The New Republic

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 >>

In 1964, an ambitious young student at the University of Louisville made an impassioned plea to his classmates, urging them to march in solidarity with Martin Luther King Jr. At the time, Kentucky was no haven for race reformers—it was dominated by some of the same elements of the Democratic Party that vehemently rejected the very notion of civil rights. Nevertheless, this 20-year-old activist called for strong statutes, state and federal, to protect the dignity of minorities. READ MORE >>

Pennsylvania was all but ignored in 2012, but the Keystone State is poised to return to prominence in 2016. On Tuesday, Joe Sestak, a former Democratic congressman, indicated his interest in a rematch with Republican Senator Pat Toomey in 2016. READ MORE >>

If you made a word cloud of profiles about Cheryl Mills in the Beltway press—and there have been several—“loyalty” would loom very large. That loyalty specifically extends to two people: Bill and Hillary Clinton, both of whom she has worked for. “She is incredibly loyal to the president,” an anonymous White House aide told the Washington Post in 1999. READ MORE >>

Conservatives are talking about the implementation of Obamacare in the same thoughtful way they talked about its enactment—that is, as an impending apocalypse. READ MORE >>

No group in America, aside from Latino activists, is a more steadfast champion of  generous immigration reform than organized labor. That stance, declares the AFL-CIO, is “based on the simple idea that working people are strongest when we work together and the labor movement is strongest when we are open to all workers, regardless of where they come from.” READ MORE >>

Imagine for a moment: You work at an Internal Revenue Service back office in the Midwest. No, you are not in a posthumously published David Foster Wallace novel. You are in the Cincinnati office, which is charged with vetting applications for 501(c)(4) status, which allows groups not only to avoid paying any taxes on the money they collect but also to keep their donors secret. READ MORE >>

After the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act last June, Senator Jim DeMint and Representative Michele Bachmann wrote Republican governors, urging them to refuse to establish ACA-prescribed “exchanges”—statewide health insurance markets—for small businesses and individuals not covered by employer-sponsored health plans. At the time, it seemed unlikely that many governors would follow this cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face advic READ MORE >>