House Democrats are worried the Senate won't survive "vote-a-rama."

Slate - 0 sec ago

The process for passing health care reform can at times sound like one of those e-mails from a generous foreign banker. I am pleased to be consulting you on behalf of the Nigerian Trust and Mercantile Exchange to request your assistance deeming the Senate health care bill as passed.

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Health care - Democratic - United States Senate - Politics - United States

What's wrong with the Washington Post op-ed page?

Slate - 0 sec ago

Washington Post domestic-policy blogger Ezra Klein encroached on my beat yesterday with an item griping about the surplus of op-eds by politicians on the Post's op-ed page. Such pieces "waste so much real estate publishing talking points," he declares as he pins his prey to the ground and bloodies his teeth shredding it. He writes:

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Washington Post - Ezra Klein - Editorial - United States - Government

The unfathomable Supreme Court penchant for talking politics.

Slate - 0 sec ago

You know things have gone ugly between the president and the Supreme Court when we're all talking about 1937 again. That was when tensions between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes led FDR to call out the court in his State of the Union speech and then, a month later, threaten to pack the court with liberal justices. Nobody really thinks President Obama wants to pack the Roberts court. Maybe just punch it in the nose. And the Roberts court hasn't struck down Obama's progressive legislation. Yet. The real reason everyone is talking about 1937 is that, when the executive and judicial branches clash openly like this, the court stops looking all lofty and deliberative and begins to look political and vulnerable. Fair or not, it's usually the court that is hurt by these skirmishes, not the president.

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Supreme Court - Supreme Court of the United States - Barack Obama - Politics - United States

Ginni Thomas brings the Tea Party to the Supreme Court.

Slate - 0 sec ago

Virginia Thomas has many ardent defenders. In fact, it's hard to find anyone who doesn't think that Ginni, as everyone calls the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, has a perfect right to launch herself headlong into the Tea Party movement with the founding of her own group, Liberty Central Inc. As Thomas herself said, pointing out that the Supreme Court's ethics office had approved her new endeavor, "I did not give up my First Amendment rights when my husband became a justice of the Supreme Court."

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Clarence Thomas - United States Supreme Court - Supreme Court - United States - Virginia Thomas

How do you get an apartment in East Jerusalem?

Slate - 0 sec ago

Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli forces on Tuesday—part of a continuing row over the Israeli Interior Ministry's plans to build new housing units in East Jerusalem. Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser defended the move against criticism from the United States and others, explaining that "Jerusalem is a big city. It is a city that has to grow." How do settlements actually get built, and who moves into them?

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East Jerusalem - United States - Middle East - Israel - Israel Defense Forces

Why it's not idiotic to buy an iPad when it goes on sale April 3.

Slate - 32 min 2 sec ago

One summer day nearly three years ago, I waited in line for 12 hours outside a San Francisco shopping mall so I could get my hands on the first iPhone. Some people romanticize waiting in line for gadgets, concert tickets, and other scarce goods—they see lines as an egalitarian way to separate poseurs from true fans, and they revel in the camaraderie built among their fellow line-waiters. Not me. I hated everything about it—the deprivation, the extended exposure to overly friendly strangers, and the soul-crushing boredom (I didn't have an iPhone to bide my time). Mostly, though, I hated the obvious idiocy of waiting for an expensive, potentially buggy first-generation device that none of us had even had a chance to touch. And we were doing it willingly!

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IPhone - IPad - San Francisco - Apple - Smartphones

Slate's Whipometer: How many vote-switchers does the pope have?

Slate - 39 min 38 sec ago

Check here regularly for the latest on what the House, Senate, White House, and various other players are doing to shorten or lengthen the odds.

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Slate - White House - Health care - United States - Politics

The Slatest: Evening Edition

Slate - 47 min 29 sec ago

As Palestinians and Israelis clash in the streets, American commentators argue over Israeli policy; the Army revamps basic training for recruits who've never been in fistfights; Stars and Stripes examines the crazy suggestions in the Defense Department's inbox.

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Kentucky's John Calipari is the sleaziest coach in a sleazy game.

Slate - 1 hour 19 min ago

I do not believe that Kentucky is going to win this year's NCAA men's basketball tournament. This is one reason why: I watched them beat the tar out of Tennessee in the SEC tournament, a ridiculous 74-45 blowout during which freshman center DeMarcus Cousins took the opportunity to give head coach John Calipari one of the greatest "Honky, please" looks since the demise of Richard Pryor, and a backup named Daniel Orton was told to absent himself briefly from the proceedings and walked up the tunnel, leaving Kentucky undermanned and the broadcast crew completely baffled. Meanwhile, Calipari was all over starry freshman guard John Wall, who was visibly counting down the seconds until the end of the season, whenever it is. And all this in a game that Kentucky won by 29.

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John Calipari - Basketball - Kentucky - John Wall - DeMarcus Cousins