The New Republic

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 >>

In The Clinton Tapes, Taylor Branch’s book of conversations with the former president, Bill Clinton recounts several days in 1999 that constituted “his most ferocious encounter in politics -- bar none.” The encounter was not with Newt Gingrich or Saddam Hussein, but instead Nawaz Sharif, the twice elected prime minister of Pakistan who is set to take office for a third time after a remarkably strong showing in Saturday’s vote. READ MORE >>

Two kinds of story have been written about the announcement that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has opted for lap-band surgery to curb his obesity: a simplistic horse-race story and a slightly more interesting, if still glib, pop-psychology story. READ MORE >>

The Beautiful Atom Bomb was, in her time, a rare talent. She had a waist on a gyroscope that attached to an ample bottom, which she could shake with such alarming ferocity that the laws of physiology seemed reversed: She didn’t control it, it controlled her. Her vibrating posterior propelled her right across the movie screen like an outboard motor, and she would saddle up to a stunned onlooker, hindquarters aflutter, and induce an immediate relaxation of the jaw muscle. READ MORE >>

Earlier this week, the Heritage Foundation released a new report, “The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer,” that confounded nearly everyone who read it. READ MORE >>

Like a shark that has to keep swimming lest it suffocate, Rush Limbaugh must pick fights with people to keep his name alive. So demanding is his job that he sometimes resorts to attacking his own species. The target du jour of Limbaugh’s jabs: Marco Rubio. When he had Rubio on his radio show last month, Limbaugh asked the senator whether going through with immigration reform wasn’t “committing suicide” for Republicans. READ MORE >>

After four long years, millions of dollars spent on lobbyists, massive protests in Washington and a dramatic pre-election presidential punt, the campaign to get a pipeline built from the Alberta tar sands to the heart of the Midwest is nearing its end. READ MORE >>

After President Obama’s relatively easy reelection, analysts and commentators wondered whether his young and diverse coalition would outlive his presidency. Many believe, based mainly on their intuition, that 2008 and 2012 were the anomalous results of a historic candidacy. On the other hand, the country is getting more and more diverse with each passing year. Recently, one prominent demographer at the Brookings Institute used the exit polls to argue that Obama would have lost if turnout rates returned to ’04 levels. READ MORE >>

Young Republicans and College Democrats have their perks—the occasional trip to a state party convention, maybe—but they can’t hope to compete with young centrists. When a dozen college students came to St. Louis recently as part of a competition funded by the 85-year-old billionaire deficit hawk Pete Peterson, they were put up in the Ritz-Carlton, while the hundreds of other students attending the same conference stayed in humbler quarters. READ MORE >>

Welcome to a non-presidential election year in the age of Obama. Last week, a new poll showed Democratic Senate candidate Ed Markey ahead of his Republican rival, Gabriel Gomez, by just 4 points in Massachusetts, reviving memories of Scott Brown’s victory in a 2010 special election. READ MORE >>