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The Price of Health Reform: Abortion Rights?

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By Rachel Morris - Nov. 10 (News Report) - Will health care reform come at the cost of abortion rights? The Democrats? historic health care bill squeaked through the House on Saturday only after pro-life forces scored a major victory. Despite months of wrangling over the public option and the price tag, in the end the legislation's fate turned on an eleventh-hour push by conservative Democrats to broaden the bill's existing limits on government funding of abortion, in the form of an amendment authored by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.). Here?s what happened and what it means:

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Is Obama Plotting To Shut Down the Internet?

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Stephanie Mencimer - Oct. 28 (Opinion) - The world is full of a lot of conservative anti-Obama craziness these days—Glenn Beck, the Birther movement, etc. But anti-immigration activist William Gheen might take the prize as this week's most paranoid Obama critic. On Tuesday, Gheen circulated an email claiming that the Obama administration may intend to use the swine flu epidemic as an excuse to shut down the web and thus silence his critics.

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The Empire Strikes Back

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Kevin Drum - Oct. 12 (Opinion) - AHIP, the insurance industry trade group, has apparently decided to hop off the healthcare reform bandwagon. After months of claiming that they were on board, they released a report on Monday claiming that current proposals would raise insurance costs for middle class families by about $4,000 more than otherwise projected over the next decade.

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Obama on Climate: Is He Even Trying?

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Bill McKibben - Sep. 24 (Opinion) - For those of us who care desperately about the climate, President Obama’s speech on Tuesday—the first to the world body by this most admired of world leaders—was a dud, a towering disappointment. Coming at the beginning of what the UN has dubbed “climate week,” the speech marked the beginning of a three-month push towards the global climate conference at Copenhagen. Obama used it mostly to downplay expectations. And it’s those downplayed expectations that may prove to be tragically self-fulfilling.

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Obama's Speech: The Doctor Is In

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By David Corn - Sep. 10 (Opinion) - Can a speech change a political dynamic? President Barack Obama and his political wizards obviously hope so. Together they came up with an address that at least on Wednesday night made it seem as if Obama was in charge of the health care reform process--which has not been the case since he handed off the hard work to Congress months ago. Obama finally defined fully the debate, the policy, and the values underlying the need for reform.

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Bush's Third Term?

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By David Swanson - Sep. 02 (Opinion) - It sounds like the plot for the latest summer horror movie. Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush had been allowed a third term as president, had run and had won or stolen it, and that we were all now living (and dying) through it. With the Democrats in control of Congress but Bush still in the Oval Office, the media would certainly be about a mandate for bipartisanship and the importance of taking into account the concerns of Republicans. Can?t you just picture it? There?s Dubya now, still laws via signing statements. Still creating and destroying laws with executive orders. And still at his whim. Imagine Bush continuing his policy of extraordinary rendition, sending prisoners off to other countries ...

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Kennedy and Health Care, Then and Now

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Josh Harkinson - Aug. 27 (Opinion) - One of the great and bitter lessons of Senator Edward M. Kennedy's political career is also the most timely for House Democrats: The need to seize the political moment on health care reform.

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The Cowboys of Kabul

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Daniel Schulman - Jul. 28 (Special Report) - Although their circumstances looked dire, the Spiers were about to become millionaires. By May, Barbara Spier had filed the paperwork to form a new corporation called US Protection and Investigations. Soon, thanks to the contracting sweepstakes that was the war in Afghanistan, she was signing an $8.4 million deal with the Louis Berger Group. The multinational construction and engineering company had landed a $214 million contract to rebuild Afghanistan's infrastructure—roads, water and sanitation, power and dams—from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). USPI's job was to provide security for contractors repairing a 300-mile road stretching from Kabul to Kandahar.

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Sotomayor Slips Up

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Stephanie Mencimer - Jul. 16 (Opinion) - After three days of Senate confirmation hearings, we've learned a lot of things—none of them, of course, about Sonia Sotomayor. Instead, the hearings have clarified a great deal about what the two political parties really care about when it comes to the Supreme Court

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The Patriot's Guide to Legalization

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Kevin Drum - Jul. 06 (Opinion) - Maybe the war against pot is about to get a lot uglier. After all, in the 1920s, Prohibition gave us Al Capone and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and that was over plain old whiskey and rum. Are we about to start paying the same price for marijuana?

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Where's My Flying Tank?

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Rachel Morris - Jul. 06 (Special Report) - A quick primer on the problem programs Gates wants to cut and the ones he left intact.

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Burger King, Carl's Jr. Remind Us: Burgers = Sex, Duh

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By David Corn - Jun. 25 (Opinion) - Two sexy burger ad revelations today. First, the burger-as-blow-job Burger King ad burst onto the scene, second, The Hills' Audrina Partridge becomes the latest scantily clad lady to make love to, I mean, to lustily eat a Carl's Jr. burger.

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Shock and Audit: The Hidden Defense Budget

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Rachel Morris - Jun. 23 (Special Report) - Cost overruns for major weapons programs now total $296 billion. We could never afford this rampant squandering of public money, but now, with the economy in crisis, the need to end the Pentagon's profligacy has become even more urgent.

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Gay Rights Groups to Ted Olson: Thanks, but No Thanks

Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Stephanie Mencimer - May. 29 (News Analysis) - If anyone could prevail in this case, Olson could. So gay rights groups must be thrilled that he’s thrown his significant legal weight and conservative bona fides behind their cause, right? But they’re not—not at all.

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Will Sotomayor Split the Right?

Tue, 26 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By David Corn - May. 26 (News Analysis) - With President Barack Obama's nomination of federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, conservatives could have a blistering fight on their hands--among themselves.

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No Country for Middle-Aged Men

Sat, 09 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Sasha Abramsky - May. 09 (Special Report) - Tom Hazel worked for three decades in a blazing hellhole to get his pension. But the financial geniuses who took over his plant had other ideas.

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Gone: Mass Extinction and the Hazards of Earth's Vanishing Biodiversity

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - Beyond a critical point, the collective body of a unique kind of mammal or bird or amphibian or tree cannot be salvaged, no matter the first aid rendered. Too few individuals spread too far apart or too genetically weakened are susceptible to even small natural disasters. A passing thunderstorm. An unexpected freeze. Drought. At fewer than 50 members, populations experience increasingly random fluctuations until a kind of fatal arrhythmia takes hold. Eventually, an entire genetic legacy, born in the beginnings of life on Earth, is smote from the future.

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Plastic. Fantastic?

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Jennifer Kahn - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - As the most visible evidence of a disposable, trash-addled society, plastic has become the emblem of a world swimming in waste. Reportedly, plastic shopping bags are used an average of just 12 minutes before being thrown away. Every year, more than 500 billion plastic bags are discarded worldwide; they wave from tree branches so abundantly that South Africans have dubbed them their "national flower," and no fewer than six countries have enacted bans. Shredded packaging fouls shorelines and turns up in the stomachs of trout, albatross, and sea turtles (which mistake plastic bags for jellyfish). In the Pacific Ocean, currents feed scraps into a thousand-mile-wide gyre of synthetic jetsam.

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An Inconvenient Truth for the GOP

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Jonathan Stein - Apr. 24 (News Report) - Republicans trying to block climate change legislation are abandoned by their once faithful corporate allies.

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Sludge Happens

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Josh Harkinson - Apr. 22 (Special Report) - In theory, recycling poop is the perfect solution to the one truly unavoidable byproduct of human civilization. Turning sewage into a potent, inexpensive fertilizer means cleaner rivers and oceans. But as sludge has spread across the country, so have concerns that it may cause as many environmental problems as it solves. In communities where sludge has been used, residents have reported ailments ranging from migraines to pneumonia to mysterious deaths. In a 1994 episode often cited by sludge foes, an 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy died of a staph infection after biking through sludge at an abandoned mine. Sludge's dirty secret is that it may contain anything that goes down the drain

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Meet Cartoonist Steve Brodner

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Nikki Gloudeman - Apr. 04 (Interview) - For over 30 years, satirical illustrator Steve Brodner has lampooned politicians such as George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich. His colorful caricatures have won numerous awards and been featured in Mother Jones, The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, and The Village Voice.

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Obama White House Close to Settling Missing Emails Case

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Nick Baumann - Apr. 01 (Special Report) - The long saga of the missing White House emails may be finally nearing its end. The Obama administration and two nonprofits that are suing it over millions of missing Bush-era emails have called a truce.

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Gwen Ifill's Truth

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Elizabeth Gettelman - Mar. 30 (Interview) - Mother Jones caught up with Ifill during a schedule packed with nightly shows and a national tour for her new book, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. Ifill shared her thoughts on moderating Sarah Palin, being spoofed by Queen Latifah, and checking the rabid fervor of Obamamanics: "Calm down, people…Prepare to be disappointed—that's almost inevitable."

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Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By Paul Roberts - Mar. 07 (Special Report) - That a recovering industrial farmer can't get respect from the alternative food crowd may seem trivial, but Fleming's experience cuts to the very heart of the debate over how to fix our food system. Nearly everyone agrees that we need new methods that produce more higher-quality calories using fewer resources, such as water or energy, and accruing fewer "externals," such as pollution or unfair labor practices. Where the consensus fails is over what should replace the bad old industrial system. It's not that we lack enthusiasm—activist foodies represent one of the most potent market forces on the planet. Unfortunately, a lot of that conscientious buying power is directed toward conceptions of sustainable food that may be out of date.

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How Could 9,000 Business Reporters Blow It?

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By Dean Starkman - Mar. 04 (News Analysis) - for casual readers of business coverage—that is, most of us—the past 18 months have been a crash course in things we never knew existed but that, we are told, have already done us all irreparable harm. Not only are the problems catastrophic, goes the somewhat frustrating message, but it is already too late to do anything about them—other, that is, than pay for them. In looking back on how we got here, the business press assumes a tone of rueful omniscience, as in this late-2007 New York Times piece on regulatory laxity under Alan Greenspan: "Had officials bothered to look, frightening clues of the coming crisis were available." Of course, the clues the Times cites in the very next sentence—the ceaseless research of the North Carolina-based Center for Responsible Lending—were available had anyone bothered to look. So, a reader might well ask, why didn't the media?

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