March Issue

2008: America’s Sweetheart, or the Working Class Hero?

Young, good-looking, full of eager potential for the future. Men want to be him, women want to be with him. When he visited the area recently, he found crowds of fans cheering him on. And he’s going to be our next president. The question is, are we talking about Edwards or Obama?

Canada’s Secret to Great Health Care – Julia Piper

A wise man once said that Canada is like a loft apartment over a really great party. We’re big, we’re loud, we’re obnoxious. We buy things we can’t afford, we assume things we don’t know, and in a drunken stupor we tread over others and break things we can’t fix, just to wake up the next morning, bleary-eyed and blissfully virtuous, until we hear the neighbors banging on our door, waving bills for broken windows and falsified testimonies in our bloated faces. Then we swear to ourselves we won’t do it again, but Saturday night comes, and forethought and investment are lost to the sensations of the moment, money for social security and health care lost to tax cuts for the rich and political jihads. In response to such blunders on the part of the rowdy renters downstairs, many of our neighbors to the north silently shake their heads, wondering, among other things, why Canada has had some form of universal health care for the past 40 years, when 15.7 percent of the population the richest country in the world is completely uninsured. [more]

Oh, Nancy: Lady Speaker in Action – Nicole Thomas

With two losses of the presidency, thousands of troops stuck in Iraq, a growing deficit, cuts in important programs, and Bush still in the White House, the Democrats needed a strong Speaker of the House when they won back Congress last November. Nancy Pelosi was the perfect woman for the job. [more]

Inside the Conservative Mind – Nathan Schneider

In the last issue, I described some of the foundational principles for the conservative worldview. These are used all the time, often unconsciously, by conservatives in their reasoning, but may seem quite strange to progressives. [more]

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