The New Republic

Alan, the panel I attended that had by far the biggest turnout was on The American Constitutional Order After 9/11 and centered on the important questions of executive power and overreach--surely among the "threats to American democracy" that you suggested political scientists didn't care to hear about. READ MORE >>

Continuing the discussion of polarization: One of Cass's papers on the topic discusses the development of academic "schools" (law and economics or critical legal studies, for example) as such examples of group polarization and cascades. I read the paper, maybe against Cass's intention, as offering some good reason for homogeneity at one, early, intellectual stage of development. READ MORE >>

by Alan WolfeI've recently returned from the American Political Science Association meeting. While there I attended two plenary sessions. One, on the future of American democracy, featured Bob Kuttner, Walter Membane, Paul Pierson, and Jacob Hacker. The other, on the clash of civilizations, presented Frank Fukuyama, Steve Walt, Ben Barber, and James Kurth. (An announced Sam Huntington was, alas, unable to attend.) So which topic and cast of characters drew the larger crowd? It was not even close. READ MORE >>

September 1--the day Nazi stormstroopers overran Poland in 1939, igniting World War II--seems an appropriate day to meditate on fascism, the word President Bush used yesterday in a major speech to explain to Americans whom we are fighting against. The word was given a place of honor in a sentence summoning up the worst hobgoblins of the past century: READ MORE >>

I want to follow up on Cass Sunstein's post about ideological amplification. It reminds me of a study I read about a few years ago by Valdis Krebs, a network theorist, on the polarized political reading habits of Americans. (I see he's updated the study for 2006). READ MORE >>

If Democrats win back the House in the midterms today, they'll owe an enormous debt to organized labor, which has spent more than $40 million--and sent millions of voters to the polls--to help the party take control of Congress. The AFL-CIO alone has targeted more than 200 contests in 21 states this cycle, and unions, despite their declining power, are still acting as difference-makers in many races. READ MORE >>

Imagine you were choosing whether to buy a book from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble's website, and you knew that Amazon's site would load much faster, allowing you to scan books and sample their content much more easily. Or imagine that Fox.com's streaming video came up instantly and CNN.com's balked. Or that whitehouse.gov loaded quickly while the site of a contentious political magazine was plagued by delays. That is what your Internet experience could READ MORE >>

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What does Jerry Falwell have in common with Paul Wolfowitz and Howard Dean? What links columnist George Will with The New Republic? All, according to a recently issued "working paper," a shortened version of which appeared in the London Review of Books, are agents of an amorphous but incalculably powerful "Israel Lobby." That same inscrutable organization, the paper alleges, has dictated the decisions of politicians from George W. Bush to Jimmy Carter and determined the content of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The goal of the lobby? READ MORE >>

 IN THE MIDDLE OF MY SOPHOMORE year of college, my mother called and said she wanted to visit me — just to have lunch. My university was a six-hour drive from my parents’ house, so I knew something was wrong. We ate at a fancy Italian restaurant; over risotto, we chatted awkwardly about classes. I dreaded the moment when our plates would be taken away. And, sure enough, after the table was cleared, my mother began to explain to me that certain lifestyles were dangerous. “What are you trying to say?” I asked. There was a silence, and then she said, “I know about the porn.” READ MORE >>