All older articles that appeared in this section through December 31, 2012 can be found in our archives. Starting in 2013 we will no longer be archiving articles in this section.

Reining In the Drones
By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD

Stop listening to neoconservative dunces! “They’ve been wrong about almost every important strategic choice”
Neocons have flawed worldview and awful track record, says Harvard professor who's seen through nonsense for years
By PAUL ROSENBERG

How Much Do Our Genes Influence Our Political Beliefs?
By Thomas B. Edsall

Federal judge says Supreme Court should “stfu”
Judge Richard George Kopf says the Hobby Lobby decision, to most Americans, "looks stupid and smells worse"
By ELIAS ISQUITH

Ronald Reagan stuck it to millennials: A college debt history lesson no one tells
Dramatic, awful changes occurred on my generation's watch -- and it amounts to a fiendishly successful conspiracy
By PETER LUNENFELD

Reading Hobby Lobby in Context
By Linda Greenhouse
"To grasp the full implications of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, it helps to read it not in isolation but alongside the court’s other major religion case of the term, Town of Greece v. Galloway. Issued eight weeks before Hobby Lobby and decided by the same 5 to 4 division, Town of Greece rejected a challenge to a town board’s practice of beginning its public sessions with a Christian prayer."

The One Underlying Factor That Explains All of Today's Wars
By Michael T. Klare
"But look more closely and they share several key characteristics—notably, a witch's brew of ethnic, religious and national antagonisms that have been stirred to the boiling point by a fixation on energy."

New Greenwald bombshell: NSA spied on 5 politically active Muslim-Americans
The leader of a Muslim civil rights group and a former Bush administration official were among the targets
By ELIAS ISQUITH

First Amendment’s racial tumult: Why Greenwald’s latest revelation matters
We're now wiretapping minority groups -- just as we once did with African-Americans. Here's what we've become
By MARCY WHEELER
"The Intercept story raises the specter that the government has resumed wiretapping civil society organizations representing minorities, just as it did when it surveilled African-American groups under COINTELPRO."

How America’s Biblical ignorance enables the Christian right
SCOTUS' Hobby Lobby ruling has set a precedent for corporations to willfully misinterpret the Good Book's teachings
By CJ WERLEMAN

Taxpayer-Financed Bigotry
New Rules Should Ban Discrimination by Federal Contractors
By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD

Coward of the House: John Boehner’s pathetic lawsuit reveals his weakness
Wimpy "leader" thinks suing the president will appease his party’s base. The good of the country is another story
By Joan Walsh

7 libertarian upstarts who might help Democrats keep their U.S. Senate majority
Come November, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid might want to send thank you notes to these relative unknowns
By STEVEN ROSENFELD

The return of George Orwell and Big Brother's war on Palestine, Ukraine and the truth
By John Pilger

Push Back Against Expensive Medicines
By Trudy Lieberman
"Many Americans have begun to realize they're paying too much for prescription drugs. And maybe -- just maybe -- a national conversation on the topic has begun, sparked by the introduction last year of Sovaldi, touted as the most effective way to treat patients with hepatitis C."

The animatronic presidency: How presidential museums become propaganda palaces, whitewashing Bush’s disasters and Clinton’s failings
At presidential museums, even the cynical melt before multimillion-dollar efforts to portray scoundrels as leaders
By THOMAS FRANK

Dick Cheney’s sadistic America: Why torture persists post-W
Six years into Obama's presidency, no one has been forced to answer for Bush's illegal war on terror. Here's why
By REBECCA GORDON
"Once upon a time, if a character on TV or in a movie tortured someone, it was a sure sign that he was a bad guy. Now, the torturers are the all-American heroes."

Can We Stop Pretending Israel is Being Attacked?
By Ben Cohen
"It’s takes an extraordinary leap of logic to justify Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine, and the blind support the nation receives is born out of irrational tribal loyalty rather than a neutral observation of the facts."

The Brutal Failure of Zionism
By John V. Whitbeck
"Israel’s renewed slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza – after failed peace talks and ethnic slayings by both sides – is further proof that the Zionist experiment has failed and that the only reasonable way forward is to recognize the equal rights of all people living in the region."

The American Century is over: How our country went down in a blaze of shame
We face a triple crisis in foreign policy, economics and democracy. Here's how it all went to hell
By MICHAEL LIND
"China and Russia have rudely declined America’s offer to make them subservient military satellites, like Japan and Germany."

Obama takes on Big Oil: Will the president’s final, radical climate push be enough?
Obama's finally living up to promises to take on climate change. Is it too little, too late? We ask Mark Hertsgaard
By LINDSAY ABRAMS
"In his second term, the president appears to be back on track, as determined as ever to fight climate change. Yet a year after the 2013 speech in which he laid out his ambitious agenda for bypassing Congress to achieve those goals, it remains unclear how much Obama will be able to accomplish this late in the game — and how his efforts will be remembered in the far-off, and far warmer, future."

What's the Matter With Gaza?
By Stephen Pizzo
"First everyone has to say it right out loud: Gaza, a piece of land disconnected from the future Palestinian state on the West Bank is, and will remain, a incitement to both sides. It is a demonstrably unsustainable fragment, an orphan, that belongs to neither Israel or Palestine. And it's a monumental slum, breeding what slums everywhere on the planet breed; discontent, anger, and endless trouble."

Pro-Israel Media Bias: It's As Easy As ABCReporting from Bizarro World, the ABC anchor tells us Israel is the perpetual victim
By Justin Raimondo

No Lessons Learned at the NYT
By Robert Parry
"The more pertinent question is whether the Times' coverage of other crises, particularly in Syria and Ukraine, has suffered from the same lack of journalistic integrity that beset the Times' handling of the run-up to the Iraq invasion."

Corporate welfare's quiet enablers: How democrats pander to big business
Support on the left for Export-Import Bank shows GOP isn't the only party tailoring policy to business interests
By David Sirota

Conspiracy of the plutocrats: Secrets of the wealth-inequality explosion revealed
Piketty protégé Gabriel Zucman explains how the world's wealthiest are scamming governments for trillions
By Sean McElwee

A left-wing Tea Party may be closer than you think
A few liberal pols get all the press, but the real work of movement-building is happening in the states
By Elias Isquith

Inequality Is Not Inevitable
By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ
"If it is not the inexorable laws of economics that have led to America’s great divide, what is it? The straightforward answer: our policies and our politics."

Whose Security? 
How Washington Protects Itself and the Corporate Sector 
By Noam Chomsky

The Supreme Court’s baffling tech illiteracy is becoming a big problem
If one thing was clear from decisions handed down this week, it's that SCOTUS is clueless on technology
By SELINA MACLAREN

President Obama To John Boehner: F**k Your Lawsuit
By Tommy Christopher
"On the heels of House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) decision to file a lawsuit against President Obama for Presidenting While Black, the President announced this afternoon that he will take any and all executive actions he can in order to fix our immigration system."

Hobby Lobby Is Only the Beginning
By PAUL HORWITZ
"The decision in Hobby Lobby was no shock to anyone familiar with the heavy weight that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act places on religious accommodation. The fate of the case was sealed 21 years ago — not by a slim majority of the court, but by virtually every member of Congress."

Supreme Court’s out-of-control spiral: Ideologues rewriting their own laws
It may be incremental, but make no mistake: This court is using absurd eccentricities to legislate from the bench
By DAVID DAYEN

5 states trying to make their kids scientifically illiterate
Louisiana, Missouri and others are shamelessly pushing a creationist agenda to appease the Christian right
By DAN AREL
"Why wasn't Texas on this list?"--editor

Bomb-crazy, “do something” neocons must be stopped — or Iraq will be Obama’s Vietnam
We have done enough harm. We're not able to do good. We must simply admit the enormity of our mistake -- and change
By PATRICK L. SMITH

The Christian right’s twisted notion of religious freedom
Evangelicals think the Constitution gives them power to force their faith on others. Here's why they're delusional
By AMANDA MARCOTTE
"'Religious freedom' has turned into conservative code for imposing the Christian faith on the non-believers."

Why Are We Surprised That a Supreme Court Decision Based on Religious Faith Makes Absolutely No Sense?
By Chez Pazienza
"Sure, the entire notion of a company being able to exercise religious faith is ridiculous and suspect, as is the idea that a company should be granted more rights than the living, breathing women who work for it. But when you’re dealing with the concept of faith, no abandonment of logic and reason, no matter how shocking, should come as a surprise."

John Roberts, abysmal failure: How his court was disgraced by corporations and theocrats
The Supreme Court's chief justice once vowed to save the reputation of the court. Here's why he's failed, big-time
By ELIAS ISQUITH

Robert Reich: Hillary’s appeals to the middle class are tone-deaf
The former secretary of labor explains how the Democratic candidate can rally the "downwardly mobile"
By ROBERT REICH

Declaration of Independents
By Timothy Egan
"That’s right: The independents, on this Independence Day, have never been more numerous. But they’ve never been more shut out of power."

SCOTUS’ other huge ruling today: Court picks the 1 percent over workers
Harris v. Quinn hurts vulnerable workers and their clients, and weakens -- but doesn’t gut -- public union rights
By JOAN WALSH

Mr. Obama, Go Big on Immigration
By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD
"This week, President Obama finally declared his independence from a suffocating debate over immigration reform that Republicans in Congress had never seriously joined."

Israel does not want peace
Rejectionism is embedded in Israel's most primal beliefs. There, at the deepest level, lies the concept that this land is destined for the Jews alone.
By Gideon Levy
"Israel has never, not for a minute, treated the Palestinians as human beings with equal rights. It has never viewed their distress as understandable human and national distress."

Quarantine the Middle East
By PHILIP D. ZELIKOW

Were the Three Settler Kidnappings an Israeli “False Flag” Operation?
By Karin Brothers

The Real Internal Revenue Scandal
By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD
"No, the real scandal is what Republicans did to cripple the agency when virtually no one was looking. Since the broad Tea Party-driven spending cuts of 2010, the agency’s budget has been cut by 14 percent after inflation is considered, leading to sharply reduced staff, less enforcement of the tax laws and poor taxpayer service."

When Beliefs and Facts Collide
By Brendan Nyhan
"Do Americans understand the scientific consensus about issues like climate change and evolution?
At least for a substantial portion of the public, it seems like the answer is no."

Tea Party phonies: Doing the conservative zigzag and right-wing flip-flop, based on who’s president
The Democratic Party is not as liberal as it was. The GOP is further right. Why do Republicans live in fantasyland?
By PAUL ROSENBERG

“Something the Supreme Court is not supposed to do”: Are Christians getting preferential treatment?
Hobby Lobby ruling could mean some religious claims get more sympathy than others. "Troubling," an expert explains
By ELIAS ISQUITH

We, the people are violent and filled with rage: A nation spinning apart on its Independence Day
School shootings, hatred, capitalism run amok: This 4th of July, we are in the midst of a tragic public derangement
By JIM SLEEPER

We are a clueless nation: America’s congenital blind spot on Iraq
As our military contemplates Iraq again, we're beset by unchallenged magical thinking -- and a dangerous narcissism
By ROBERT HENNELLY
"As the U.S. military heads into Iraq again, the news media lacks sufficient Iraqi and Muslim voices offering us any authentic situational awareness of the facts on the ground or on what has transpired since we left."

Inside Job: Ex-Power Player Pounds Imperial Poobah
By Chris Floyd
"Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, delivers a blistering attack on his former Bush Regime colleague Dick Cheney -- and the idea of rapacious empire that Cheney serves and embodies -- in language rarely seen in the mainstream press from a thoroughly entrenched Establishment figure."

Pay No Attention to the Apocalypse Behind the Curtain
By David Swanson
"Last Thursday a place in the U.S. called the Stimson Center released a report on the new U.S. habit of murdering people with missiles from drones."

NSA’s Kafka-esque darkness: Secrets in plain sight newly revealed
President's hand-picked panel says the Section 702 program is narrowly legal. Here's what it conveniently ignores
By MARCY WHEELER

When the Republicans Really Were the Party of Lincoln
By John Nichols

Alito could have been stopped: Why Dems should have filibustered the radical
The man who has wreaked havoc on this country could have been avoided altogether. Here's why it never happened
By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

What Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia don’t understand about contraception
An IUD is a month's pay for a woman earning minimum wage. The legal argument against Hobby Lobby is a human one
By DAWN JOHNSEN, SCOTUSBLOG

A court majority of conservative Catholic men: What's Next? A Ruling that Insurance Doesn't Have to Cover Transfusions?
By Dave Lindorff

10 Blistering Highlights from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Hobby Lobby Dissent
"The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield."
By Janet Allon

Fear Not the Coming of the Robots
By Steven Rattner
"Becoming more efficient (what economists call “productivity”) has always been central to a growing economy. Without higher productivity, wages can’t go up and standards of living can’t improve."

Gun nuts are terrorizing America: The watershed moment everyone missed
From Cliven Bundy defeating the cops to "open carry" movement's menace, the left's timidity has spawned a nightmare
By RICK PERLSTEIN

Hate Summer? Just Wait Until Global Warming Really Kicks In
By Thom Hartmann
"In other words, if you try to take a run on a hot day in the year 2085, there's a good chance that it will kill you."

Iraq: Another False Prosecution
By Barry Sussman
"While an objective observer might tend to see the disastrous results of the war's prosecution and question the wisdom of the initial engagement, those responsible have been making the rounds and defending their calamitous acts with sociopathic certitude."

The secret history of numbers: How math shapes our lives in amazing, unpredictable ways
The relationship between people and numbers is so much more fascinating than simple dollars and cents
By ALEX BELLOS

The Supreme Court Saves Cellphone Privacy
By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD

Hillary Clinton forgets the ’90s: Our latest gilded age and our latest phony populists
The gilded age Clinton now laments had its roots in the dark side of Bill's economic record. So why trust her now?
By THOMAS FRANK

All older articles that appeared in this section through December 31, 2012 can be found in our archives. Starting in 2013 we will no longer be archiving articles in this section.