Author: Lenny
Redistricting in the Courts
For those of you following the ongoing saga of redistricting in New York, last week saw the development of a growing consensus that the courts, and not the state legislature or an independent commission, will ultimately draw New York’s district lines. As Governor Cuomo put it the other day, “this always winds up in the courts.” And despite a recent Supreme Court decision that required a Texas court to give weight to a legislatively-created plan in drawing district lines, the courts … Read More
Grading Obama on Home Economics
In my last piece, I rated the Obama administration’s performance over the last three years on foreign relations, focusing on a few major foreign policy accomplishments. This week I take a look at some of Obama’s key achievements here at home, on the economy. Of course, any analysis of Obama economic policies has to start from an understanding of the dire situation he inherited after eight years of the profligate spending of George W. Bush. Bush ran up the national … Read More
Fireside Chat with Sen. Liz Krueger
There may not have been a fireplace, but last Thursday ACT NOW was honored to have progressive champion State Senator Liz Krueger (26th District) over for an informal “fireside chat.” As she approaches her 10th anniversary in office, Liz is certainly turning up the heat on in Albany on key progressive issues. We talked with Sen. Krueger about redistricting reform in New York State, a subject dear to ACT NOW’s heart and on which we have worked tirelessly since last winter. … Read More
Grading Obama on Foreign Affairs
If you had to give President Obama a grade in International Affairs for these past three years, what would it be? A plus? B minus? “Incomplete”? For my part, I give him (and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, key architect of his foreign policy) an A minus, for a job well done, with room for improvement. It’s been interesting to watch Republicans try to find fault in every foreign policy decision Obama has made, without much of a coherent theme or a credible … Read More
Who’s Afraid of National Popular Vote?
This past week, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called the National Popular Vote movement (the initiative to have the president chosen by direct popular vote rather than the electoral college) an “absurd and dangerous” idea that would lead to “catastrophic” results, saying, “We need to kill it in the cradle before it grows up.” Yikes, Mitch. Methinks you doth protest too much. What is it exactly about National Popular Vote that you’re so afraid of?
Granite State of Mind
This morning the Manchester Union-Leader, an influential newspaper in New Hampshire, endorsed Republican presidential candidate New Gingrich for the January 10, 2012 New Hampshire primary. The Union-Leader passed over frontrunner Mitt Romney despite (or perhaps because of) their familiarity with him from his time as governor of neighboring Massachusetts, several years of his assiduously courting NH voters and the newspaper’s editorial staff, and his large lead in current NH primary polls. Political media have had their sights trained on the Granite State … Read More
Sunday at Park51 with Goldfield
Since my post on the Park51 Islamic Center last month, ACT NOW had the opportunity this past Sunday to take a private tour of the once-controversial space. Our guide was Danny Goldfield, the artist whose photography exhibit NYChildren – featuring photos of NYC children hailing from nearly every country on earth – is currently on display there.
Arab Spring and Gaddafi’s Fall
With the death of Libya’s brutal dictator Muammar Gaddafi as the latest result of this year’s “Arab Spring,” which has already toppled dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, we’ve been hearing a lot about regime change in the Middle East. We liberals so far have had very little trouble drawing a distinction between, on one hand, revolutions brought about by the will of Middle Eastern people, and on the other hand, by the Bush-Cheney neoconservative “regime change” doctrine in Iraq. But is that line really so easily … Read More
Alabama Immigration Law
Causes Chaos
If more states are considering enacting sweeping new immigration laws like Arizona’s and want a recipe for chaos and panic, they can use Alabama as their model. The problems caused by Alabama’s new immigration law show exactly why the Constitution takes certain matters that affect the country as a whole – like national defense, foreign policy, and, in this case, setting a “uniform rule of naturalization” – out of the hands of individual states. Earlier this year, citing a desire to … Read More
“Ground Zero Mosque”
Proves Everyone Wrong
On September 21, the Park51 Islamic Center – derided by Tea Partiers as the “Ground Zero Mosque” despite being neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero – opened its doors to popular acclaim and surprisingly little controversy. In the end, all of the inflammatory rhetoric about this religious center turns out to have been a tempest in a teapot. Why? Because Park51 was fundamentally misunderstood as a symbol of intolerance and insensitivity, rather than one of tolerance and healing.
