The New Republic

Texas electoral politics tend to elicit sensationalism. Jeb Bush has suggested the Lone Star state, which voted for Romney by 16 points in 2012, could somehow turn blue in 2016; Ted Cruz, who doesn’t even favor comprehensive immigration reform, similarly said that new Hispanic voters would turn Texas blue and bury the GOP alongside the Whigs. READ MORE >>

The debate over the IRS scandal officially became ludicrous on Thursday, when Republicans decided to use it as a cudgel for bashing Obamacare. READ MORE >>

One reason the idea of gay marriage, or “marriage equality,” spread so fast is that it seems obvious once you think about it. It was a genuinely new idea when it first appeared in this publication in 1989. As was not the case with civil rights for African Americans, feminism, or for that matter gay rights themselves, there was no long history of opposition to be overcome. The challenge was simply getting people to think about it a bit. READ MORE >>

For those of us who have long wondered why the Justice Department never investigated Wall Street, the Associated Press subpoena scandal illustrates a key point: The Justice Department sets priorities based on what it hears from the White House. When the White House wanted to identify and prosecute leakers of classified information, Justice sprang into action and used extremely aggressive tactics. "I make no apologies" President Obama said today, for being concerned about leaks. READ MORE >>

There was some initial Beltway confusion this week in the search for a larger, unifying meaning to justify our monomaniacal coverage of the scandal trifecta. The scandals showed that Barack Obama was too political. No, they showed that he was not political enough. READ MORE >>

Feeling perhaps that columnist Paul Krugman hasn't made the point emphatically enough, The New York Times Monday published an op-ed shocker by two academics with the title, "How Austerity Kills." Kills? Yes, kills. READ MORE >>

Politico recently christened all the conservative think tanks, nonprofits, and publications Bill Kristol is involved with “Kristol World.” But “world” doesn’t do it justice: Kristol’s résumé occupies its own universe. His influence ranges from conservative media to foreign policy to academia to economics. To help untangle Kristol’s myriad activities, both past and present, we mapped the influence of the neoconservative mastermind. READ MORE >>

In Washington, it’s almost a rite of passage for a president to be compared to Richard Nixon, and this week the current occupant of the White House got his. The lawyer who represented the New York Times during the Pentagon Papers ordeal wrote a piece comparing the president’s dealings with the press to Nixon’s, only to conclude that Obama is worse. READ MORE >>

Last week's results of the Census' Current Population Survey on the 2012 election appeared historic: For the first time ever, black voter turnout exceeded white turnout. But the Current Population Survey is just that—a survey—and thus imperfect, subject to the same sampling errors and response problems that plague smaller public-opinion polls. READ MORE >>

Since news broke Monday that the Justice Department had secretly accessed the phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors over a two-month period—likely as a result of its anonymously sourced story on a foiled al Qaeda plot to blow up a U.S.-bound plane—no watchwords have gotten more READ MORE >>