I was writing this column when I heard of Senator Kennedy's death.

I am heartbroken.

For more than five decades, my father William vanden Heuvel was a close friend and political ally of Kennedy's. When I called him this morning he had been weeping. He'd just seen the footage on...

At this moment -- when 72 percent of the nation supports a public plan option and 14,000 people lose their healthcare every day -- the House Blue Dogs and conservative Democratic Senators are doing just about everything they can to cripple real health care reform.

So why does the...

As we mark Obama's first 100 Days, there is much to celebrate--from repeal of the global gag rule to the passage of the stimulus and the Administration's pledge to close Guantanamo. The budget, a smart blueprint to build a new economy, will demand that progressives mobilize to take on well-funded...

Of his many promises during the 2008 Presidential campaign, one of the most appealing was Barack Obama's pledge to make his administration "the most open and transparent in history." The democratizing tools mastered at MyBarackObama.com and the inspiring grassroots enthusiasm for the Obama campaign opened the door to...

This week The Nation reports on a stunning scandal in New Orleans. Our cover story, Katrina's Hidden Race War, is the result of a tireless 18-month investigation by A.C. Thompson, exposing for the first time a rash of vigilante shootings in New Orleans, as white residents in the Algiers...

At the end of this remarkable week, we're starting to look ahead to the First 100 Days of the Obama presidency. Already, we're hearing calls in the mainstream media warning the new administration "not to overreach." And working overtime, the Inside-the-Beltway Punditocracy continues to reveal its ability to ignore reality...

Four years ago we gathered at The Nation to watch the election returns. Around midnight we began to weep. But we had to put out an issue the next day. So, through the grim night and bleak day after, as the Election 2004 verdict became clear, we held our emotions...

Last Friday, one of the guests preceding my segment on MSNBC's Hardball was a then-little known Congresswoman from Minnesota named Michele Bachmann.

She's not little known now.

Bachmann said of Barack Obama, "I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views." She then called on the media to "take...

Barack Obama's candidacy has inspired a wave of political enthusiasm like nothing seen in this country for decades. Now, many progressive supporters of Obama are urging him in a new open letter to stand firm on the principles he so compellingly articulated in his successful primary fight.

Please join Phil...

This July 4, lets put election reform on the agenda.

Are you a pro-democracy patriot? I am. Like millions of Americans, I experienced a surge of hope after the most nationally inclusive race for a presidential nomination in US history. It was that hope -- a sense that the...

In early 2007, The Nation published an extraordinary speech by Bill Moyers. In "A New Story for America," America's media conscience wrote of how "voters have provided a a respite from a right-wing radicalism predicated on the philosophy that extremism in the pursuit of virtue is no vice." Newt...

My colleague at The Nation, Ari Berman, has done more than any journalist to shine some light on how pollster-strategist Mark Penn, head honcho at PR giant Burson-Marsteller, and perhaps the most important figure in Hillary Clinton's campaign, poses a real dilemma for the candidate. Penn heads a firm...

This week marks the fifth anniversary of Congress's vote to authorize the Bush Administration to overthrow the government of Iraq by military force. The Nation opposed the war authorization. In "An Open Letter to Congress," which we published on the magazine's cover on the eve of the vote, we...

To bomb or not to bomb Iran, that's the question the Bush administration appears to be debating these days, once again revealing the extraordinary disconnect between the White House and the American people. With a catastrophic occupation of Iraq and polls showing the American public so skeptical about the use...

He's Back.

Having apparently spent sufficient time with his family since being sacked, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is battling to rebuild his disgraced image. In Phase One, he sought to set the terrain with a folksy article in GQ about life on his ranch outside of Taos.

As President Bush asks the nation this week for more time in Iraq, the brutal truth about his failed occupation continues to unfold. This week the Nation magazine published a 15,000 word, year-long investigation into the impact of the war on Iraqi civilians. Based on interviews with fifty soldiers,...

Pity the poor Democrats. They never get any respect. Even after their historic return from twelve years in the minority desert, no one wants to throw them a presidential party.

While the Twin Cities are more than happy to serve as the stomping grounds for the fat cats of...

"The pace of life feels morally dangerous to me," Richard Ford, novelist
"Time is on my side," The Rolling Stones

As the New Year approaches, I keep reflecting on Time. It runs through all of our lives - at work, at home, at play - in the...

Can Al Gore ever escape him? No, I don't mean Bill Clinton; I'm talking about Ralph Nader. In 2000, the Nader vote was the margin of victory in Florida, and thus, a Gore presidency, and therefore an alternative reality much less grim than the one we now face. But that...