California is in deep trouble because it has a dysfunctional system of government. Much of the problem can be changed by one sentence.

I have sent to the Attorney General a ballot proposition for the 2010 ballot called The California Democracy Act, whose content is the following:

All legislative action...

Barack Obama ran the best-organized and best-framed presidential campaign in history. How is it possible that the same people who did so well in the campaign have done so badly on health care?

And bad it is: The public option may well be gone. Neither Obama himself nor Senior...

The Sotomayor nomination has given radical conservatives new life. They have launched an attack that is nominally aimed at Judge Sotomayor. But it is really a coordinated stealth attack -- on President Obama's central vision, on progressive thought itself, and on Republicans who might stray from the conservative hard line.

Hooray! The outrageous propositions 1 A-E have been crushed by voters who just can't take any more.

California voters have rejected the nonfunctional minority-rule government that has bankrupted the state, along with the governor who led the state into bankruptcy.

The voters want a functional democracy, and that means majority...

EcoAmerica is soon to make public a report on the framing of the environment called "Climate and Energy Truths: Our Common Future." The New York Times, on May 1, 2009, ran a front-page story on the report by John M. Broder called "Seeking to save the Planet, with a...

Co-authored by Glenn W. Smith and Eric Haas

Real health care reform is within our grasp. President Obama and Congress can create an American plan that can provide health care to all Americans. However, Democrats are not yet doing very well at describing what they are proposing in the area...

As President Obama prepares to address a joint session of Congress, what can we expect to hear?

The pundits will stress the nuts-and-bolts policy issues: the banking system, education, energy, health care. But beyond policy, there will be a vision of America--a moral vision and a view of unity that...

In the first debate, Obama did what he needed to do: convince a majority that he has what it takes. But there is room for improvement.

1. Obama kept working within McCain's frames: Earmarks, tax policy, military policy as foreign policy, and so on. McCain would say...

Co-authored by Kathleen Frumkin

John McCain knew that there would be no bailout agreement before he announced that he would go to Washington, supposedly to help promote such an agreement in the spirit of bipartisanship. We smell a trap. Bush, Paulson, and the Congressional Republicans lure the Democrats (and...

Throughout the nomination campaign I was struck by how well the Obama campaign was being run, especially how sophisticated the framing was. I was heartened that my five books on the subject might have had a real effect. But recently I have begun to wonder. It looks like, in certain...

Co-authored by Chris Shutes

Introduction

The Endangered Species Act is our primary legal tool for environmental protection.

We have until September 15--about a week--to save the Endangered Species Act.

Not just some species, but the Act itself! Bush administration officials are proposing redefinitions of...

This election matters because of realities -- the realities of global warming, the economy, the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, civil liberties, species extinction, poverty here and around the world, and on and on. Such realities are what make this election so very crucial, and how to deal with them is...

Political conventions are not occasions for philosophy. You'll be hearing mostly cheerleading from Denver -- more about change and hope, more Yes-we-cans, more about renewing the American dream, more about McCain's seven houses, Bush's third term, and policy. There's nothing wrong with this; it's what we expect.

But there is...

Barack Obama should not move, or even appear to be moving, toward right-wing views on issues -- even with nuanced escape clauses. Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman, and the NY Times Editorial Page all agree, for various reasons. I agree as well, for many of the same reasons,...

Political endorsements rarely make interesting reading. But this year is different. Take the endorsements of Hillary Clinton by the New York Times [NY Times, January 25, 2008] and Barack Obama by Caroline Kennedy [NY Times, January 27, 2008].

To the editors of the New York Times, Hillary...

The US Senate will make linguistics history today. Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell actually brought to the floor a bill based on a linguistic trope called "metonymy." The bill also makes history by trying to censure an ad. But the most "damning" part of the censure is not what...

Betrayal is everywhere in the news. We learned today from the Washington Post that Alan Greenspan said, in his new book, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Not keeping our country safe, as the troops were...

"Centrism" is the creation of an inaccurate self-serving metaphor, and it is time to bury it.

There is no left to right linear spectrum in the American political life. There are two systems of values and modes of thought -- call them progressive and conservative (or nurturant and strict, as...

By George Lakoff and Glenn W. Smith

"I'm trying not to say that I'm not accountable."
--Lieutenant General Kevin Kiley, Walter Reed Hospital's former commander

Now that the Democrats in Congress can hold hearings with sworn testimony, the word "accountability" has finally become a staple...

"The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran's nuclear ambitions, but the conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete."

--Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker,...