To understand why conservatism is dying, it is instructive to see how it came full bloom in the Gilded Age. This era is indelibly depicted in Age of Betrayal, a brilliant book by Atlantic Monthly senior editor Jack Beatty. Here is how the book's jacket captures the time:

Lately there has been some rather over-heated discussion in the papers and on the airwaves about the notion of betrayal.

The unsubtle agitprop "Betray-us or Petraeus" ad (yes, literally untrue, but a useful provocation), became a short-term totem which might re-emerge during the desperate and venal...

Someone should tell chicken-hawk Rush Limbaugh that the only phonies are those who choose not to serve and then criticize those who do. I served proudly, so did two of my fellow paratroopers in the 82nd Airborne who spoke out and died just weeks ago. Generations of American veterans...

Yesterday, Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton (NY), Chuck Schumer (NY), Bob Menendez (NJ), Barbara Mikulski (MD), and Ben Cardin (MD) all voted in favor of the "Kyl-Lieberman Iran Amendment." This piece of legislation actually encourages the practitioner of cowboy diplomacy, George W. Bush, to be even more belligerent in his foreign...

Why is the green movement so white? "It used to be the more committed you were to the environment, the further away you were from regular people," Van Jones tells me. "It was tofu and Birkenstocks and all that."

Jones, a 39-year-old African-American civil rights activist with an impressive track...

The recent news that Buddhist monks have been shot and killed in a peaceful democratic demonstration in Rangoon, over a raise in the price of gasoline, is shocking!

No question that General Than Shwe is plenty un-American and has a real genocide thing going. Several years ago the rotund general...

In recent days the Senate and then the House voted to condemn MoveOn for an ad that questioned General Petraeus' statistics on improvements in Iraq. Many Democrats joined in the condemnation.

Yesterday Rush Limbaugh said that troops serving in Iraq are "phony soldiers." From Media Matters - Limbaugh:...

Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad, the "humble" former mayor of Tehran, has now been thrust on the international stage and if most of the media in the West is to be believed, he is positively Hitlerian.

Not particularly blessed with the dashing good looks I associate with so many Iranian men,...

U.N. climate scientist, Rajendra Pachauri, announced, during the one-day climate summit earlier this week, that "the time is up for inaction."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has called climate change the "defining issue of our era," has invited world leaders to attend a special one-day event to help map out...

For the past couple weeks MoveOn.org's ad "General Betray Us" has dominated the news and even managed to be condemned by the U.S. Senate and House. It has gone so far as having almost every Presidential candidate put to the "patriotism test" by the media with questions related to their...

She thinks you're weak. She has no respect for you, and her lack of respect amounts to loathing--the kind of loathing that the powerful feel for the powerless. She's confident that progressives are too impotent, divided, and disorganized to deny her the nomination.

How else to explain her vote...

From the moment the joint New Year's/EU accession party ended in January, Romania's political parties have been at each other's throats, while simultaneously cutting deals of convenience. With elections coming soon, and no political majority apparent, the centrists may stop abstaining from dealing with a politically untouchable party -- and...

If he weren't such a ridiculous, pathetic oaf, I'd invite Bill O'Reilly up to my 'hood for a little white-on-white bonding, re-education and diversity training -- if he weren't afraid to set foot in it! It would obviously surprise, and perhaps even frighten the Man Who Wouldn't Shut Up, to...

In demanding that Democrats who campaigned against NAFTA now vote for a package of new NAFTAs, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted that Democrats need to "take yes for an answer," according to CongressDaily.

Pelosi is now on record literally plagiarizing David Broder's columns. You may recall that...

This week marks the premiere of Trade in local theaters, a powerful new film about the underworld of sex trafficking. The movie is inspired by a 2004 New York Times Magazine cover story by journalist Peter Landesman, and shares with it the revelation that human trafficking exists right here in...

I was planning to write a blog today on how congressional Democrats need to stop playing checkers while Congressional Republicans play chess -- how they can refuse to allow an up and down vote on Bush's new attorney general nominee until the Republicans allow an up and down vote on...

The WWF will feature a series of grudge matches between Rudy Giuliani and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this fall--if the Republican candidate can squeeze the appearances in between other campaign events. At least his opponent will look very much like the Iranian president, though it may be difficult to verify his identity...

When Iran's Ahmadinejad came to New York, everyone acted like we were being visited by Hitler. Maybe he is that bad, I don't know. But it doesn't feel that way to me. I'm a Jew. I support Israel. And still, he doesn't feel that bad to me. "More research is...

We haven't even put a dent in it. It's arguable that the laughably low approval rating the public gives the Democratic-run Congress is attributable to that body's failure to move the ball one inch down the field. Worse, the Democratic leadership has looked feckless, confused, spineless and outmaneuvered at every...

As Media Matters reported today, Rush Limbaugh, on his show said that those troops who come home and want to get America out of the middle of the religious civil war in Iraq are "phony soldiers." I'd love for you, Rush, to have me on your show and tell...

Yesterday, by a vote of 76-22, the Senate passed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment in support of military actions against Iran. This is the second such endorsement of the president by a senate majority in just three months. In July, the Lieberman amendment to "confront Iran" passed with the far stronger...

As the administration is asking Congress for an additional $190 billion for the Iraq war, why should we listen to a lone voice? The email I have just received from an Iraqi friend, S, who was working for a U.S. aid agency in Iraq was particularly haunting to me because...

Democrats are still resting on laurels they created almost 50 years ago when Richard Nixon, leading John F. Kennedy in the polls, was upset in his bid for president of the United States.

At the time Kennedy was the relatively undistinguished junior senator from Massachusetts. What essentially catapulted him into...

Hillary has finally started taking advice on the war from someone who knows: George W. Bush.

Iraq is Enron, and President Bush is Ken Lay. He's fighting a war with phony accounting tricks. The Bush administration fudged the numbers to get us into Iraq, and cooked the books to keep us there. "The surge" is simply another in a long series of inflated stock quotes. This...

The other day before a war-related vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) finally called out on the Senate floor something that has been long-clear to 70% of the country (repeat: 70% of the country): "Senators, please, don't follow the White House talking points on this. This is Bush's...

[cross-posted at JohnKerry.com]

If there's anybody left who doubts that "compassionate conservatism" is an Orwellian smokescreen for the same old Republican policies, the President's actions around SCHIP should put that to rest.

After promising he'd work on "expanding health care for children," the President has now unilaterally declared war...

Pick your poison -- and it's not just Ahmadinejad at Columbia University! Faculty at Stanford say the Hoover Institute has no business inviting former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld as a visitor.

The Board of Regents of the University of California rescinds a speaking invitation to former Harvard President Larry...

It's beginning to look a lot like 2002.

Or perhaps I should say 1998. That's when the Senate passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which officially opened the legislative floodgates for the Iraq invasion. This week, the Senate passed legislation that similarly paves the way for our third war in this...

So, Bill O'Reilly expressed surprise that a world-famous black restaurant could have the same decorum of a white suburban restaurant. As we all know, O'Reilly revealing ignorance is not news. O'Reilly revealing that he's capable of expanding his understanding of his fellow human beings--well, that is.

I believe we've...

by Taylor Marsh

Clinton's vote yesterday on the Lieberman-Kyl legislation was a very bad vote. Last night Edwards called her out on it. It wasn't as bad as the Iraq vote many Democrats in the Senate cast,...

The plight of the Jena 6 and Mychal Bell in particular was all over the news last week, with Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and thousands of other black activists scaring the hell out of marching on that tiny Louisiana town. But why are they there? There's no race problem in...

Crossposted at OpenLeft.com

I am about as old school as you can get. I started knocking on doors in campaigns 35 years ago, at the age of 12, and I still go out door-knocking at least a little bit every election cycle. I think that kind of person-to-person political work...

Have you been following Ken Burns' The War on PBS? Have you been thinking about Iraq as you do?

The War is Burns' epic new documentary on America, its people, and the effort the country put into winning World War Two. It is all but impossible not...

As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers has become the point man on three of the most contentious upcoming political battles: the fight over Bush's desire to make permanent the temporary FISA law rushed through Congress this summer; Congressional attempts to restore habeas corpus rights to military detainees;...

Just days after asserting that there are no homosexuals in Iran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today invited United Nations inspectors into his country to search for homosexuals.

"We have nothing to hide," Mr. Ahmadinejad said in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. "You can search the entire country...

The speech given by Iranian President Ahmadinejad at Columbia University on Monday, signified three key topics: first, a remarkable ode to freedom of speech in the University; second, Ahmadinejad's weak performance in addressing some controversial questions; and third, as host and President of Columbia Lee...

The rhetoric around reauthorization the State Children's Health Insurance Program is making my head spin. Whoever thought that providing health care to kids could be so complicated?

Instead of the usual political bickering, I prefer to look at the numbers, plain and simple:

$35 billion: The additional funding...

I just had the chance to sit down with Governor Bill Richardson as he did a press conference before he took off on a day where he will hit multiple states with a single message.

"I will end this war and get our troops out."

It's a message that, having...

President Bush's Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change, set to begin today, is nothing more than fig leaf diplomacy. The president called for this meeting last June before the G-8 Summit as part of his effort to block the G-8 nations' call for a 50 percent reduction...

Responding to a question about the growing number of uninsured Americans, President George W. Bush observed: "No one goes without health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.''

This let-them-eat-cake attitude recalled Barbara Bush's observation when thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims lay sleeping with strangers...

Watching last night's forum from Dartmouth, I was stunned by the convergence of the top three Democratic presidential candidates on a new target date for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq: 2013. My initial reaction upon hearing that date was that the top tier of the Democratic presidential field had...

I hear John McCain can only afford to fly commercial these days, and I think we know how he is filling up the hours during those frequent DC to Manchester flights.

You might remember that back in early 2006, Senator McCain made an appearance on Fox's 24. The only...

In a recent post, ("Ahmadinejad and Columbia University," September 26, 2007) I argued that Columbia University did nothing "wrong" in inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. To the contrary, its invitation to this allegedly "cruel and petty dictator" was well within Columbia's fundamental mission as a university, which is not to...

From Bloomberg:

The Pentagon is requesting almost $190 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in fiscal year 2008, which would be the largest annual expenditure since the conflicts began.

The Pentagon today added $42.3 billion to its previous $147 billion request. Defense Secretary Robert...

We "can't afford" national health insurance.

Better schools are too expensive.

Expanding and fixing Amtrak is too expensive.

Taking care of the soldiers we used like Kleenex is too expensive.

Just about everything is too expensive for these fiscally-responsible Republicans

With pundits evaluating the efforts of Edwards and others to go after Hillary, progressives may want to go beyond the headlines to learn more about the real records of the contenders. They should discover one of the most definitive and useful sources for the actual voting records and public...

Since Rudy has already decided to make some money off 9/11, here are a few more ideas.

The argument has raged in New Orleans since the flooding: HUD, the federal agency which runs the city's public housing (don't ask), has insisted on demolishing the existing housing projects, even the ones undamaged by the floods, because the feds claim to want a new model of mixed affordable and...