Editor's Cut

Rediscovering Secular America

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

This Fourth of July, those who identify themselves as non-believers, or humanists, or atheists -- or a whole host of other names which signify a nontheistic worldview -- have much cause for celebration. After eight years in the Bush wilderness -- and an even longer period of ostracism by the Washington political establishment -- a rising demographic of like-minded Americans and a new president are guiding us back to our roots as a secular nation.

"We have generally been a pariah group in America," says Woody Kaplan, Advisory Board Chair of the Secular Coalition for America. "Pretty much unrecognized by the political establishment. Yet there's almost no religious group in America as large as us…. We were that third rail that politicians failed to touch."

Indeed when the Obama Administration invited the Coalition to the White House for a meeting in May it marked a stark departure from recent history.

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July 3, 2009

Obama in Moscow

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

On Monday, President Obama heads to Moscow for two days of talks with President Dmitrii Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He also plans to meet with Russian opposition leaders and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and deliver what White House officials are billing as his third major foreign policy address--after his April arms control speech in Prague and his address in Cairo to the Muslim World. And today the White House confirmed that Obama will give an interview to Russia's leading opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

This is very good news.

In April, Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev gave his very first print interview to Novaya and its courageous editor-in-chief Dmitrii Muratov. The view inside Russia at the time was that Medvedev's interview gave the paper protection at a time when the economic and human rights situation in Russia is, at best, unstable.

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July 2, 2009

Time to End False Bipartisanship

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

God I hope David Broder is wrong. "The President has told visitors," the Washington Post columnist wrote last week, "that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85 percent of what he wants rather than a 100 percent satisfactory bill that passes 52-48." The good news is that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is now talking about how bipartisanship may need to be redefined downward if the Democrats are going to pass meaningful healthcare reform. In a meeting with journalists last week, Emanuel proposed that healthcare legislation could be bipartisan without Republican votes. "There will be ideas from both parties, and individuals from both parties, in the final product," he said. "Whether the Republicans decide to vote for things they promoted will be up to them." ( David Axelrod seconded the emotion in his appearance on ABC's "This Week.")

The trick now is to ensure that "centrist" Democrats (who, as Paul Krugman notes, "are in fact way out in right field") pay more attention to the broad majority favoring a strong public option than to the wads of dough lavished on them by big Pharma and insurance lobbyists. As Joe Conason put it in his invaluable New York Observer column, "If Congress fails to enact healthcare reform this year---or it enacts a sham reform designed to bail out corporate medicine while excluding the 'public option'---then the public will rightly blame Democrats, who have no excuse for failure except their own cowardice and corruption." Blame could well be registered in ugly midterm election results in 2010.

It's time to part ways with obstructionist Republicans and pass a strong healthcare bill with a majority vote, which is possible if efforts cease to get a handful of Republicans to cross over. Redefining bipartisanship at a time when the GOP has become a male, pale and stale party committed to deficit demagoguery and fearmongering is the common sense and, I'd even argue, pragmatic course. Instead of wasting time on recalcitrant GOP holdouts, do what Drew Westen, author of the terrific book "The Political Brain," advises to pass meaningful healthcare change: "Focus on principles, tell compelling stories, move people emotionally and send clear messages."

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June 28, 2009

Obama: Refocus and Reset

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

At a moment when the President is more popular than most of his signature policies, when weak-kneed Democrats threaten to bolt on healthcare reform and hypocritical legislators have turned Iran's election into a political football with little regard for the ramifications of their rhetoric for Iranian protesters, Obama worked hard to use his fourth press conference to refocus and reset the political debate.

Keeping his cool (even while sparring with a handful of snarky reporters), Obama displayed moral realism and principled respect for the courage, dignity and sovereignty of the Iranian people. He did what Iranian expert Trita Parsi advised: condemn violence, without picking sides.

In his opening remarks, Obama did sound a more impassioned note than at any time since the Iranian election in deploring the violence in the streets of Tehran. "The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions." Yet Obama was careful to continue, " I have made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran's affairs..... The Iranian people can speak for themselves." He referred again to Dr. Martin Luther King's powerful words, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," to affirm the belief--as he did in his magnificent Cairo Speech-- that "suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.....those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history."

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June 23, 2009

Around The Nation

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

As I write today, turmoil and violence continue to roil Iran. Our Contributing Editor Robert Dreyfuss was on the ground in Tehran in the days before and after the election. He left Iran but is following the crackdown and protests; you can track breaking news at his blog The Dreyfuss Report, and see our slideshow, Iran on the Edge, for images from Tehran.

In other news from The Nation this week: Federal authorities in New Orleans have launched an investigation into the mysterious death of Henry Glover, a New Orleans resident who was found burned to death in the days following Hurricane Katrina. Glover's death went unsolved for over three years, until an expose by reporter A.C. Thompson in The Nation last December (supported by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute) raised serious questions about the incident and the role of New Orleans law enforcement. Six months after Thompson's cover story, new witnesses have come forward and a federal grand jury is hearing testimony from police officers and eye witnesses.

The debate over health care is heating up. Over the weekend we launched the first in a summer-long online debate series with National Review, with our Washington DC Editor Chris Hayes and the Review's Reihan Salam debating whether or not health care is a human right.

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June 23, 2009

Americans for Financial Reform

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

In April, President Obama delivered a speech in which he alluded to the Sermon on the Mount to describe the stronger, more just economy he envisioned: "We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand," he said. "We must build our house upon a rock."

But the regulatory reforms he laid out on Wednesday do not fully accord with those eloquent words. Indeed columnist Joe Nocera accurately described President Obama's new plan in the New York Times yesterday: "The Obama plan is little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam rather than rebuild the dam itself…. Everywhere you look in the plan, you see the same thing: additional regulation on the margin, but nothing that amounts to a true overhaul."

Yet, at a time when we are living amid the blowback of an overgrown financial sector that did more harm than good, and we've seen the failure of a whole model of banking -- the Administration has offered some useful reforms. Most promising is the creation of a Consumer Finance Protection Agency-- the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren. But we don't see the kind of real revamping that is sorely needed. What we really need now -- as Obama himself indicated in April -- is a new foundation for a new economy. That means ensuring -- through tough regulatory reforms that Nocera pointed out would "make some bankers mad" -- that we have a financial sector that is more responsive to the public interest and the real economy; that is a servant, not master, of the people.

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June 19, 2009

War Supplemental Narrowly Passes

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Just a few minutes ago, the Obama Administration's $106 billion war supplemental passed on the House floor by a vote of 226-202. Congressional Democrats who oppose military escalation were in a tough position. They were whipped aggressively by both Speaker Pelosi and the White House. And they support President Obama.

Which is exactly why they did the right thing in voting no.

President Obama himself has said, "There's got to be an exit strategy." Yet we are sliding into a military escalation and commitments without a full and necessary national debate about the ends, means, or exit strategy for this war.

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June 16, 2009

Leveraging Inside Outside Power

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

When it comes to the big issues of our time -- like healthcare, energy and climate change, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and building a more just economy -- I've long believed it will require a strong inside-outside strategy to push progressive solutions through Congress. That's why I was so pleased when Darcy Burner was recently named Executive Director of ProgressiveCongress.org. (Full disclosure: I'm a board member.)

The organization's purpose is to bring together progressives both inside and outside of Congress to craft strong policies and work cooperatively to implement them. Burner knows the grassroots, netroots, and political landscape as well as anyone, and her close Congressional races in Washington state against a Republican incumbent in 2006 and 2008 are a testament to that fact. A former Microsoft manager, she was also the architect of the "Responsible Plan to End the War In Iraq".

Last month, ProgressiveCongress.org asked people to submit and vote on questions regarding healthcare reform via its website. Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) then answered the questions on the House floor, where proceedings are broadcast on C-SPAN and entered into the Congressional Record.

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June 15, 2009

Around The Nation

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Last week in The Nation, investigative reporter Teo Ballve exposed a stunning lapse in American foreign policy: USAID's "Plan Colombia" appears to be subsidizing drug traffickers. Although USAID insists that it has done nothing wrong, Balleve's investigation suggests that taxpayer funds are allowing Narcotraffickers to cultivate biofuels on stolen, contested land. It's a disturbing story, and while it hasn't taken off here in the States it made the front page of Colombia's newspaper of record, El Tiempo. The link is here (in Spanish). Here is a great interview with Teo from the Jack Rice Show, from Air America and other stations nationwide.

We're hopeful that more attention on this important story will yield some action and a change in USAID policy.

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June 9, 2009

Time for a New Round of Stimulus

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

"We might be witnessing the mother of all jobless recoveries."

That's how economist Bernard Baumohl described today's jobs report to the New York Times.

While there were "only" 345,000 jobs lost last month--as compared to 504,000 in April--the report doesn't account for the upcoming job losses as well as the ripple effect that will result from the GM bankruptcy. Nor does it reflect the severe budget shortfalls states continue to face. It did, however, reveal a continued collapse of wage growth, the highest unemployment rate in 25 years, and the loss of 156,000 manufacturing jobs.

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June 5, 2009