Abortion

“The United States has one of the highest abortion rates in the developed world, with women from every socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, religious and age-group obtaining abortions,” says Lawrence Finer, associate director for domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute. The highest rate of abortion was recorded in 1981, when the rate of abortion in the States …

Civil Political Discourse

Following up on my Obama/Ayers, it seems that McCain did realize the impact of his words and has tried to tamp back the hostility. (It wasn’t met with too much success.) But Obama recognized this, as Ken Vogel reportsfrom Philadelphia: “I want to acknowledge that Sen. McCain tried to tone down the rhetoric in his …

Obama and Ayers

The McCain campaign’s recent line of attack has been to try to tar Obama by associating him with Bill Ayers, who they’ve labeled a ‘domestic terrorist’. Let me tell you about the Obama/Ayers connection, from what I’ve been able to find out. First of all, a little on Bill Ayers. In the 1960s, he was …

Barack, redux

[Photo: Pete Souza/White House] Original post: October 9, 2008, updating an earlier blog; repost: March 5, 2010. Still read best in tandem with my friend Liz’s blog on election season 2008. When I arrived in the US in the summer of 2006, I had never even heard the name of Barack Obama, and I had very …