The Week: Most Recent Dana Liebelson

The growing undercover effort to get God into biology class

The Week — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 07:12:00 -0500

Imagine an American public school where science textbooks were obligated to debunk Charles Darwin; where students could deny global warming and still get an A, and where college professors could tell Biology 101 students that the world was born on the back of a giant turtle. Sounds a little backwards for 2013, right?

Frighteningly, these are all real scenarios that could occur under new education bills proposed this year. But the language in most of these bills is so obtuse that you might not even know if you live in one of the six states considering them (Montana, Colorado...

How I learned to stop worrying and love Twitter

The Week — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 08:55:00 -0500

Twitter is dead, you guys. Writers used to send pithy tweets across cyberspace, borne on the golden wings of Hermes. Now, as T.S. Eliot would say, "Our dried voices, when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless." Twitter is so uncool, that even if we resurrected the spirits of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix and got them to tweet never-before-heard song lyrics from the grave, they would have like, 20 followers, tops. And most of them would be spambots. Do you know what else is dead? Rock and roll. When I put on the Dead Weather or Jay-Z, my parents inform me that music used to be all about...

CHART: 40 years later, Roe v. Wade is still under siege

The Week — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:00:00 -0500

Forty years ago, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to protect a woman's right to have an abortion in her first trimester, citing the constitutional right to privacy. But now, the pro-abortion-rights Americans who fought to win the landmark Roe v. Wade decision might not recognize today's bruised-and-battered version of the law.

It began in 1992, when the Supreme Court gave states more power to regulate abortion, choosing to judge laws by whether they placed an "undue burden" on the mother, rather than the more rigorous "strict scrutiny" standard. Since then, many clinics that provide abortions...

The Supreme Court takes on gay marriage rights today: 4 things you need to know

The Week — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 10:20:00 -0500

Is America ready to treat same-sex married couples like everyone else under the law? That's the question the Supreme Court is grappling with today. SCOTUS is looking at several gay-marriage cases, and depending on which it decides to hear, the U.S. could be much closer to granting gay married couples the same federal rights as their hetero-married neighbors. There's a lot of misinformation floating around about what the Supreme Court can actually do — so to help clear the air, here are four things you need to know about today's deliberation on which cases to hear. (The results could be disclosed...

Obama's war on hackers: 5 things you need to know

The Week — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 10:35:00 -0500

Here's a campaign promise we didn't hear much during the 2012 presidential election: President Obama will keep hackers out of America's water supply. It seems like something from the latest 007 movie — but the Obama administration is taking the threat seriously. He proclaimed October National Cyber Security Awareness month, beefed up the military's cybersecurity defenses in a secret directive, and supported (failed) legislation that would have protected the nation's infrastructure from hackers. Now, the president is expected to issue an executive order to accomplish that latter goal, a move...

4 failures Obama should remedy in his second term

The Week — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:20:00 -0500

Now that the 2012 presidential horse race is over, America can stop focusing on gaffes and attack ads, and pay attention to issues that matter, like when exactly Gen. David Petraeus began sleeping with his mistress, and how she dresses. (Not really!) Seriously, though, when a president gets a second term, it's an opportunity to secure a legacy and achieve policy goals without having to worry about that pesky re-election problem. Here, four things Obama failed to accomplish in his first term, but absolutely should in his second. No excuses, Mr. President.

1. Demonstrate leadership on climate change...

A tale of two Americans: How they'd fare under Obama and Romney

The Week — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 06:22:00 -0400

There are just four days left until Election Day. Chances are, you've already made your mind up about who you want to run the United States of America — or alternatively, you're crying like this little girl: "I'm tired... I'm tired of Bronco Bama and Mitt Romney!" After being bombarded with millions upon millions worth of attack ads, personal phone calls, and semi-threatening donation emails, you'd be forgiven for wanting to give up on this election altogether.

But here's why you shouldn't: Despite all the exaggerations, false promises, and flat-out lies told by both presidential candidates...

Miss Bush? Vote Romney!

The Week — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 06:11:00 -0400

During Tuesday's presidential debate, a woman asked Mitt Romney about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named: George W. Bush. Specifically, she asked Romney how he differs from the former Republican president. Romney, after trying to deflect the question, said, "President Bush and I are different people, and these are different times."

Romney is right about it being different times: When Bush took office in 2000, the U.S. was riding high on a $236 billion budget surplus — and according to the Chicago Tribune, when he left in 2008, the country was $407 billion in the hole. By the end of this year, the...

Why the culture war is crushing Mitt Romney

The Week — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 06:15:00 -0400

Watching the GOP lately, I am reminded of an ominous prediction Gerald Ford made almost nine years before he passed away. The former Republican president, who was unabashedly pro-abortion rights, said that if the party kept going down the ultra-conservative line on issues like abortion, it would not be able to elect another Republican president.

"The American people are basically middle-of-the-road moderates," he told The New York Times.

Here in 2012, Ford's words are coming back to haunt Mitt Romney. Although this is supposed to be a "jobs" election, the GOP has a side agenda that...

The Mitt Romney we have always known

The Week — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 11:00:00 -0400

Shortly after Mother Jones leaked the now-infamous videos of Mitt Romney speaking at a private fundraiser, I repeatedly got this question (I work for the magazine): Are the tapes real? Besides the fact that my confidence in David Corn's reporting is ironclad, I could reassure readers of the videos' authenticity for another reason. This is the Romney we've known all along.

Romney admitted as much himself at a last-minute press conference on Monday. He didn't deny the statements, but instead said they were "not elegantly stated." You could practically hear the baffled wheels of his brain cranking...

4 human rights the GOP forgot to protect

The Week — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 06:30:00 -0400

After World War II, the United Nations adopted a landmark declaration to ensure basic human rights across the globe. Today, this prestigious document contains 30 articles and is available in 385 languages. But if this year's GOP had been in charge of figuring out how to protect human rights in 1948, that declaration would be one paragraph long.

That's not an exaggeration. One paragraph is exactly how much space the 2012 GOP platform devotes to "protecting human rights." And if word count is anything to go by, the GOP considers voter fraud — which has been debunked as an almost nonexistent...

What a Montana farmer could teach Romney and Obama

The Week — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:00:00 -0400

In Washington, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana is largely known for two things: Competing in one of the most closely watched races in the Senate, and his devotion to Montana beef. Millions of dollars have been flowing into Tester's race, where he's neck-and-neck with Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), an extreme conservative who stands against everything from women's health programs to putting the gray wolf on the endangered species list.

But there's much more to Tester than his race against Rehberg (not to mention the Democrat's idiosyncratic habit of packing Montana beef in a cooler and bringing...

What Mitt Romney's Israel fumbles say about his foreign policy

The Week — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 07:01:00 -0400

It's that time of year again: Olympians are sweating, fans are watching them sweat, and the U.S. presidential challenger just came home after the traditional "grand tour" overseas. You'd think the media would be paying attention to the amazing feats of the American teenagers in London — I'm looking at you, Gabby Douglas and Missy Franklin — but instead, all the news cycle focuses on are the gaffes of the GOP candidate, Mitt Romney.

Romney isn't in the spotlight because he's doing standing back flips. In Britain, he stumbled all over his own feet: From insulting his London...

What the Tea Party can teach Mitt Romney about defense spending

The Week — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 06:43:00 -0400

What does the Tea Party have in common with the liberal anti-war group Code Pink? At first glance, not much. The former heckles President Obama and champions tax cuts; the latter heckles George W. Bush and attempts to arrest Karl Rove in public. But last week, both groups supported a House amendment that would rein in runaway defense spending, by freezing the Pentagon budget at $518 billion.

And here's the crazy thing: The amendment passed, thanks to its bipartisan support in and outside of Congress. These days, it's extremely rare for Congress to vote to cut the sacred cow of defense spending...

The GOP's make-believe voter fraud epidemic

The Week — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 16:30:00 -0400

Out of the blue, Florida recently asked a 91-year-old World War II veteran to provide proof of his U.S. citizenship — or he wouldn't be allowed to register to vote. Bill Internicola, born and raised in America, sent the state the information it requested and military papers to boot, according to NPR.

So why was this "flabbergasted" senior citizen targeted by Florida? Republicans across the country are pushing new state laws to stop "voter fraud" — a crime so demonstrably rare that many critics assume these laws are meant not to stop fraud, but to disenfranchise Democratic voters. And...

President Obama's poor pardoning record

The Week — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 10:00:00 -0400

Despite recent parallels drawn between U.S. politics and HBO's epic fantasy drama Game of Thrones, the power-hungry, bloodthirsty kings in that fictional realm would actually have quite a difficult time working in the U.S. executive branch. Just imagine their thinking: Checks and balances... huh? Wait, we can't decapitate our staffers? No unlimited expense accounts for wild boar, wine, and prostitutes?! Outrageous!

The kings would, however, share at least one power with the American president: The ability to singlehandedly pardon a convicted criminal.

Pardons allow U.S....