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The Modesty Wars: Women and the Hasidim in Brooklyn

by Ruth Rosen

Via Flickr.Originally posted on openDemocracy.Until recently, you could have lived your entire life in the United States and never have bumped into any Jewish Orthodox Hasidim, who live in scattered communities, mostly in the New York’s borough of Brooklyn. In the last few years, however, the media have publicized the Hasidim’s cultural clashes with their non-fundamentalist neighbours. In each instance, the conflict has pitted the Hasidic view of women’s modest traditional dress and their appropriate role in the family, on the streets, and in their community against the sexualized dress and behaviour of their neighbours. 

Can American Conservatism Be Salvaged?

by Richard Striner

Credit: DonkeyHotey.The greatest threat to the United States today is the Republican Party. The once-magnificent organization of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower has degenerated into a coalition of religious fanatics, gun lunatics, shills for the rich, and libertarian simpletons who hover at the brink of anarchism and would probably like nothing better than to see the United States unable to play the role of a superpower any longer.

Congress Needs to Lead on the Budget, Not the President

by Raymond Smock

Speaker John Boehner in front of the U.S. Capitol in late January. Credit: Flickr/SpeakerBoehner.In the political posturing and finger-pointing taking place regarding the “sequester,” the first victim is the United States Constitution. Congress has ignored its responsibility as a co-equal branch of the government. It is the House and Senate that have the power of the purse, not the president. It is the job of Congress to pass appropriations bills, which the president can either sign or veto. The president does not have the power to pick and choose those budget items he likes or dislikes. The money has to be spent, by law, the way Congress says it should be spent.

Climate Change as History's Deal-Breaker

by Tom Engelhardt

Protesters against climate change at the February 17 rally in Washington, D.C. Via Flickr/350.org.Originally posted on TomDispatch.com Two Sundays ago, I traveled to the nation’s capital to attend what was billed as “the largest climate rally in history” and I haven’t been able to get the experience -- or a question that haunted me -- out of my mind. Where was everybody?

Senator Cruz, You're No James Madison

by John Willingham

Ted Cruz speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC. Credit: Gage Skidmore.More than twenty years ago, by way of linking his work to the ideas of James Madison, Ted Cruz titled his senior thesis at Princeton “Clipping the Wings of Angels,” derived from a famous quote in Madison’s Federalist No. 51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.  In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

In Defense of Our Do-Nothing Congress

by Kyle Scott

John C. Calhoun in 1849. Daguerreotype by Mathew Brady.

GOP Leaders are Playing Chicken with the American Economy

by Robert Brent Toplin

The illustrious House leadership of the Republican Party. Credit: Flickr/DonkeyHotey.In recent months the U.S. economy has been gaining strength. “Weekly Jobless Claims Plunge to 5-Year Low,” announced The Huffington Post. “Home Prices Hit a Milestone,” reported The Wall Street Journal. “Consumer Sentiment Rises,” announced the New York Times.Now that progress is endangered. Republicans have been acting like it’s a great time to drive the economy into a storm.

You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby (Or Have You?)

by Ruth Rosen

Originally posted on TomDispatch.com

Social Security: A Right or a Privilege?

by Eric Laursen

How did it come about that people have a “right” to certain benefits from the state -- or “entitlement,” in the loaded language of our day? A fascinating new paper by legal scholar Karen N. Tani argues that the idea of “welfare rights” first became commonplace not amongst activists in the 1960s, but with a group of mid-level Roosevelt administration officials who in the late 1930s were trying to get an ambitious new state-federal assortment of anti-poverty programs off the ground.

Where Have All the Real Conservatives Gone?

by Scot Faulkner and Jonathan Riehl

Brent Bozell and William F. Buckley in 1954. Credit: Wiki Commons/UCLA Library/LA Daily News.Recent Republican and conservative convocations have displayed one common thing. Those who pass for thinkers and leaders of these intertwined movements think they can keep doing the same things but achieve better results. With the notable except of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, most Republicans, after sifting through the debris of November 6, think they need new spokespeople and better packaging.The only thing standing between Republicans and the great Reagan landslides of 1980 and 1984 is them. This is a sad commentary on once noble movements. Republican and conservative “leaders” think twenty-first-century Americans are waiting to embrace tenth-century stands on social issues and science, and blustery vague pronouncements on government spending. Does any rational person think today’s Republicans and conservatives bear the slightest resemblance to those who rallied around Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan? Those two icons would not have finished in the top ten in the 2012 Iowa caucus or South Carolina primary.

What's Still Missing From the Gun Control Debate

by Jim Sleeper

Behind the gun control debate lies a deeper one that we need to have. It would show that the danger to our freedom isn't coming from government censors and conspiracies but from marketing sensors that are bypassing our brains and hearts on the way to our gut instincts and wallets.

Why Philanthropy Matters

by Zoltan J. Acs

Via Flickr.On Sunday, January 27, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his latest donation to Johns Hopkins University. His $350 million gift will be the largest in the university's history. Over the last four decades Bloomberg has given $1.1 billion dollars to his alma mater, a truly staggering amount of money. This makes him the most generous donor to any educational institution in the United Sates.Reading Bloomberg's giving pledge letter sheds light on what he hopes to accomplish by giving money away. "If you want to fully enjoy life -- give. And if you want to do something for your children and show how much you love them, the the single best thing -- by far -- is to support organizations that will create a better world for them and their children. Long term, they will benefit more from your philanthropy than your will. I believe the philanthropic contributions I am now making are as much gifts to my children as they are to the recipient organizations." Bloomberg has set up a foundation to give away the bulk of his $25 billion fortune before he dies.

Fracking Could Release Radiation from Old Nuclear Tests

by Scott Kaufman

Storax Sedan nuclear test, 1962, a part of Project Plowshare.“Nuclear explosives” versus “nuclear power.” The former raises images of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, or the atomic tests held in the Pacific Ocean or at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). The latter is suggestive of civilian applications of the atom, specifically, atomic power plants that generate electricity. Yet the idea of using nuclear devices to find a way to meet Americans’ demand for energy received serious consideration during the Cold War. Indeed, tests conducted decades ago to stimulate natural gas production are once again making news.

Forget the Contrarians: Ed Koch Was A True Liberal

by Robert W. Snyder

Ed Koch as mayor. Credit: Flickr/LCB Ed Koch was laid to rest with applause for leading his city out of the despair of the 1970s with bluff, bluster and chutzpah. Yet the Koch mayoralty, for all its theater, was also a turning point. In complex and contradictory ways, Koch hastened the shift from a liberal New York that dates to the 1930s to the more conservative city of today. His record bears marks of both.When I interviewed Koch in 2010 for a book about New York City from LaGuardia to Bloomberg, he said he wanted to be remembered as the mayor who restored the city’s confidence after the fiscal crisis; balanced the city’s budget; built affordable housing on a massive scale; and reformed the process of selecting judges to take the politics out. All three were measures (excepting perhaps the pride in budget balancing) that any liberal Democrat could endorse. Yet his style and policies gave him a reputation as a conservative.

The Income Tax Amendment Turns One Hundred and It’s Worth Celebrating

by Ray Raphael

Image via Shutterstock.Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday, and like tens of millions of Americans, I watched the game last night, blackout and all. Yesterday morning, though, I celebrated a less popular institution: the federal income tax. February 3 marked the centennial of the Sixteenth Amendment, which wrote that tax into the Constitution.Why do I feel so alone?

Could We Actually Learn Something from '50s-Style Civics Education?

by Erik Christiansen

During last year's presidential campaign, I asked a class of freshmen students to keep track of each candidate's references to history. They needed a basic knowledge of history -- enough to code each historical mention according to the time period referenced. I was prepared to be distressed by my students' ignorance of history, and I wasn't disappointed. I wasn't as prepared, however, for the much greater ignorance of and disinterest in the election. In September, few could name both presidential candidates; none could name a candidate for any other office; only two or three evinced much interest in civic life.

The Politics of Debt in America

by Steve Fraser

Image via Shutterstock.Originally posted on TomDispatch.com via Jacobin magazine.

Channelling George Washington: The Worthless Continental

by Thomas Fleming

A 1779 fifty-five dollar note printed by the Continental Congress. Via Wiki Commons."Welcome to the Continental Congress.""I'm not sure what you mean by that, Mr. President.""I mean we're on our way to a visit to the people who almost lost the American Revolution -- if we continue to try to maintain the illusion that our money has any value when the interest rate for borrowing it is zero and we try to solve our mounting debt problems by printing it by the billions.""Was that what happened to the Continental Congress?""Congress printed dollars at a fantastic rate in 1776. It seemed to work beautifully. They shipped it to the various states and they built forts, warships and mustered new regiments for the Continental Army. We were a dynamic new nation -- until we lost a couple of battles. Suddenly people started thinking that if we lost the war, these pieces of paper would be worth nothing. NOTHING. That's when our dollars started to depreciate.""How could you tell that was happening?"

Actually, Scalia's Legal Logic Permits Gun Control

by Alan Singer

"The key issues I want to address in this article are the constitutional principles Mr. LaPierre is so intent on defending."

Obama's Second Inaugural Loaded with History

by Ian Reifowitz

Barack Obama at his inauguration. Credit: Flickr/afagen.Barack Obama has always had a keen sense of history, both how to make it and to talk about it. He consistently offers an inclusive, unifying narrative of our country’s past that helps explain his conception of our national identity. We can see this clearly in his second inaugural address.