Hillary, Bernie and the banks
Giant Wall Street banks continue to threaten the wellbeing of millions of Americans, but what to do? Bernie Sanders says break them up and resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act that once separated...
View ArticleCan total war in the Middle East be prevented?
Three weeks ago, Russia started to directly intervene in Syria. The proxy war between Russia and Iran on the one hand, and the United States and Saudi Arabia on the other, threatens to turn into an...
View ArticleAn eight-point plan to repair the U.S.-Mexico border
Ten years ago, in 2005, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security introduced its Secure Border Initiative (SBI). Today, the Mexico-U.S. wall is a fact of everyday life for millions of people who live in...
View ArticleTerrorism in Paris: hard lessons for soft borders
Terrorism in Paris is not France’s fault, it’s Europe’s fault. In less than three hours on the night of Friday 13 November 2015, seven men killed 129 people, wounded 352, mostly with small arms (their...
View ArticleWhat I learned on my Red State book tour
I’ve recently returned from three weeks in “red” America. It was ostensibly a book tour but I wanted to talk with conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers. I intended to put into practice what I tell...
View ArticleDrone war: recipe for blowback?
A ghost is stalking the presidential debates, uninvited and unacknowledged. It’s the silent envoy from a murderous side of U.S. overseas operations, one that’s reviled abroad and can’t help but scar...
View ArticleMolenbeek, Europe’s capital of jihad?
Belgium has a sad record. With some 450 jihadists, it is Europe’s largest contributor per capita of ISIS fighters in Syria. The country has also been mentioned in connection to a series of recent ISIS...
View ArticleSurviving new terrorist attacks in 10 steps
Multi-method terrorist attacks – like the attacks in Paris on the night of Friday 13th November 2015 – are becoming more frequent and deadly, while official authorities are struggling to protect their...
View Article‘The Big Short’ and Bernie’s plan to bust up Wall Street
If you haven’t yet seen “The Big Short” – directed and co-written by Adam McKay, based on the non-fiction prize-winning book by Michael Lewis about the housing and credit bubble that triggered the...
View ArticleThe volcanic core fueling the 2016 election
Not a day passes that I don’t get a call from the media asking me to compare Bernie Sanders’s and Hillary Clinton’s tax plans, or bank plans, or health-care plans. I don’t mind. I’ve been teaching...
View ArticleWhy don’t refugees fly?
On Feb. 11, 2016, efforts to stop refugees from entering the safety of the European Union were militarized. The NATO alliance will immediately move three warships to the Aegean Sea to stop the flow of...
View ArticleElection 2016: The long and uncertain path to a Trump victory
After his victory in New Hampshire, Donald Trump has shown that he is a real contender for the Republican Party’s nomination. Prediction markets, in which consumers can place bids on who will win the...
View ArticleFeminism’s fault lines: understanding young women’s support for Bernie
This campaign season has been pretty bleak on the gender front, from Marco Rubio’s assurance that he understands rape victims’ “terrible situation,” but would insist on them carrying any resulting...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to Peggy O’Donnell
Dear Peggy, I want first to express my admiration for your recent post. It was eloquent and to the point, and everything you said was well worth saying. But there was also a lot in your post that...
View ArticleElection 2016: How predictive are Iowa and New Hampshire?
Now that we know the results from Iowa and New Hampshire, how much do they really tell us about who will eventually capture the Democratic and Republican nominations? As the charts below indicate, the...
View ArticleJustice Scalia and environmental law
Over the past three decades, Justice Scalia did much to shape environmental law, nearly always in a conservative direction. Because of the importance of his rulings, environmental lawyers and scholars...
View ArticleSyrian refugees in Turkey are pawns in a geopolitical game
In September 2015, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, alarmingly prophesied: “We are talking about millions of potential refugees trying to reach Europe, not thousands.” In a short...
View ArticleWhat would Nino do?
A profound irony hangs over Republican politicians, pundits, and presidential candidates as they mourn the unexpected death of Antonin Scalia. They laud him as an intellectual giant for his promotion...
View ArticleBehind the Republican implosion
The profound dysfunction on display in the Republican party’s contest for its 2016 presidential nomination reflects an intra-party civil war that has been simmering for the past 25 years and has now...
View ArticleA response to Professor Robin Lakoff
Dear Professor Lakoff, Now it is my turn to thank you for your passionate response to my blog post from last week, in which I expressed my frustration about statements made by Gloria Steinem and...
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