The New Republic

Presidential elections are relatively easy to analyze. The economic fundamentals provide an early handicap of the outcome, and by the end the countless polls are so accurate that you often need to try to get presidential elections wrong, as hopeful partisans do. READ MORE >>

A top United Nations official has declared that Syria is now the worst humanitarian crisis the organization has ever faced. It is no surprise, therefore, that moral interventionists are calling for action. But President Barack Obama has consistently downplayed morality in his foreign policy calculus. He tends towards the realism associated with George H.W. Bush. READ MORE >>

On Wednesday, the National Review's Robert Costa reported that freshman Senator Ted Cruz, a tea party favorite from Texas, is considering a presidential campaign. Apparently, Cruz's supporters argue that he would be a “Barry Goldwater type” who could reconnect the party with its base—except with “better electoral results.” Outdoing the GOP's 1964 nominee would not, of course, be much of an accomplishment: Goldwater won only 38 percent of the popular vote against Lyndon Johnson. READ MORE >>

In President Obama's first term, when the Department of Health and Human Services overrode consensus in the medical community and made the "morning-after pill" available over-the-counter only to women 17 and over, liberals were angry but also somewhat understanding: It was 2011, and the election cycle was underway. In a second term, it seemed, President Obama would no longer feel the need to play politics with women's reproductive health. No such luck. READ MORE >>

Late Monday night, the New York Times posted a story that has set off voluminous chatter in the New York political class. A year ago, HarperCollins announced it planned to bring out a biography of Gov. Andrew Cuomo by Fredric U. READ MORE >>

Expanded background checks may have been defeated last month in the Senate, but one area of bipartisan gun-control consensus is gathering steam in American cities: tougher sentences, including mandatory minimums, for illegal firearm possession. READ MORE >>

After decades dreaming of high black turnout, Democrats finally got their wish in the last two elections, with obvious results. President Barack Obama overcame a strong Republican performance among white voters last November, and Monday, an analysis by William Frey, a demographer at Brookings, found that black turnout actually exceeded white turnout in 2012. He also concluded that Mitt Romney would have won last year if racial turnout levels had mirrored 2004's. Both conclusions are premature—and the latter is plain wrong. READ MORE >>

You’re a local government. You have a mostly minority population in an impoverished post-industrial area. You’re in debt by the billions, but paying it off would require taxes that residents can't afford. But wait, you’re in luck! Or maybe you’re out of luck? Either way, get ready: You’re about to get taken over. READ MORE >>

Yesterday The New York Times reported that the Central Intelligence Agency has been funneling tens of millions of dollars to the Afghan government for more than a decade, in the form of "bags of cash." For anyone surprised to discover that a foreign intelligence service would underwrite the daily operations of President Hamid Karzai’s National Security Council, it is perhaps worth noting that the paper exposed a simila READ MORE >>

The "chaos" of Obamacare just got a little less chaotic. On Tuesday morning, the Obama Administration released its new insurance application, for use on the new health insurance marketplaces. The marketplaces are for people without employer-sponsored coverage, and the idea has always been to make the application process as simple as possible. READ MORE >>