Commentary by Joe Conason

June 25, 2009

The Sickening Addiction That May Kill Reform By Joe Conason

If Congress fails to enact health care reform this year -- or if it enacts a sham reform designed to bail out corporate medicine while excluding the "public option" -- then the public will rightly blame Democrats, who have no excuse for failure except their own cowardice and corruption. The punishment inflicted by angry voters is likely to be reduced majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives -- or even the restoration of Republican rule on Capitol Hill.

June 19, 2009

The AMA's Unhealthy Obsession By Joe Conason

Campaigning to build the widest possible consensus for reform of the nation's health care system, Barack Obama told the delegates of the American Medical Association (AMA) that he wants their support, too.

June 11, 2009

Why So Scared of a Public Plan? By Joe Conason

Within the coming weeks, Americans will begin to consider critical issues concerning the future of health care for themselves and their children, including universal coverage, taxation of benefits, computerized records and the controlling of costs. But before the debate commences in Congress and the media, big insurance and pharmaceutical companies are lobbying frantically (and spending millions of dollars) to foreclose the possibility of the most promising aspect of health care reform: a public insurance option.

June 4, 2009

Domestic Terrorism by Any Standard By Joe Conason

If right-wing broadcasters don't want to be blamed when someone murders a person they have demonized repeatedly -- as in the case of George Tiller, the doctor shot dead in his Wichita, Kan., church last Sunday by an anti-abortion zealot -- then they ought to moderate their rhetoric. No doubt they will choose their words more carefully for a while, and they will whine piteously about anyone who calls attention to their screaming extremism.

May 28, 2009

Why Obama's Court Pick is Already a Winner By Joe Conason

Choosing Sonia Sotomayor as his first nominee to the United States Supreme Court will allow Barack Obama to prove three important things. As a politician, he is not afraid of a fight. As a constitutional lawyer, he is willing and able to defend his conception of that living document. And as president, he is prepared to brush aside the phony consensus of Washington's gossipy elite.

May 22, 2009

Cheney and the Iraq-Torture Link By Joe Conason

Defending their record in office these past eight years, figures from the last administration seem especially touchy on the subject of torture. Led by the former vice president, Dick Cheney, they have argued that there was no torture, preferring more vague and delicate terms such as "enhanced interrogation" or simply "the program." They have insisted that any harsh tactics were used only to extract "actionable intelligence" from recalcitrant terrorists in order to save "thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands" of innocent lives.

May 14, 2009

Republicans Wonder How To Sell a Toxic Brand By Joe Conason

Uplifting as it was to see insurance executives, pharmaceutical manufacturers, hospital officials and doctors gather at the White House on May 11, pledging cooperation toward health care reform, nothing they said or did was inconsistent with precisely the opposite objective. According to the famed pollster who is helping Republicans in Congress to block reform, in fact, the first critical step toward stopping real change is pretending to support it.

May 7, 2009

Those Brand-New Humble Republicans By Joe Conason

Hoping to re-brand their declining party, a group of prominent Republicans recently launched a national "listening tour," presumably as an exercise in market research. They would like to know why voters -- and especially younger voters -- increasingly reject the GOP.

April 30, 2009

Combating Epidemic Ignorance By Joe Conason

In the turbulent imagination of the hard-core conservative, American foreign policy should be about telling off the rest of the planet. According to the right-wing mind-set, a manly foreign policy would curtail any effort at seeking influence abroad, cut off assistance to developing countries, forget about improving our global image and, above all, withdraw from the existing international organizations, especially the United Nations, which is nothing more than a gargantuan waste of money and a hive of parasitic bureaucrats.

April 23, 2009

Reagan (and Nixon) Greeted Despots, Too By Joe Conason

Few aspects of American politics are as ridiculous and dangerous as the right-wing urge to substitute macho posturing for foreign policy. That irrepressible habit surfaces constantly now that President Obama is in the Oval Office, most recently when he shook hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, a smiling moment that provoked calls for impeachment among the most deranged conservatives.

April 16, 2009

Obama's Cup of Tea By Joe Conason

If conservative leaders no longer even try to offer serious solutions to national problems, nobody should underestimate their capacity or their will to mobilize angry Americans.

April 2, 2009

No More Refuge for Scoundrels By Joe Conason

While the leaders of the world's largest economies debate stimulus and regulation in London, let us hope they do not forget about crime and punishment.

March 26, 2009

The Con Game of Blame By Joe Conason

As Barack Obama's economic advisers confront choices that vary from bad to worse in their mission to revive the financial sector and the broader economy, it is worth remembering that those choices were in essence inherited by the president, who is still new to his office. Listening to his critics, especially on the right, it would be easy to believe that the president is personally responsible for ballooning deficits, gigantic bailouts, ridiculous bonuses, nationalized institutions and careening markets. It would be easy to believe but entirely false -- and merely the latest episode in an old political con game that is all too typical of Washington.

March 19, 2009

Push Back Against AIG's 'Brightest' By Joe Conason

Having long flattered themselves as "masters of the universe," the creative financiers of Wall Street and London are today exposed as grifters rather than geniuses. Their proud claim that society cannot prosper without them -- voiced so often whenever anyone raised subjects such as taxation or regulation -- would now provoke bitter laughter instead of credulous nodding.

March 13, 2009

From Frozen Minds, A 'Spending Freeze' By Joe Conason

If President Barack Obama's response to the economic crisis is imperfect, as he acknowledges, and if the Congressional Democrats leave much to be desired as well, then Americans can at least be thankful that the nation's fate has not been consigned to the frozen minds on the other side of the aisle.

February 26, 2009

Pushed To the Margins, Finally By Joe Conason

At the brink of global ruin, many Americans suddenly seem willing to consider sensible ideas that were always deemed unthinkable, and to reject foolish notions that were once deemed brilliant. Soon we may be mature enough to observe how other developed countries address problems that have baffled us for generations.

February 19, 2009

There Was No GOP "Victory" By Joe Conason

With President Obama's signature affixed to the economic stimulus bill, his landmark victory can be put in proper political context. Regardless of that bill's manifest imperfections and the messy legislative process, the new administration achieved a difficult objective on the tightest possible schedule.

February 12, 2009

Stronger, Please, Mr. President By Joe Conason

Having allowed his Republican opponents to dominate the economic debate for two weeks as his stimulus proposal languished, President Obama used his first news conference to rebut them -- coolly and civilly, yet without leaving any doubt that he can strike back harder if necessary.

February 5, 2009

Stimulus Skeptics Wrong (Again) By Joe Conason

Mythology is overshadowing history in the debate over President Barack Obama's plan to stimulate the depressed economy. Excessive airtime isdevoted to the prejudices of cable hosts and radio personalities who regurgitate ideas they barely understand (and who haven't entertained an original thought since the Reagan era).

January 30, 2009

Let the Limbaughs Whine By Joe Conason

How fortunate for Barack Obama that Rush Limbaugh, big radio personality and leader of the instinctual far right, has yet to retire to a sunny island with his bottles of pills. At a moment when Republicans on Capitol Hill feel they must pretend to negotiate with the popular new president over spending to revive the economy, he blurted out what they really feel.

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