7b92-4308-95c5-b1b467366a3d</link><author>William Galston</author><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[As health care reform enters the phase of serious legislation, it becomes vital to understand what the American people expect and believe ... and how the forthcoming debate is likely to affect their views.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-04:story.html?id=c7996d97-7b92-4308-95c5-b1b467366a3d&amp;k=27990</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Say What You Will About Rush And Newt--But They've Successfully Tilted Media Coverage To The Right]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=bce3f283-6fdb-4302-9e4d-56a9345803e4</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON--A media environment that tilts to the right is obscuring what President Obama stands for and closing off political options that should be part of the public discussion.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-04:story.html?id=bce3f283-6fdb-4302-9e4d-56a9345803e4&amp;k=65108</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: How To Keep Volatile Oil Prices From Fouling Up Clean Energy Efforts]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/03/tnrtv-how-to-save-clean-energy-from-volatile-oil.aspx</link><author>Bradford Plumer</author><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNR assistant editor Bradford Plumer breaks down why high oil prices aren't nearly as big a problem as volatile oil prices—and what the United States can do about it.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-04:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/03/tnrtv-how-to-save-clean-energy-from-volatile-oil.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Music In The Meltdown: What Should Pop Sound Like When The Country’s Going To Hell?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=c3db6105-4e39-4640-a43d-67a90201a54b</link><author>David Hajdu</author><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[When all this is over, the economic crisis will take lasting form in the American consciousness as a video montage. The images are already familiar: traders gaping in horror at the Stock Exchange ... Paulsen testifying before Congress ... A foreclosure notice tacked onto a front-porch door ... Obama selling the bailout ... The Chrysler headquarters posted for sale on Craigslist (well, not really, not yet). It is as easy to envision this string of images as it is to conjure a mental highlight reel of the visual iconography of the Great Depression: the Dust Bowl photography of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, newsreel clips of bread lines and Hooverville shacks--and all of it set to the sound of Rudy Vallee singing "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" What, then, will play on the soundtrack of the montage of the current crisis? What is the music of our meltdown?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-03:story.html?id=c3db6105-4e39-4640-a43d-67a90201a54b&amp;k=32644</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA['A Stain On Our Souls': Why Has Obama Decided To Go Soft On Darfur?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ae9cec88-881d-4aa4-b5bd-9034dc38c825</link><author>The Editors</author><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Back in 2007, then-candidate Barack Obama minced no words when it came to Sudan. "When you see a genocide, whether it's in Rwanda or Bosnia or in Darfur, that's a stain on all of us," he said. "That's a stain on our souls." Obama is now president, and Darfur is still a mess. What is taking place there today is not simple to describe. People are no longer being killed at the alarming rate of 2003 and 2004. Yet the region continues to attract the world's attention because two million people remain housed in camps where they live on the brink of disease and starvation, with little hope of returning home in the near future. In Germany, Cambodia, and Rwanda, genocides came to a halt when <i>genocidaires</i> were chased from power. But, in Sudan, while the killing has slowed dramatically, those who perpetrated the massacres remain in control of the country, able to toy with the fate of survivors in the cruelest possible manner. Sudan's leaders continue to impede a fair peace settlement, most recently by obstructing Darfuri political representatives from attending peace talks in Addis Ababa. And, in the wake of the indictment of Sudanese President Omar Bashir by the International Criminal Court, the government expelled numerous international aid groups, making the already precarious existence of displaced Darfuris that much worse. Call this situation what you want--the awful aftermath of an unresolved genocide; the second, less violent phase of a bid by Khartoum to punish ethnic groups that supported the rebellion launched in 2003--but, whatever you label Darfur in 2009, it is still a terrible catastrophe.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-03:story.html?id=ae9cec88-881d-4aa4-b5bd-9034dc38c825&amp;k=49782</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Dispatch From Cairo: What The Muslim Brotherhood Wants From Obama]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/02/the-muslim-brotherhood-invited.aspx</link><author>Michael Crowley</author><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[CAIRO--Good news for political reformers and Islamists: In an unexpected bit of diplomatic choreography, several members of the Muslim Brotherhood have been invited to attend Barack Obama's speech in Cairo tomorrow. This is a small triumph for the many people upset that Obama's visit would simply affirm Hosni Mubarak's near-monopoly on political discourse here, and if reports are true that the invitation came after a push for Washington, suggests that Obama isn't putting on a show perfectly tailored to Mubarak's liking.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-03:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/02/the-muslim-brotherhood-invited.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why Sonia Sotomayor Came Out Okay Despite the Height of the Building She Grew Up In]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/mcwhorter/archive/2009/06/02/why-sonia-sotomayor-came-out-okay-despite-the-height-of-the-building-she-grew-up-in.aspx</link><author>John McWhorter</author><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The descriptions of the housing project that Sonia Sotomayor grew up in are an important rejoinder to a truism oft-heard: that poor blacks were done in by, in addition to so many other things, architecture.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-03:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/mcwhorter/archive/2009/06/02/why-sonia-sotomayor-came-out-okay-despite-the-height-of-the-building-she-grew-up-in.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Hugo Chavez Ruined My Weekend!]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3089ebe5-a5fb-4277-89a2-37d57ae04846</link><author>Alvaro Vargas Llosa</author><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[CARACAS, Venezuela--A group of foreign writers, academics and politicians was invited here to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Cedice, a Venezuelan think tank that promotes liberal democracy and the market economy, both of which President Hugo Chavez wants to destroy. The government's thuggish reaction turned the visit into a public showdown that helped expose what Venezuelans are going through these days.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-03:story.html?id=3089ebe5-a5fb-4277-89a2-37d57ae04846&amp;k=10865</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Time To Kill: Why Is Anti-Abortion Violence At An All-Time High When Radical Pro-Life Activism Is On The Decline?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=409ed7ae-76fa-411c-9720-618215852f11</link><author>Jon A. Shields</author><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[George Tiller was one of the most infamous physicians in the pro-life world. The Kansas abortion provider regularly aborted fetuses, both disabled and healthy, in their final trimester, which few others are willing to do. He further stoked religious ire by retaining a chaplain who offered cremated ashes to parents and baptized aborted remains. But his practices do not fully explain his murder at Wichita’s Reformation Lutheran Church on Sunday.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-02:story.html?id=409ed7ae-76fa-411c-9720-618215852f11&amp;k=19196</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Drone War]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=b951d70b-db5e-4875-a5b9-4501e713943d</link><author>Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann</author><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The Al Qaeda videotape shows a small white dog tied up inside a glass cage. A milky gas slowly filters in. An Arab man with an Egyptian accent says: "Start counting the time." Nervous, the dog starts barking and then moaning. After flailing about for some minutes, it succumbs to the poisonous gas and stops moving.]]></description><enclosure url="http://media.canada.com/24be34eb-ecfe-4969-88c2-5aa898db4139/Dronemag.jpg" type="image/jpeg"></enclosure><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-03:story.html?id=b951d70b-db5e-4875-a5b9-4501e713943d&amp;k=40024</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Matter With Kansas: What Role Did The State's Political Climate Play In The Murder Of Dr. George Tiller?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a8660380-b6b3-435b-a24d-a5890cb535d7</link><author>John B. Judis</author><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[No one who has written about Kansas politics can be unfamiliar with Dr. George Tiller, who was assassinated Sunday as he was entering the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. Tiller has been the target of the state’s right-wing Republicans for two decades. He was also the focus of the fanatical anti-abortion group, Operation Rescue, founded by Randall Terry, which is now headquartered in Wichita. Both the state’s Republicans and the leaders of Operation Rescue have some explaining to do in the wake of Tiller’s murder.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-02:story.html?id=a8660380-b6b3-435b-a24d-a5890cb535d7&amp;k=26741</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The New Bob Woodward Book That's Making The White House Tremble]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=7894e8ce-9773-4792-b66d-b6acfdbc6521</link><author>Gabriel Sherman</author><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In early May, White House Counsel Greg Craig circulated a memo inside the West Wing. Part of a series of memos on protocol, it explained how to deal with writers researching books and articles on the White House. (Craig's unsurprising instructions: Clear interview requests with the press office.) While the memo didn't mention any journalists by name--and while there are currently no fewer than half a dozen major reporters under contract to write books about the nascent Obama presidency and the 2008 campaign, any of whom could conceivably end up embarrassing the administration--there is one person in particular the White House is undoubtedly nervous about: Bob Woodward.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-02:story.html?id=7894e8ce-9773-4792-b66d-b6acfdbc6521&amp;k=60162</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Can't We Just Learn To Live With Global Warming?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/01/can-t-we-just-learn-to-live-with-global-warming.aspx</link><author>Bradford Plumer</author><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Whenever the subject turns to climate-change policy, one question constantly pops up: Wouldn't it be easier to adapt to a warmer world than to spend money shrinking greenhouse-gas emissions now? David Orr has an essay tackling this query over at Environment360, giving four big reasons why mitigation is "easier, cheaper, and more ethical" than depending solely on adaptation:]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-02:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/06/01/can-t-we-just-learn-to-live-with-global-warming.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: The Government Says It Wants To Be Hands-Off With GM. Yeah, Right.]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/01/tnrtv-will-the-government-end-up-running-gm.aspx</link><author>TNRTV AUTHOR TK</author><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Simon Johnson, professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and co-founder of BaselineScenario.com, commends the Obama administration's GM bankruptcy plan, but warns that it will be difficult for the government to provide autonomy.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-02:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/01/tnrtv-will-the-government-end-up-running-gm.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Can Conan Do Politics? A TNR Video Rundown.]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/01/conan-o-brien-a-political-look-back.aspx</link><author>Dylan Matthews</author><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[After 16 years at the helm of "The Late Show," tonight Conan O’Brien will finally take over for Jay Leno to become the fifth host of NBC’s "The Tonight Show." To mark the occasion, TNR decided to take a look back at some of Conan’s best political material from 1993 to 2009.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-02:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/01/conan-o-brien-a-political-look-back.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Could The Government Have Kept GM Afloat?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/01/the-end-of-gm-as-we-know-it.aspx</link><author>Jonathan Cohn</author><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[It's been clear for a while now that General Motors, like Chrysler before it, was headed for bankruptcy. But it's still a huge development. And, at least from the perspective of history, it's still a little stunning.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-01:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/01/the-end-of-gm-as-we-know-it.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Can The U.S. Really Trust The Former (And Possibly Future) Pakistani Leader, Nawaz Sharif?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=10262403-53af-4597-80bf-3345a817f86b</link><author>Nicholas Schmidle</author><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Earlier this spring, Nawaz Sharif threatened to topple Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's government. Since taking power in September, Zardari had been promising to reinstate Iftikhar Chaudhry, the chief justice of the supreme court, whom Pervez Musharraf had sacked on March 9, 2007. But Zardari, who feared that Chaudhry would try to either curb executive power or dredge up corruption cases, balked repeatedly. This annoyed Sharif--and many of his fellow countrymen--to no end. So, to coincide with the two-year anniversary of Chaudhry's suspension, Sharif planned a "long march" to Islamabad, backed by thousands of lawyers and demonstrators. On March 14, 2009, the eve of his final push toward Islamabad, Sharif described the street protests as a "rare moment of Pakistan's history." Added the two-time former prime minister, "It's [a] prelude to revolution."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-01:story.html?id=10262403-53af-4597-80bf-3345a817f86b&amp;k=10972</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Take The Hike! Why It's Worth Paying More For Health Care Now.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=6a320cca-e92f-492f-b983-fe1741e94355</link><author>Jonathan Cohn</author><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[With Congress back in session, health care is at the top of the political agenda. And, already, you can hear the opponents of reform making a familiar argument: It will mean huge new taxes for you, even if you're part of the middle class. Although they're exaggerating, conceptually they have a point: Health reform could mean slightly higher taxes for some middle-class people.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-01:story.html?id=6a320cca-e92f-492f-b983-fe1741e94355&amp;k=91846</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Dispatches From The Strangest Trial Involving A Fake Rockefeller In Probably Forever]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=b635a88c-b765-447c-946b-a01f767ea31f</link><author>Margo Howard</author><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Last July one of <I>The</I> <I>Boston Globe</I> guys who’s a pal called to ask if I knew any Rockefellers. I said yes. He said, “Can you find out if anyone in the family who would be in his 40s is named ‘Clark’?” I asked why. He said someone who identified himself as a Rockefeller just kidnapped his seven-year-old daughter and left town with her. They were found, six days later, in Baltimore where “Clark Rockefeller” had bought a house with $400,000 worth of cashier’s checks.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-01:story.html?id=b635a88c-b765-447c-946b-a01f767ea31f&amp;k=80954</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Aborted Debate: Moral Conflict Just Ain't What It Used To Be]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3800fb63-ae72-4d6b-a84a-a09fb1c41849</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON--It seems so long ago. In the weeks after the 2004 election, one exit poll finding lit up the political world. The survey showed that "moral values" were the single most important issue in the election, narrowly outstripping even the economy and terrorism.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-06-01:story.html?id=3800fb63-ae72-4d6b-a84a-a09fb1c41849&amp;k=87701</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Justice Served: What Kind Of Jurist Will Sonia Sotomayor Be?]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=64f122c0-0373-4659-836d-d6f1ba708867</link><author>The Editors</author><pubDate>Sat, 30 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In the long history of the Supreme Court, biography is hardly destiny. The Court's chambers have been occupied by justices who have emerged from hardscrabble pasts yet possessed stunningly little empathy for those still mired in impoverished conditions. Clarence Thomas, to name the most obvious example, may have come from crushing poverty in Pin Point, Georgia, and triumphed over the longest odds--but that experience laid the basis for a body of work marked by bitterness, anger, and ideological rigidity.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-30:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=64f122c0-0373-4659-836d-d6f1ba708867</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How The Health Care System Is Like The Subprime Mess]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/05/29/how-the-health-care-system-is-like-the-subprime-mess.aspx</link><author>Noam Scheiber</author><pubDate>Sat, 30 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Last night I finally had a chance to read Atul Gawande's terrific New Yorker piece about health care costs, which everyone is recommending. I'll leave most of the analysis to the healthcare wonks (though I don't want to sell it short--it's an engagingly written piece that any civilian will enjoy). But, from where I sit, Gawande's most interesting idea is an analogy he offers up:]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-30:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/05/29/how-the-health-care-system-is-like-the-subprime-mess.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Can Obama Win The Battle Of The Budget?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/29/tnrtv-can-obama-win-the-battle-of-the-budget.aspxTNR senior editor Jonathan Chait discusses his last "TRB from Washington" column with editor Franklin Foer: How should Obama respond to allegations of fiscal irresponsibility?</link><author>Jonathan Chait</author><pubDate>Sat, 30 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNR senior editor Jonathan Chait discusses his last "TRB from Washington" column with editor Franklin Foer: How should Obama respond to allegations of fiscal irresponsibility?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-30:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/29/tnrtv-can-obama-win-the-battle-of-the-budget.aspxTNR senior editor Jonathan Chait discusses his last "TRB from Washington" column with editor Franklin Foer: How should Obama respond to allegations of fiscal irresponsibility?</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Newt Bomb: How A Pulp-Fiction Thriller Became A GOP Talking Point]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a25fb1f1-aced-41bb-9d30-fa0de6a531fc</link><author>Michael Crowley</author><pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Speaking to a Washington conference earlier this month, Newt Gingrich heartily recommended a disturbing apocalyptic thriller currently on The New York Times' best-seller list. Written by William Forstchen, One Second After tells the story of what happens to a college town after the lights go out. Not just the lights, actually, but electrical devices of all kinds. Phones go dead, computers fritz, cars won't start. That this is a more than an inconvenience quickly becomes apparent: Patients die in powerless hospitals, and frozen food begins to rot. Word spreads that airliners have simply dropped from sky, including Air Force One. (The president is dead.) Squirrel meat is traded for ammunition as Mexico reclaims Texas, China occupies the West coast, and cannibalistic mobs rampage everywhere else.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-29:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a25fb1f1-aced-41bb-9d30-fa0de6a531fc</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Will Obama Stand Up For Human Rights In Cairo Next Week?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/galston/archive/2009/05/28/obama-s-challenge-in-cairo.aspx</link><author>William Galston</author><pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[As President Obama prepares for his historic speech in Cairo next week, he faces a dual challenge--not only to redefine the troubled relations between the United States and the Muslim world, but also to clarify the place of democracy and human rights in his administration's foreign policy. The former would have been the centerpiece of his first speech in an Islamic nation no matter where he had chosen to deliver it. But it was the selection of Egypt as his venue that made the latter unavoidable.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-29:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/galston/archive/2009/05/28/obama-s-challenge-in-cairo.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why Tightening Sanctions Against Iran Won't Work]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4db1787e-02de-4f34-9b99-79c550187bd0</link><author>Ed Morse and Michael Makovsky</author><pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[As the Obama administration prepares to engage Iran diplomatically, sentiment in Congress is rising in support of applying greater pressure on Tehran. The current centerpiece of this strategy is legislation recently introduced by a bipartisan set of congressional leaders to sanction companies that sell gasoline to Iran or help upgrade Iran’s gasoline refining capacity. Despite the appeal of leveraging Iran’s apparent dependence on imports of refined petroleum, the legislation is unlikely to have much impact. Moreover, valuable time could be wasted while Iran continues its ever more rapid march toward nuclear capability. The only effective option for seriously limiting its gasoline imports is to impose a naval blockade on Iranian ports, which should only be undertaken, if needed, after proper and complete preparation.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-29:story.html?id=4db1787e-02de-4f34-9b99-79c550187bd0&amp;k=10998</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: If Every Closeted GOP Politician Came Out, Would It Change Anything? Part 2 Of A TNR Debate.]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/28/tnrtv-key-to-gay-rights.aspx</link><author>Richard Just and Kirby Dick</author><pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In the second part of a TNR debate, managing editor Richard Just and Outrage director Kirby Dick argue about whether it would change anything if all closeted Republicans were open about their sexuality.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-29:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/28/tnrtv-key-to-gay-rights.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Until Logic Did Them Apart: The Definitive Case Against Gay Marriage Critics]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=aed7b949-7b03-4e5d-810f-ef651863251c</link><author>Jonathan Chait</author><pubDate>Thu, 28 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The Definitive Case Against Gay Marriage Critics]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-28:story.html?id=aed7b949-7b03-4e5d-810f-ef651863251c&amp;k=61978</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why It's Good For Liberals That Sonia Sotomayor Is Not The Activist Judge They Have Been Waiting For]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=9f36b707-ef6d-401e-a23a-8b96987b8b5e</link><author>Gordon Silverstein</author><pubDate>Thu, 28 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[When Sonia Sotomayor’s name surfaced on almost every short-list for Souter’s potential replacement, a very strange thing happened.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-28:story.html?id=9f36b707-ef6d-401e-a23a-8b96987b8b5e&amp;k=82284</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: What China Really Wants For North Korea]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/27/tnrtv-what-china-really-wants-for-north-korea.aspx</link><author>James Mann</author><pubDate>Thu, 28 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In the first part of a TNRtv series on China, James Mann, author-in-residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of The China Fantasy, breaks down Speaker Pelosi's visit to Beijing this week, arguing that a unified North Korea is not on China's wish list.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-28:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/27/tnrtv-what-china-really-wants-for-north-korea.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Trouble Sotomayor Poses For Ideologues On Both The Left And Right]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=6c6c3618-f3e9-4b8a-9dd3-fc48c2af7c25</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Thu, 28 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON -- Republicans would be foolish to fight the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court because she is the most conservative choice that President Obama could have made.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-28:story.html?id=6c6c3618-f3e9-4b8a-9dd3-fc48c2af7c25&amp;k=51990</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Beyond Her Biography: TNR Debates The Relevance Of Sotomayor's Background To Her Performance On The Bench.]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/26/tnr-on-sotomayor.aspx</link><author>Erwin Chemerinsky, Alan Dershowitz, Randall Kennedy, Tom Goldstein, and Jeffrey Rosen</author><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNR debates Obama's first Supreme Court appointment.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-27:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/26/tnr-on-sotomayor.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Real Reason Why Chris Dodd's Senate Seat Is In Such Danger]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=eef7480e-d714-4dfa-a49c-33e9c8dfe6eb</link><author>Suzy Khimm</author><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA["It's a rough patch I'm going through," says Chris Dodd. How rough? Not long ago, Dodd entertained dreams of ascending to the White House. He moved his family to Iowa in 2007 and enrolled his daughter in a Des Moines public school, all in the hope of winning the state's caucus. He gave solid (if never spectacular) performances in debates while fund-raising prodigiously. And, though he didn't vault into the top tier of candidates, he managed to end his bid for the presidency with his long-standing reputation as a serious player in Democratic politics basically intact.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-27:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=eef7480e-d714-4dfa-a49c-33e9c8dfe6eb</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Did The Government Just Miss An Opportunity To Wake The Banks From Their Deep Denial?]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5c4c29ea-57b1-49b3-9598-a5e438dcc173</link><author>Noam Scheiber</author><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[A few days after the stress-test results hit Wall Street last week, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke took to a podium in Jekyll Island, Georgia, to share his thoughts on the much-hyped exercise. The chairman went deep into the weeds on how 150 government examiners spent ten weeks scrubbing the balance sheets of the country's largest banks. He pronounced the findings firmly in the mainstream of independent studies, with copious citations to bolster his case. Then, when he was done, Bernanke tried to place the stress tests in a broader context. "A principal goal of the capital assessment process is to help increase confidence in the banking system. ... Whether the objectives of the assessment program were achieved will only be known over time," he said. "We hope that, in two or three years, we will be able to reflect on the banking system's return to health."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-27:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5c4c29ea-57b1-49b3-9598-a5e438dcc173</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Why I Worry About the Fed's Ability To Keep Inflation Under Control]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/26/tnrtv-fears-of-inflation.aspx</link><author>Simon Johnson</author><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNRtv: Fears Of Inflation]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-27:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/26/tnrtv-fears-of-inflation.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Obama Is Trying To Turn The U.S. Into Canada!!! Debunking The Latest Conservative Smear About Health Care Reform.]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/05/26/more-right-wing-lies-with-beer-chaser.aspx</link><author>Jonathan Cohn</author><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing group last seen sponsoring Joe the Plumber's speaking tour against card-check legislation, is getting into the health care debate. And it's making arguments with all of the nuance and rigor you'd expect.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-27:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/05/26/more-right-wing-lies-with-beer-chaser.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Deficit Of Logic: Why Is Obama Getting Creamed In The Budget Debate?]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=46270d4d-61a1-4c1a-af71-92b5ddda9b6c</link><author>Jonathan Chait</author><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[If there's one political blemish on Barack Obama's first four months in office, it's that he's losing the budget debate. Democrats are openly worrying about the red ink. Republicans have taunted Obama as less fiscally responsible than his predecessor. (House Republican John Campbell compared George W. Bush's deficits to a "couple of drinks," and Obama's to "falling down, throwing up and wasted.") The administration's hasty budget-cut announcements (first $100 million, then $17 billion) show signs of panic.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-26:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=46270d4d-61a1-4c1a-af71-92b5ddda9b6c</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[From 'National Review' To David Brooks: Taking Stock Of The Intellectual Right In The Age Of Obama]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/linker/archive/2009/05/25/where-the-right-is.aspx</link><author>Damon Linker</author><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Roughly four months into Barack Obama's presidency, it's possible to make a few observations about the factions forming on the intellectual right as it adjusts to life in the political wilderness.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-26:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/linker/archive/2009/05/25/where-the-right-is.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Richard Just Debates 'Outrage' Director--Is It Wrong To Out Closeted Politicians?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/22/tnrtv-richard-just-debates-kirby-dick.aspx</link><author>Richard Just</author><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Richard Just Debates 'Outrage' Director--Is It Wrong To Out Closeted Politicians?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-26:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/22/tnrtv-richard-just-debates-kirby-dick.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Obama's Center-Left Two-Step: How Much Longer Can The President Keep Sending Different Messages To Different Audiences?]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2098f11c-1f05-4fcc-8a6c-0f3dcd8dae14</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[How Much Longer Can The President Keep Sending Different Messages To Different Audiences?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-25:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2098f11c-1f05-4fcc-8a6c-0f3dcd8dae14</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Washington Diarist: My Secret Life]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=01039d49-071b-47b5-95b3-08de40c168a8</link><author>Leon Wieseltier</author><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[I was given many reasons to deplore perfection, and never to dream of it. The tradition in which I was gratefully raised included in its beginnings an admonition against imperfect offerings, but grew into a welcoming comprehension of human finitude. It may be onerous to be reminded that I am not free to desist from the work, but it eases the night to know that it is not for me to finish it. My religion rains obligations, but it is notably free, except in some of its more stringent and sectarian versions, of the worst terrors of sin. The compassion is even in the etymology: in Hebrew, the arrow that misses its target "sins" against it. The proper response to imperfection is not despair. It is another arrow. And this penetration of duty by mercy was reproduced for me in my other universe, the America that had prostrated itself before psychology, in which the best was infamously the enemy of the good, and the individual was to aspire chiefly to adjustments. This atmosphere of acceptance was a benevolent thing. Perfectionism is also a way of thwarting, or injuring, oneself: masochism pretending to morality, in which one's demons are tricked out as one's angels. Yet the management of the psyche soon broadened into the larger managerial ethos that leveled every domain of American life, for which the problem with perfection is finally that it is impractical. One of America's dubious innovations has been to confer philosophical prestige upon practicality. When something works, we pronounce it truth. And beauty, too: at an antique shop in Maryland, I once found myself in a dispute with a brilliant companion about the beauty of tools. Stirred by the design of some nineteenth- century kitchen implements, she said that their fitness for their function made them beautiful. I said that their beauty was owed to the extent to which their form surpassed their use. She persisted in her mechanistic rapture, but proposed that there are many kinds of perfection. This, an ancient notion, appeased my exasperated idealism, but it settled nothing. The perfection of which I spoke was neither relative nor metaphorical. I could apprehend the modest perfections that she extolled, but she could not apprehend the immodest perfections that I extolled.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-23:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=01039d49-071b-47b5-95b3-08de40c168a8</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Departing AIG CEO Ed Liddy Went From White Knight To Whipping Boy]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/05/22/who-cries-for-ed-liddy.aspx</link><author>Noam Scheiber</author><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[No one, apparently. Back in March, the outgoing AIG CEO was all over the Internet thanks to the massive bonuses his notorious Financial Products unit was slated to receive. Today, after news of his looming departure broke, The Wall Street Journal buried the story on page C2 and the Times devoted half its Liddy piece to an unrelated lawsuit by AIG policyholders.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-23:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/05/22/who-cries-for-ed-liddy.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Liberals Might Be Killing Health Care Reform]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/05/20/when-unions-do-incredibly-stupid-things.aspx</link><author>Jonathan Cohn</author><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[How Liberals Might Be Killing Health Care Reform]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-23:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/05/20/when-unions-do-incredibly-stupid-things.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Is The Bottom Falling Out For U.S. Government Finances?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/05/22/tnrtv-scheiber-panic-govt-finances.aspx</link><author>Noam Scheiber</author><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Is The Bottom Falling Out For U.S. Government Finances?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-23:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/05/22/tnrtv-scheiber-panic-govt-finances.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Backward Runs 'Newsweek': Blah Blah Newsmag Remake Blah Blah.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=7cc5324e-0fbc-4316-a656-d49e77e3a5a4</link><author>Michael Kinsley</author><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Having recently been dumped by Time, I naturally had great hopes for this week's much-anticipated makeover of Newsweek. Both surviving newsmags (US News is said to exist still in some form, but no one I know has seen it lately) are in an Internet panic like that affecting newspapers. Newsweek has always been a bit faster on its feet. But judging from its first issue, the new Newsweek is not going to be the instrument of my revenge, alas.]]></description><enclosure url="http://media.canada.com/24be34eb-ecfe-4969-88c2-5aa898db4139/newsweek_obama.jpg" type="image/jpeg"></enclosure><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-22:story.html?id=7cc5324e-0fbc-4316-a656-d49e77e3a5a4&amp;k=8877</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Do Financial Crises Make People More Socially Conservative? Explaining Those New Abortion Polls.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=616ab33e-161b-42e9-b1a4-73cd00f48b5f</link><author>John B. Judis</author><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Do financial crises make people more socially conservative? Explaining those new abortion polls.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-22:story.html?id=616ab33e-161b-42e9-b1a4-73cd00f48b5f&amp;k=41715</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[In Defense Of Nancy Pelosi (On Health Care)]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/05/21/in-defense-of-nancy-pelosi.aspx</link><author>Jonathan Cohn</author><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[No, this is not about the CIA and torture. This is about health care legislation and some dogs that haven't barked.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-22:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/05/21/in-defense-of-nancy-pelosi.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Uncertain Future Of Nuclear Power]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/05/21/the-future-of-nuclear-revised.aspx</link><author>Bradford Plumer</author><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Via the Wall Street Journal's Keith Johnson, MIT has just updated its big 2003 study on "The Future of Nuclear Power." I do believe the party line on this blog is that nuclear power's safe and certainly worth considering as a source of carbon-free power, but that cost and financing are two big question marks. (Huge question marks, in fact.) One issue the MIT study explores is whether a cap or price on carbon-dioxide emissions will automatically lead to a boom in new reactor construction here in the United States. And the short answer is… not necessarily.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-22:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/05/21/the-future-of-nuclear-revised.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Prophet Motive: Is Nouriel Roubini Lucky Or Just Good?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=72d11e65-5086-4f71-a91d-408211a6b8b7</link><author>Julia Ioffe</author><pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[This year, Nouriel Roubini, the economist known to the general public as Dr. Doom, Prophet of the Financial Apocalypse, spent the early hours of Mardi Gras on the floor of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. It was only 11 a.m., but the party was rollicking. Traders careened around the floor, hooting and honking, dressed as dragons and devils and convicts. Rock music roared overhead, and no one seemed to care that, by the bye, the market had tanked. Tickled, Roubini registered the flicker of amusement on his Twitter thread: "Nouriel is at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange," he wrote, "where everyone is dressed in Mardi Gras costumes even if the market is down 2.5%."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-21:story.html?id=72d11e65-5086-4f71-a91d-408211a6b8b7&amp;k=97200</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Tamil Tigers Have Been Vanquished, But Sri Lanka's Problems Have Just Begun]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=01aebf3f-aa52-4b52-9310-ee584b4f67d4</link><author>Michael Schaffer</author><pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[After a quarter century of bloodshed and somewhere over 80,000 deaths, Sri Lanka’s civil war didn’t really settle anything. It began in 1983 in a flawed-but-functioning postcolonial democracy whose leaders never seemed quite up to the task of integrating different ethnicities into one nation. In apparently ended on Sunday, in a still-flawed, newly-swaggering postwar democracy where that basic task remains even more elusive.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-21:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=01aebf3f-aa52-4b52-9310-ee584b4f67d4</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Try As He Might, Obama Can't Avoid A Debate On Bush-Era Security Decisions]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2f2ab0a4-7089-4bcc-b26a-e8a036978cdf</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON -- President Obama's lieutenants would love it if all the television networks ran a crawl line at the bottom of the screen during news broadcasts that would keep repeating the words: "The economy, health care, energy, education. The economy, health care..."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-21:story.html?id=2f2ab0a4-7089-4bcc-b26a-e8a036978cdf&amp;k=10409</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: 'There Is No Such Thing As A Neutral Judge']]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/20/tnrtv-there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-neutral-judge.aspx</link><author>Erwin Chemerinsky</author><pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Erwin Chemerinsky, founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, defends Obama's intention to appoint a Supreme Court justice that is capable of considering the law in the context of people's every day lives.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-21:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/20/tnrtv-there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-neutral-judge.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Huntsman, Interrupted: Spending Time With The Man Who Wants To Be The Future Of The GOP, Just Not Its Present]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=bf9098d4-6b65-480f-b5dc-0ffb56844eb1</link><author>Zvika Krieger</author><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Huntsman, Interrupted: Spending Time With The Man Who Wants To Be The Future Of The GOP, Just Not Its Present.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-20:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=bf9098d4-6b65-480f-b5dc-0ffb56844eb1</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Meet Diane Wood, The Second Coming Of Ruth Bader Ginsburg]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=7fe82716-b9da-4fed-a113-904a9bd424ff</link><author>Jeffrey Rosen</author><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In March, 2008, Martha Nussbaum, a law professor at the University of Chicago, traveled
with Judge Diane Wood to a conference in India. The topic was
affirmative action in higher education, and before the conference
began, they went to Kolkata to meet women leaders who were gathered to
talk about how women should claim their legal rights. “Diane borrowed
half of my Indian wardrobe and came in like an Indian woman,” Nussbaum
recalls.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-20:story.html?id=7fe82716-b9da-4fed-a113-904a9bd424ff&amp;k=25932</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Americans Are Tilting Further Right On Abortion And Gun Control These Days. What?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/galston/archive/2009/05/19/the-shifting-cultural-mainstream.aspx</link><author>William Galston</author><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Political trends are rarely as simple as they appear. The last few years have brought sweeping Democratic victories, a surge of young voters into the electorate, and rising support for gay marriage--and so it is plausible to believe that the American people have become more liberal on social issues. But in recent weeks, surveys have indicated a turn toward the right on two of the most enduring and politically consequential cultural controversies--gun control and abortion. According to the Pew Research Center, 45 percent of the people now believe that it is more important to protect gun owners' rights than to control gun ownership, up from 37 percent just a year earlier. While pro-gun gains were strongest among less educated white men, most groups contributed to the surge--college as well as high school graduates, the Midwest and West as well as the South. Increases among independents were even larger than among Republicans. Only easterners and African-Americans bucked the trend.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-20:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/galston/archive/2009/05/19/the-shifting-cultural-mainstream.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why It's So Dangerous For Republicans To Bank On Obama's Becoming Unpopular]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/19/shorting-obama.aspx</link><author>Jonathan Chait</author><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[I thought this Tom Toles cartoon did a particularly good job of capturing the Republican Party's strategy. I thought of it again when I read this item from the Weekly Standard's Matthew Continetti:]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-20:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/19/shorting-obama.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: There Are Way Too Many Conflicts Of Interest Between Big Banks And The Government]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/19/tnrtv-shady-deals-between-banks-and-the-government.aspx</link><author>Simon Johnson</author><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Simon Johnson, professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and co-founder of BaselineScenario.com, argues that we must award government contracts to a wider range of Wall Street firms so as to minimize conflicts of interest.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-20:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/19/tnrtv-shady-deals-between-banks-and-the-government.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Cheney Fallacy: Why Barack Obama Is Waging A More Effective War On Terror Than George W. Bush]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=1e733cac-c273-48e5-9140-80443ed1f5e2</link><author>Jack Goldsmith</author><pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Former Vice President Cheney says that President Obama’s reversal of Bush-era terrorism policies endangers American security. The Obama administration, he has “moved to take down a lot of those policies we put in place that kept the nation safe for nearly eight years from a follow-on terrorist attack like 9/11.” Many people think Cheney is scare-mongering and owes President Obama his support or at least his silence. But there is a different problem with Cheney’s criticisms: his premise that the Obama administration has reversed Bush-era policies is largely wrong. The truth is closer to the opposite: The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. This does not mean that the Obama changes are unimportant. Packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric, it turns out, are vitally important to the legitimacy of terrorism policies.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-19:story.html?id=1e733cac-c273-48e5-9140-80443ed1f5e2&amp;k=21440</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Green Bubble: Why Environmentalism Keeps Imploding. PLUS, Dalton Conley Responds.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=6cd5578a-85ab-4627-b793-680ea8d44c7f</link><author>Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger</author><pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Sometime after the release of An Inconvenient Truth in 2006, environmentalism crossed from political movement to cultural moment. Fortune 500 companies pledged to go carbon neutral. Seemingly every magazine in the country, including Sports Illustrated, released a special green issue. Paris dimmed the lights on the Eiffel Tower. Solar investments became hot, even for oil companies. Evangelical ministers preached the gospel of "creation care." Even archconservative Newt Gingrich published a book demanding action on global warming.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-19:story.html?id=6cd5578a-85ab-4627-b793-680ea8d44c7f&amp;k=62454</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[CORRESPONDENCE: The Allure of Green]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5ea4a59d-37ea-4d8c-a67e-5d32fec67e4a</link><author>Dalton Conley</author><pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger argue forcefully that green consciousness is a luxury good that emerges at a certain stage of economic development and which ebbs and flows in strength with the business cycle (and the price of oil). Yet, in today's society, a green orientation goes beyond the luxury of enjoying clean air and swimmable waterways. In good times and bad, ecologically-sensitive consumption serves a particular moral role for today's affluent Americans who find themselves at the vortex of the most unequal economy in the developing world, and who work in some of the most abstract sectors of production.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-19:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5ea4a59d-37ea-4d8c-a67e-5d32fec67e4a</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: How Close Is Pakistan To Becoming A Jihadist State?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/18/tnrtv-the-most-dangerous-country-in-the-world.aspx</link><author>Bruce Riedel</author><pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Bruce Riedel, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of Obama's strategy review of Afghanistan and Pakistan, explains why President Zardari must convince his army to go after the Taliban--"if the state is hijacked by jihadists, the nuclear arsenal goes with it]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-19:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/18/tnrtv-the-most-dangerous-country-in-the-world.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Starting Over In Rwanda: Finding A Future In A Country That, 15 Years Ago, Looked Like It Might Not Have One]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=d5c54aed-08cb-48d0-b33a-ae2303cb7f9f</link><author>Christine Stansell</author><pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Raj Rajendran has great expectations for Rwanda, a nation whose
devastation would seem to invite pity and charity, not
entrepreneurial exuberance. His thriving textile operation,
Utexrwa, accounts for a sizeable chunk of the country's
manufacturing sector. With his kindly monomania about the goodness
of textile production and copious public spirit, he seems like a
businessman from another age, maybe a character out of Dickens.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-18:story.html?id=d5c54aed-08cb-48d0-b33a-ae2303cb7f9f&amp;k=64135</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Class Dismissed: How Obama Outmaneuvered His Critics At Notre Dame]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5312fe65-4044-4e9d-95a9-3cfa6e4b2bf8</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON -- Facing down protesters who didn't want him there, President Obama fought back at Notre Dame not with harsh words but with the most devastating weapons in his political arsenal: a call for "open hearts," "open minds," "fair-minded words," and a search for "common ground."]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-18:story.html?id=5312fe65-4044-4e9d-95a9-3cfa6e4b2bf8&amp;k=84552</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Are We Spending Too Much Time On Iran And Not Enough On North Korea?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/17/tnrtv-is-north-korea-a-bigger-threat-than-iran.aspx</link><author>J. Peter Scoblic</author><pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNR executive editor J. Peter Scoblic compares the challenges that we face in dealing with Iran to those with North Korea, arguing that even though Iran enjoys a greater presence in the media, it does not necessarily pose a greater threat.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-18:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/17/tnrtv-is-north-korea-a-bigger-threat-than-iran.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[EXCLUSIVE: How The Bean Counters At The Congressional Budget Office Could Kill Health Care Reform]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=b8f7b0c6-8f56-4e24-9168-f89b5852544e</link><author>Jonathan Cohn</author><pubDate>Sat, 16 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Everywhere you look, health care reform seems to be chugging along. Insurers and drug companies are visiting the White House to show solidarity with President Obama. House Democrats are promising to pass a bill by July 31. But, if you talk to senior staff in the administration or on Capitol Hill, you'll detect anxiety over one tiny agency--an agency that helped kill health care reform in 1994 and has the power to do so again.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-16:story.html?id=b8f7b0c6-8f56-4e24-9168-f89b5852544e&amp;k=37414</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Will The Notre Dame Controversy Suck Obama Into A Debate On Abortion? Don't Count On It.]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/15/the-great-deflector.aspx</link><author>Michelle Cottle</author><pubDate>Sat, 16 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The protests over President Obama's commencement speech at Notre Dame highlight one of our commander-in-chiefs more fascinating (not to mention politically useful) qualities.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-16:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/15/the-great-deflector.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Let's Make A Deal: Why Obama Should Appoint A Politician To The Supreme Court]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5b3add4d-851f-4ab0-9ae9-40fb29a27592</link><author>Gordon Silverstein</author><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Let’s Make A Deal: Why Obama Should Appoint A Politician To The Supreme Court]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-15:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5b3add4d-851f-4ab0-9ae9-40fb29a27592</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Cannibalization Watch: The Sad Fate Of A Conservative Heretic]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/14/the-making-of-a-conservative-heretic.aspx</link><author>Christopher Orr</author><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[A few days ago, Jon tweaked Jerry Taylor, a poster at the Corner, for refering to Rush Limbaugh and his conservative TV and radio brethren as figures who are "thought to be relatively unpopular with non-movement Americans." Jon imagined that this was a characteristic example of low-grade conservative disingenuousness, a unwillingness to acknowlege that Limbaugh is, in fact, demonstrably unpopular.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-15:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/14/the-making-of-a-conservative-heretic.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[To Prosecute Or Not To Prosecute? Obama Wimps Out On Torture.]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=842c7853-680a-445b-9018-2c4e7d32ace5</link><author>Jeffrey Rosen</author><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Barack Obama is trying to split the difference on torture. He wants to move forward--no messy dwelling on the Bush-Cheney era--except that he'll look backward if forced. There will be no independent commission to hold top- ranking officials politically accountable. But, if Attorney General Eric Holder wants to prosecute the Bush lawyers who defended the legality of waterboarding-- John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Steven Bradbury--well, the president won't stand in the way.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-15:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=842c7853-680a-445b-9018-2c4e7d32ace5</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Disputations: The New York Congressman Argues That The Law Demands An Investigation Into The Legal Origins Of Torture]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=d8457eb7-296a-43ad-b6b1-0e8b7a12f641</link><author>Jerrold Nadler</author><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[I agree with most of Jeffrey Rosen’s commentary on how to proceed with a potential torture investigation (“Truth or Dare”; May 20, 2009), but take issue with some of his conclusions. Yes, indeed: In order to successfully prosecute the authors of the “torture memos”--Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury--a prosecutor would have the burden of proving conspiracy to torture and to contort the law to the authors’ ultimate illegal goals. Yes, a prosecutor would have to prove that they were acting in bad faith. And, yes, this would require “smoking gun evidence” that may well be hard to come by. This is all true. And it is all irrelevant.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-15:story.html?id=d8457eb7-296a-43ad-b6b1-0e8b7a12f641&amp;k=59648</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: How Republicans Should Deal With 'Cranky Uncle Dick']]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/14/tnrtv-cottle-on-how-to-deal-with-quot-cranky-uncle-dick-quot.aspx</link><author>Michelle Cottle</author><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNR senior editor Michelle Cottle breaks down Dick Cheney's return to the spotlight, arguing that rather than "scream like a little girl and hide," the GOP should make it painfully clear that they'd prefer to forget about the Bush years.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-15:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/14/tnrtv-cottle-on-how-to-deal-with-quot-cranky-uncle-dick-quot.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Too Much To Handle? Why I Expect Obama's Poll Numbers To Plummet Soon.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=bd815f64-36e5-4310-be37-733482bad8cc</link><author>John B. Judis</author><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Almost four months after his inauguration, President Barack Obama is
still riding high in the polls. According to Gallup, 66 percent of
Americans approve of the job he is doing. But I expect that Obama's
popularity will begin to fall, even plummet, as the leaves turn brown.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-14:story.html?id=bd815f64-36e5-4310-be37-733482bad8cc&amp;k=58056</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why Obama And Netanyahu Want You To Think They're On A Collision Course--Even Though They're Not]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=7f94dc76-eb01-4865-b87b-f34adcd3487d</link><author>Shmuel Rosner</author><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[There are many downsides to Israel's tendency to recycle its
leaders--its perpetual inability to find new leaders instead of the
already-tested-and-weren’t-impressive-enough ones. But this habit has
some benefits as well: The recycled leaders tend to learn from their
own mistakes.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-14:story.html?id=7f94dc76-eb01-4865-b87b-f34adcd3487d&amp;k=9990</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Only Way Obama Can Fix The Economy Is By Changing The Way Banks Do Business]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=6c4548ef-91c2-47b5-a357-c83bc5212cae</link><author>Laurence J. Kotlikoff &amp; John C. Goodman</author><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The Obama administration’s strategy to address the economic crisis may be making the problem worse. Its strategy--bailing out one financial institution after another and rebuilding the old system pretty much as was--treats the symptoms, not the disease, and will leave us fiscally and financially weaker.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-14:story.html?id=6c4548ef-91c2-47b5-a357-c83bc5212cae&amp;k=24854</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Battle For The Republican Soul Moves South: Get Ready For Crist-Rubio Senate Race Showdown]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4aa39c38-b206-485a-b1b6-dc68f7a2492d</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON--When Charlie Crist, Florida's popular governor, announced
this week that he would run for the U.S. Senate, it was the best news
the Republican Party has had in an otherwise unpleasant year. <br>]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-14:story.html?id=4aa39c38-b206-485a-b1b6-dc68f7a2492d&amp;k=62564</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[What An Important Senate Document Says About The Future Shape Of Health Care]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/galston/archive/2009/05/13/a-peek-into-what-health-care-reform-will-look-like.aspx</link><author>William Galston</author><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In advance of a meeting scheduled for Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee has released a 62-page description of policy options for expanding health insurance coverage. It is a revealing document, because we can glean from it the outlines of where the process now stands in the Senate--the body that will determine whether President Obama's top domestic priority lives or dies. Here is some of what we learn:]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-14:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/galston/archive/2009/05/13/a-peek-into-what-health-care-reform-will-look-like.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Battle Of The Homocons: Gay Republicans Can't Get Along--Both Of Them]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3529af8e-6b38-492e-b9ef-096fec04351a</link><author>James Kirchick</author><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[It's a sunny Friday afternoon in April, and Frank Ricchiazzi is
addressing the annual convention of the Log Cabin Republicans at a
hotel ballroom in downtown Washington. He is speaking about
betrayal. A squat, goateed Vietnam vet from California, Ricchiazzi
helped found the gay GOP activist group, and, among Log Cabin
members, he is known as "the Godfather." He begins his speech by
reminiscing about the organization's early days in the late 1970s.
At the time, it had only two chapters, in San Francisco and Orange
County, and "we didn't agree on anything," Ricchiazzi recalls.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-13:story.html?id=3529af8e-6b38-492e-b9ef-096fec04351a&amp;k=14845</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Meet The 1,400 Jobless New York Teachers Still Getting Paid]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2468789b-84b8-4681-9d2b-9f09503aba7b</link><author>Seyward Darby</author><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[It would seem like a pretty good gig: About 1,400 teachers in New
York City are receiving full salaries and benefits even though they
don't have permanent jobs. Two hundred and five of them have been
without full-time work for three years. And they can continue
receiving payments indefinitely even if they never secure new
positions.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-13:story.html?id=2468789b-84b8-4681-9d2b-9f09503aba7b&amp;k=8046</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Yoo Can't Be Serious: How Bush's Torture Defender Wound Up With An 'Inquirer' Column]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/12/yoo-can-t-be-serious.aspx</link><author>Michael Schaffer</author><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[If John Yoo had any writerly creativity, he'd have come up with a better name for his Philadelphia Inquirer column. The possibilities are endless: "Tortured Logic." "Stress Positions." "Hints from the Gulag." But the author of the Bush administration torture memos apparently used up all his creativity in explaining why waterboarding doesn't violate America's legal obligations. So his monthly missive to the good people of greater Philadelphia is just called "Closing Arguments," which sounds like a feature that any superannuated lawyer could write. In]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-13:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/12/yoo-can-t-be-serious.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why Obama Is So Much Better Than Michael Steele At Using Hip-Hop Slang]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/mcwhorter/archive/2009/05/11/why-how-obama-talks-is-more-interesting-than-how-michael-steele-tries-to.aspx</link><author>John McWhorter</author><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Interesting moment the other night at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner when Barack Obama teased Republican National Party Chairman Michael Steele for his famous inclination towards slightly studious mouthings of hip hop slang.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-13:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/mcwhorter/archive/2009/05/11/why-how-obama-talks-is-more-interesting-than-how-michael-steele-tries-to.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Obama Could Avoid A Congressional Battle Over 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell']]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=464a2c20-e692-4a21-889a-4fd2ba49d9f6</link><author>Nathaniel Frank</author><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[How Obama Could Avoid A Congressional Battle Over 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell']]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-12:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=464a2c20-e692-4a21-889a-4fd2ba49d9f6</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[One Of The Worst Scams In Washington Will Be Coming To An End--If Obama Stands Firm]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/11/Too-Important-To-Compromise.aspx</link><author>Barron YoungSmith</author><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[One of President Obama's major priorities is making college more affordable, and he now has an historic chance to do that by reforming the way the federal government delivers student loans. Under the current student-loan program, the government essentially bribes banks to lend to students by offering them generous subsidies and promising to take on 97 percent of the risk. As Jon Chait and Kim Clark have written, the program is purely a sop to banking interests--absorbing money that could be used to increase Pell Grants and lend to more kids.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-12:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/11/Too-Important-To-Compromise.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: What Should The Next Stimulus Package Look Like?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/11/tnrtv-how-a-stimulus-could-torpedo-health-care-reform.aspx</link><author>Simon Johnson</author><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Simon Johnson, professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and co-founder of BaselineScenario.com, argues that if Obama continues to prioritize fiscal stimulus over recapitalizing the banks, he will put health care and other costly reforms at risk.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-12:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/11/tnrtv-how-a-stimulus-could-torpedo-health-care-reform.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Rendezvous In Beirut: What Would The Middle East Look Like If Iran Gets The Bomb?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=59fe8f65-fc23-40b0-b3d8-6b334b46aee2</link><author>David Samuels</author><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA['Yes, sometimes I go into the room with my advisers and I start shouting. And then they say, 'And then what?'" The question hangs in the perfectly cooled air in Sa'ad Hariri's marble-floored sitting room, where Beirut appears as a sunlit abstraction visible at a distance through thick windows. Hariri's father, the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, martyr of the Cedar Revolution, arches his black eyebrows from a giant poster near the sofa, looking out at his son with a sidelong, mischievous glance. "It hasn't been a joyful trip," Sa'ad Hariri is saying.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-11:story.html?id=59fe8f65-fc23-40b0-b3d8-6b334b46aee2&amp;k=49857</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[When 50 Is Too Old: How To Get More Experienced Justices On The Supreme Court]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3dc0bc6c-8457-493b-a064-d655418f62e6</link><author>Richard Primus</author><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[It is now widely understood that presidents must value youth in their Supreme Court nominees. The reason lies in the combination of two factors: life tenure and the party system. Because justices serve for life, presidents can increase their influence on the law by choosing young nominees.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-11:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3dc0bc6c-8457-493b-a064-d655418f62e6</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Health Care Reform Is Going To Be Remarkably Difficult To Pass. This Is What We CAN Do.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=066be5eb-a949-4bf8-a272-9b67662b9be1</link><author>Henry Aaron</author><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Behind closed doors all over Washington, serious people are working hard to design a major overhaul of the U.S. health care system. We should wish them well, but their chances of success are slim. Since yet another complete failure would be catastrophic, some attention should be given now to policies that are politically palatable, and would begin the evolution to a new and better health system.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-11:story.html?id=066be5eb-a949-4bf8-a272-9b67662b9be1&amp;k=90346</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[What I Hope The Supreme Court Battle Will Look Like]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5a3db08b-d9e5-48eb-a0bd-0e1da65b17be</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON -- The coming battle over President Obama's first Supreme Court nomination could be an enlightening debate over what direction the court should take. It could also be a nasty and hypocritical fight that obscures more issues than it clarifies. Which will it be?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-11:story.html?id=5a3db08b-d9e5-48eb-a0bd-0e1da65b17be&amp;k=24080</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Jonathan Cohn Hosts A New Game Show--Why Republicans Can't Be Trusted On Health Care!]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/05/10/tnrtv-a-new-gop-health-care-strategy-lie-and-deceive.aspx</link><author></author><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[To explain why you can't trust Republicans on health care reform, TNR senior editor Jonathan Cohn hosts a special TNRtv health care edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-11:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/05/10/tnrtv-a-new-gop-health-care-strategy-lie-and-deceive.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Do The Stress Tests Check Out? Yep. So Why Am I Still Nervous?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/05/08/parsing-the-stress-test-results.aspx</link><author>Noam Scheiber</author><pubDate>Sat, 09 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[It's hard not to be a little mystified by the long-awaited stress-test results--at least if you were rooting for a thorough scrubbing of the banks' balance sheets. A few weeks ago we worried that several big banks might be insolvent; yesterday the government told us that the 19 stress-tested banks collectively need a meager $75 billion (a substantial portion of which they can generate simply by converting the preferred shares the government currently owns to common stock). One struggles to make sense of it.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-09:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/05/08/parsing-the-stress-test-results.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Does Going To Church Make You A Nicer Person?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/08/it-s-church-not-prayer-that-makes-us-good.aspx</link><author>Michelle Cottle</author><pubDate>Sat, 09 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Mike Gerson has a column up today laying out some of the key findings to be featured in Bob Putnam and David Campbell's upcoming book, "American Grace," that I mentioned on Wednesday.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-09:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/08/it-s-church-not-prayer-that-makes-us-good.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Washington Diarist: The End Of Ideology?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a07df7e1-cd79-4b34-ae12-d5706e70aec9</link><author>Leon Wieseltier</author><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA['Let's put ideology aside; that's so yesterday.' Those memorable words were uttered by Hillary Clinton in Santo Domingo, on her way to the Summit of the Americas. I wish to parse them. They may be read charitably and uncharitably. I will begin with charity, since in this case it goes against my grain. There are two ways in which the abdication of ideology by the Secretary of State seems understandable.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-08:story.html?id=a07df7e1-cd79-4b34-ae12-d5706e70aec9&amp;k=66115</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Frank Luntz Is Baaaack--And He's Here To Help The GOP Sink Health Care. Will He Succeed?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/05/07/why-frank-luntz-makes-me-slightly-optimisic.aspx</link><author>Jonathan Cohn</author><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[To what extent was Frank Luntz's memo on health care--as reported yesterday in Politico, first by Mike Allen and then by Ben Smith--just a publicity stunt for Luntz? And to what extent was it an actual effort to guide the Republicans as they try to stop President Obama and his allies from enacting comprehensive reform?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-08:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/05/07/why-frank-luntz-makes-me-slightly-optimisic.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[More Sotomayor: Jeffrey Rosen Responds To His Critics]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=6168aeb7-9869-43eb-b401-2204a0d84478</link><author></author><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[I’ve just returned from London to find that my piece on Sonia Sotomayor has provoked an energetic response in the blogosphere.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-08:story.html?id=6168aeb7-9869-43eb-b401-2204a0d84478&amp;k=37738</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Upside To Nominating A Lesbian To The Court]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/06/a-gay-supreme-court-justice.aspx</link><author>Richard Just</author><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Politico notes that two of the people whose names are being tossed around as Supreme Court possibilities are lesbians: Kathleen Sullivan and Pam Karlan, both of Stanford Law School. (For more about Karlan, see this impassioned endorsement from Bill Stuntz, who has written some terrific pieces for TNR over the years.) Obviously, putting a lesbian on the court (or a gay man, for that matter, although none appear to be under consideration) would mark a wonderful step forward for the country. But is it politically possible?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-08:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/06/a-gay-supreme-court-justice.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Anxiety Vs. Confidence: Why Were The Stress Test Results Leaked?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/05/07/a-unified-theory-of-stress-test-leaking.aspx</link><author>Noam Scheiber</author><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Okay, so thanks to a final, heroic burst of leaks, we have a pretty good idea of who stands where, stress-test wise: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and GMAC all need $10-billion-plus increases in common equity, which is just ordinary stock ($34 billion in BofA's case). Citigroup needs another $5 billion--this on top of up to $45 billion in bailout money it's already converting from preferred shares to equity. (That takes what's essentially a loan from the government and turns it into an ownership stake.)]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-07:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/05/07/a-unified-theory-of-stress-test-leaking.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Is Obama Abandoning His Promise To Undo One Of Bush's Greatest Legal Abuses?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e07e8554-0214-4db0-9c0d-489c922162c1</link><author>Elizabeth Goiteine</author><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[At a press conference last week, President Obama announced that his administration intends to engage in an “overarching reform” of the state secrets privilege, a legal tool exploited during the Bush era to shut down lawsuits that challenged warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and other unlawful government practices. This was a welcome announcement from the president, but also a puzzling one.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-07:story.html?id=e07e8554-0214-4db0-9c0d-489c922162c1&amp;k=58019</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Surprising Ferocity Of Obama's Response To The Crisis In Sri Lanka]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/06/obama-s-first-humanitarian-crisis.aspx</link><author>Mark Leon Goldberg</author><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Over the past four months an estimated 6,500 ethnic-Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka have died at the hands of their own government. Tens of thousands more have been injured. Unlike humanitarian crises in places like Darfur, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this outbreak of violence occurred almost entirely during President Obama's first 100 days. It is the first man-made humanitarian crisis of the Obama era.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-07:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/06/obama-s-first-humanitarian-crisis.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: The Government Is Finally Pushing Back Against The Big Banks--The Ones Without Political Connections, Anyway]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/06/tnrtv-is-obama-finally-governing-the-banks.aspx</link><author>Simon Johnson</author><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Simon Johnson, professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and co-founder of BaselineScenario.com, argues that the results of Bank of America's stress test seem to imply that the government is finally pushing back against the big banks--the ones without political connections, anyway.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-07:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/06/tnrtv-is-obama-finally-governing-the-banks.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Learning From California's Mistakes: Why Blistering Speed Is So Important In The Effort To Pass Health Reform]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/05/05/beat-the-clock.aspx</link><author>Anthony Wright</author><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[During the fifth and last of the White House Regional Forums on Health Reform, held in Los Angeles several weeks ago, domestic policy advisor Melody Barnes didn't provide much detail about the substance of health reform. But she did provide a timeline. She indicated that in order to meet Obama's goal of passing comprehensive health reform this year, legislation would need to be ready within 100 days.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-07:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/05/05/beat-the-clock.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Pandering To Pakistan: How A Fighter Jet Explains Why We're Losing The War On Terror]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2008ecb3-3d16-4240-86e0-5516f7e0caed</link><author>Michael Crowley</author><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Pakistanis treat their military achievements like pop icons. Photos of the nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan are waved at rallies, and a street in Islamabad bears his name. Replica models of the mountain site where the country tests its nuclear bombs stand at the center of traffic circles. And the angular black silhouette of the F-16 fighter jet is such a treasured image that it is often found on the brilliantly colored commercial trucks that rumble along Pakistan's highways.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-07:story.html?id=2008ecb3-3d16-4240-86e0-5516f7e0caed&amp;k=74802</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TRB From Washington: Why Do Republicans Only Apply The Rule Of Law To Democrats?]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=db244f73-129d-444d-a090-2bf39c026d1d</link><author>Jonathan Chait</author><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Remember the Rule of Law? In the late 1990s, it was all the rage in conservative circles. Having maneuvered Bill Clinton into a position where he could either lie under oath or suffer massive personal and political embarrassment, conservatives reasoned that Clinton must be held accountable for perjury or the basic underpinnings of democracy would be shattered.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-06:story.html?id=db244f73-129d-444d-a090-2bf39c026d1d&amp;k=66957</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Many Civilians Were Killed In Gaza? Meet The People Who Do The Counting.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f470f8e7-49ae-4eb1-a8ac-1a2326ae9c9f</link><author>Simona Weinglass</author><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[On December 27, the first morning of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead offensive in the Gaza Strip, Khalil Shaheen was driving in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City when he spotted a friend and got out of his car to say hello. Suddenly, an Israeli F-16 appeared in the sky and dropped a bomb on a building 200 feet up the road--one of many such bombings part of the IDF’s 22-day effort to stop Hamas rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-06:story.html?id=f470f8e7-49ae-4eb1-a8ac-1a2326ae9c9f&amp;k=52374</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Good News And The Bad News About Harold Koh, One Of Obama's Most Important Nominees]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5520a8f0-f30e-4a08-9c52-927238863714</link><author>David Fontana</author><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The Good News And The Bad News About Harold Koh, One Of Obama’s Most Important Nominees]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-06:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5520a8f0-f30e-4a08-9c52-927238863714</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Strawberry Bellinis, Gift Bags, And Clothing Discounts: Now That's What I Call Philanthropy!]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/05/philanthropy-chic.aspx</link><author>Angela Valdez</author><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[It's unfashionable to be too glamorous during a recession, and so it seems as if every event in Washington is tied to a good cause these days. Take the grand opening of a Guess store in downtown Washington last week. There was booze and food and gift bags. And all purchases came with a free dose of the warm and fuzzies: A portion of the proceeds went to Fashion Fights Poverty, "an organization dedicated to raising awareness for initiatives that encourage sustainable means of challenging global poverty." Whatever that means.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-06:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/05/philanthropy-chic.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Going Green Doesn't Mean Having To Go Back To The Dark Ages]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/05/05/tnrtv-why-going-green-is-less-painful-than-you-think.aspx</link><author>Bradford Plumer</author><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNR assistant editor Bradford Plumer breaks down the debate over whether environmental initiatives are compatible with consumer capitalism, arguing that going green will not require many big lifestyle changes.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-06:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/05/05/tnrtv-why-going-green-is-less-painful-than-you-think.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[AEI And CAP Are Joining Forces. What? Why?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/05/an-unlikely-duo-pushes-for-entrepreneurship-in-schools.aspx</link><author>Seyward Darby</author><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[An "odd couple" of think tanks have combined forces on education reform. This morning, the Center for American Progress (CAP), the organization that spawned numerous Obama administration officials and policy ideas, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), considered a leading architect of Bush administration policy, unveiled a joint report on innovation and entrepreneurship in education.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-06:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/05/an-unlikely-duo-pushes-for-entrepreneurship-in-schools.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Pimp My Rep: Reality Shows, Twitter, TMZ--Is This Congress Or 'The Real World'?]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=913edc39-b09e-49a8-8c9e-c7e88b2c6c75</link><author>Michelle Cottle</author><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[OMG! Have you seen Episode 7 of CNN.com's "Freshman Year"? Unbelievable. First, Congressman Jason Chaffetz (you know, the Utah Republican living out of his office) totally slams Nancy Pelosi at his birthday party, laughing about how he shares a birthday with "all the ugly people": the speaker, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, comedian Martin Short, and that creepy old guy who played Spock in the original "Star Trek." Meanwhile, crunchy Colorado Dem Jared Polis gets to meet Bono (!), and they bond over how much they hate wearing ties.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-05:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=913edc39-b09e-49a8-8c9e-c7e88b2c6c75</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Will Republicans Sink Environmental Reform Like They Did Healthcare In 1994?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/05/04/no-it-s-not-1994-all-over-again-not-yet.aspx</link><author>Bradford Plumer</author><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[According to today's Politico, some House Dems are fretting that Obama's climate proposals will suffer the same grim fate that health care reform did during Bill Clinton's first term. DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen, for one, has started warning that the House should "move cautiously" on the big Waxman-Markey energy bill if it's just going to die in the Senate anyway.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-05:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/05/04/no-it-s-not-1994-all-over-again-not-yet.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNR Live: Leon Wieseltier Questions Condoleezza Rice On Bush's Torture Policies And Mistakes In The Middle East]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/04/tnr-live-condi-and-wieseltier-on-torture-middle-east.aspx</link><author></author><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice talks with TNR literary editor Leon Wieseltier about her defense of Bush's torture policies, the future of the Middle East, and more. Highlights of the discussion are below.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-05:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/04/tnr-live-condi-and-wieseltier-on-torture-middle-east.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Many Cities Would Have To Be Sacrificed To Justify The Use Of Torture?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/linker/archive/2009/05/02/torture-revisited.aspx</link><author>Damon Linker</author><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Andrew Sullivan has written a thoughtful response to this post of mine about torture from two weeks ago.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-05:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/linker/archive/2009/05/02/torture-revisited.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[What We Don't Yet Know About Obama's Economic Program]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/galston/archive/2009/05/04/uncertainty-in-bankland.aspx</link><author>William Galston</author><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[During his first 100 days in office, President Obama has honed his economic program, and his defense of it. There is no longer any question about what he intends to do. As the croupiers in Monte Carlo say, les jeux sont faits. The remaining uncertainties are these: Will it work? If so, how long will it take? And what are the likely political consequences?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-05:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/galston/archive/2009/05/04/uncertainty-in-bankland.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Case Against Sotomayor: An Indictments Of Obama's Front-Runner To Replace Souter]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=45d56e6f-f497-4b19-9c63-04e10199a085</link><author>Jeffrey Rosen</author><pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The Case Against Sotomayor: An Indictment Of Obama's Front-Runner To Replace Souter]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-04:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=45d56e6f-f497-4b19-9c63-04e10199a085</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Dispatch From Mexico City: Is The Government Overreacting?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/03/mexico-dispatch.aspx</link><author>Mary Cuddehe</author><pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Dispatch From Mexico City: Is The Government Overreacting?]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-04:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/03/mexico-dispatch.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Obama's Position On Immigration Reform: Yes We Can, But Not Quite Yet]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3ecff64a-0831-4c5b-bfc6-6ecb5d60a2eb</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr.</author><pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON--On many questions, President Obama's approach is full speed ahead. On immigration reform, he prefers to take one step at a time. There really is no alternative.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-04:story.html?id=3ecff64a-0831-4c5b-bfc6-6ecb5d60a2eb&amp;k=43607</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Jack Kemp I Knew: Why His Success Never Translated From Football To Politics]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/03/jack-kemp-r-i-p.aspx</link><author>John B. Judis</author><pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In Jack Kemp’s office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he served as secretary under George H.W. Bush, a larger-than-life photograph of Kemp, fading back to pass, adorned an entire wall. It was the most important thing to know about Kemp the politician, who died yesterday at age 73.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-04:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/03/jack-kemp-r-i-p.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Not So Fast, Arlen! Specter Needs To Earn His Spot In The Democratic Party.]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=69e3d5f4-89fb-4adb-986f-f067a0e08ef0</link><author>The Editors</author><pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[When Arlen Specter went to the White House the day after he announced he was leaving the Republican Party, the occasion had the feel of a wedding ceremony. President Obama pledged Specter his "full commitment," and Vice President Biden, who rhapsodized about the many hours he'd spent riding Amtrak with the Pennsylvania senator, went even further. "Arlen Specter has been my friend and my confidant and my partner," Biden said. "It's just a delight to have no separation." In a way, the matrimonial overtones were understandable.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-03:story.html?id=69e3d5f4-89fb-4adb-986f-f067a0e08ef0&amp;k=54474</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNR Live: Can Liberalism Combat Global Challenges?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/01/tnr-live-can-liberalism-combat-global-challenges.aspx</link><author>E.J. Dionne, Jr., Ross Douthat, William Galston, and Alan Wolfe</author><pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[TNR contributing editor Alan Wolfe discusses his new book, 'The Future of Liberalism,' with TNR writer and senior Brookings fellow William Galston, Washington Post columnist and frequent TNR contributor E.J. Dionne, Jr., and senior editor of 'The Atlantic' Ross Douthat. The first part of the discussion is here. Below, the second part of the discussion addresses the viability of democratic self-governance in an interconnected world, the relevance of communities, and the influence of the 60s movement on liberalism today.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-02:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/01/tnr-live-can-liberalism-combat-global-challenges.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Souter Ended Up Disappointing Conservatives By Being … Conservative]]></title><link>http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=20bbcc0a-4425-4863-bb18-ca6783773057</link><author>Gordon Silverstein</author><pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The Supreme Court will lose its only true conservative this summer when Justice David Souter packs up his Volkswagen and drives north one last time. Yes, you read that right. His votes may well have upheld and further entrenched liberal results, but Souter has been the court’s only true judicial conservative for the past 19 years.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-01:story.html?id=20bbcc0a-4425-4863-bb18-ca6783773057&amp;k=66209</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Wall Street's Civil War: The Inside Story Of How Wealthy Bankers And Big-Time Investors Are Battling To Control Obama's Economic Plan]]></title><link>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2589dfdd-029a-4b99-905f-2c881ddf5870</link><author>Noam Scheiber</author><pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2009 06:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[There’s a tendency, in our endless discussions about the economic crisis, to think of the entire financial industry as a single, ultra-powerful actor. Big commercial banks, nimble hedge funds, even the odd insurance company all get lumped together under the heading “Wall Street,” with its sinister, Death-Star connotations.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-01:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2589dfdd-029a-4b99-905f-2c881ddf5870</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why Scapegoating Mexicans Over Swine Flu Is Not Just Racist, But Also Bad For Public Health]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/04/29/scapegoating-mexicans.aspx</link><author>Howard Markel and Alexandra Minna Stern</author><pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[The first question to President Obama during Wednesday’s press conference was about whether he’d consider closing the border with Mexico. If you listen to cable television or check around the Internet, you’ll hear that same question--along with some nastier insinuations. You’ll hear stories about how the Mexican government covered up the epidemic, in order to protect its tourist industry. You’ll hear “analysis” blaming the outbreak on the poor hygiene of Mexican people. This is all very predictable. And counter-productive.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-01:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/04/29/scapegoating-mexicans.aspx</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[TNRtv: Is Obama Moving Too Fast On Palestine And Too Slow On Iran?]]></title><link>http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/04/30/tnrtv-will-obama-let-iran-go-nuclear.aspx</link><author>Yossi Klein Halevi</author><pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[In the second part of a TNRtv series on the Middle East, TNR contributing editor Yossi Klein Halevi argues that Obama is acting too hastily with regards to the Palestinians, and not hastily enough with regards to Iran.]]></description><guid>tag:canada.com,2009-05-01:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/04/30/tnrtv-will-obama-let-iran-go-nuclear.aspx</guid></item></channel></rss>