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Inside Politics Daily
George Gallup, Health Care and the Peril of Legislating by Polls
Health Stakes: Pressure Builds on Democrats to Reverse Decades of Failure
Chaos Theory - The Heartbreak of Elephant Amnesia
Out of the Shadows: A Rally for Immigration Reform
Pence, Petraeus in N.H.: Can a Congressman or General Become President?
And the Envelope, Please: Surviving the College Application Process
God as Tea Partier: Judges Defend the Pledge of Allegiance
Glenn Beck, Jim Wallis, and Falwell-esque Dangers of Mixing Politics and Faith
Lady Gaga, Rep. Jared Polis, and 5 Tips for Pols Who Twitter
The Census and Me -- Life in 10-Year Chunks
Michelle Obama Rejects Demonizing Twinkies In Her Anti-Obesity Crusade
Massachusetts Study: Health Care Reform Reduced Abortions
Alex Wagner
Alex Wagner is the executive director of Not on Our Watch, a global advocacy and aid organization... moreSocial Networking: Obama's New Weapon Against Iran, Cuba, Sudan
By Alex Wagner
Facebook is mightier than the sword, or so it would appear with a new policy announced this week in Washington. On Monday, the White House said it would allow companies, including Microsoft and Yahoo, to export such technology as instant messaging, chatting and photo sharing to some of the world's most censorial countries, including Sudan, Iran and Cuba, in the hope that increased access to information and greater communication among citizens will establish more tolerant societies and progressive governments. Specifically, The New York Times reports that the Office of Foreign Asset Control ...
From Burma to Zimbabwe, It Was One Rotten Week
By Alex Wagner
It was a week that made 50-inch snowdrifts in Washington look like a cakewalk. While parts of the U.S. grappled with Mother Nature's unforgiving hand, citizens elsewhere in the world dealt with far crueler forces. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad triumphantly proclaimed that his country had produced its first batch of highly enriched uranium, and that Iran was now "a nuclear state." He added: "The Iranian nation is brave enough that if one day we wanted to build nuclear bombs, we would announce it publicly without being afraid of you." ...
Hillary vs. Hu: U.S. Climbs in the Ring With China
By Alex Wagner
The uncomfortable reality that the Chinese are sitting on nearly $1.6 trillion in U.S. securities has -- up until very recently -- made the Obama Administration somewhat lily-livered about going head to head with our biggest financier on anything too touchy, such as nuclear-weapons proliferation, human rights and freedom of speech. Until now. ...
A Burqa Ban? Keep the State Out of America's Closets
By Alex Wagner
Delia -- thanks for a thoughtful response to Bonnie Erbe's great conversation starter on banning the burqa, especially the argument that the melting pot (or salad bowl, or whatever metaphor you prefer) is one of the things that makes America great. And as someone who has covered the (disconcerting) wave of Muslim countries cracking down on women in Western dress, I'll throw in an additional reason for letting women wear what they want: getting the state involved in fashion is a slippery slope. ...
Google in China: Baby, Please Don't Go!
By Alex Wagner
If you didn't know, Google's motto is "Do No Evil." China doesn't have anything in the way of a semi-biblical-post-modern credo, as far as I know, but if it did it would probably go something like: "Do No Evil . . . Unless It Will Protect the State." Given these not-necessarily compatible codes of ethics, it's not surprising that Google, behemoth of the West, and China, behemoth of the East, have locked horns in spectacular fashion this week. Google has a history of battling with the Chinese government on censorship issues, and this week news broke that (presumably state-sanctioned) hackers ...
Airport Security: Joke's on Us!
By Alex Wagner
Our PD colleague Ria Misra has pointed out the sketchiness of the recently announced airport-screening policy for would-be terrorists, and I can dig the ickiness of what effectively amounts to racial profiling. Still, I'm saving my rants for the ineptitude of the Transportation Security Administration. ...
The Top 10 Unsung Global Thinkers
By Alex Wagner
Joann passed along Foreign Policy's first annual "Top 100 Global Thinkers" list yesterday morning -- an ambitious (if impossible) list, which is probably (definitely) an answer to Time's 100 Most Totally Relevant Pooh-bahs or whatever they call it. I'm all for FP's inclusion of folks like Paul Farmer, Aung San Suu Kyi, Anwar Ibrahim and Vaclav Havel, but I do think the good dudes over there might've dug a little deeper, especially as far as humanitarians, writers and thinkers are concerned. (And, um, women -- come on guys, only 20 ladies of note outta 100?) With that in mind, here's my ...
Burma Journal: Curiosity and Hope in the Land of the Lost
By Alex Wagner
They say that Venice is sinking, but really, when you arrive in Rangoon, it becomes clear that if any place is slowly edging deeper into the earth, it's this one. There's a certain romance in the crumbling colonial buildings, covered in black mold like shrouds of mourning, or the public buses from the late-'60s, crammed with Burmese of every stripe, some hanging off the back with only one foot onboard. This is what the tourists come for -- a passing glimpse of especially acute third-world poverty that gives way to a countryside that has been (thus far) exempt from development, no Starbucks or ...
Burma Journal: The Hard Work of Healing Is a Bitter Pill for Doctors
By Alex Wagner
Burma is not a good place to get sick. It's a bad place for a lot of things -- basic freedoms, rule of law, taxis (the fleet in Rangoon is about 30 years old and suffering from some seriously gnarly transmission ailments). Still, the government has an abysmal record when it comes to helping the sick: In 2005, UNICEF reported that the government spent a paltry 40 cents a year on health care per citizen (in comparison, the Thai government spent nearly $61 per person). In 2000, Burma's health care system was ranked 190th out of 191 countries by the World Health Organization. It's one thing for ...
Burma Journal: The Kids Are Alright -- a Democratic Youth Movement
By Alex Wagner
There's graffiti covering the walls surrounding the Generation Wave hideout here in the dusty town of Mae Sot on the Thai-Burma border: giant bubble letters spelling out FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY in a shade of purple too optimistically bright to be the handiwork of disgruntled youth. This despite the fact that Generation Wave is one of the largest underground youth movements inside Burma, a network of young people brought together by a desire to challenge the repression, brutality and subjugation of the ruling military junta. In other words, they have a lot to be disgruntled about. ...
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