News & Features

The logic of much lobbying is a two-step process.  It begins with the golf aphorism that every act leaves someone happy and someone sad.  Among the sad are potential clients.  Typically, there are two groups of sad people – one poor but sympathetic (perhaps people who’ve been denied a prescription drug they’re comfortable with because it has been found no more effective than cheaper options) and the other rich (perhaps the pharmaceutical firms making the expensive drugs) who are willing to spend to protect profits.

In 1938, shortly after the Nazis marched into Vienna, Sigmund Freud fled to England. He settled in the town of Hampstead, not far from Oxford University. The following year, when Freud was 83 and dying slowly and painfully from cancer of the mouth, he was visited by a young Oxford professor. The identity of the young professor is not known, but on the supposition that it was C.S. Lewis, then on the brink of becoming one of the leading Christian apologists of the 20th century, Mark St. Germain has constructed Freud’s Last Session–a mind-blowing and richly entertaining play currently running at Houston’s Alley Theatre.

Ever since the military coup of 2006 that ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand had been sailing in uncharted waters. Though a divisive figure in Thai politics, Thaksin was democratically elected in 2001. He won re-election by a landslide with the highest voter turnout in Thai history, in 2005. A populist and a multibillionaire, he’d done more for the rural population than all his predecessors combined, introducing effective policies to alleviate rural poverty by half in only four years, and, equally enticing, implementing universal health care. 

Media platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and even Amazon have all released successful series this past season. They have lured big-time writers and directors like Weed's Jenji Kohan and “Fight Club’s” David Fincher. TV is now drawing big-time players like Matthew McCaughey (True Detective), Martin Scorsese (Boardwalk Empire), and John Goodman (Alpha House) to the small screen,  which was unthinkable 10 years ago.Yet this “Golden Age” in TV also means fierce competition. With the rise in popularity of digital platforms like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, the television landscape has been severely altered. 

This country has come too far since the Voting Rights Act's initial passage in 1965 to move backward. House Democrats will continue to fight to ensure that participation in our democracy remains unfettered and that all votes will be properly counted. During President Obama's first term, Republicans made their top priority loud and clear: to make President Obama a one-term president. We’re all glad they failed. But if Republicans maintain or build on their majority after November, President Obama’s legacy—and the nation’s economic recovery—will be in jeopardy.

How, then, did this barely literate country boy become the Lincoln of letters? Some of us know that Lincoln was devoted to the King James Bible and the plays of Shakespeare. But his education as a writer was broader than that. The historian Douglas L. Wilson has traced Lincoln’s progress as a writer in two excellent books, Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words.

One out of every four American families in 2012 dealt with a medical bill debt burden, according to a data report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in January. And while that statistic, compiled by the National Health Interview Survey, is alarming, even more compelling is the fact that one out of every 10 individuals with medical debt is “unable to pay at all.”

On February 4th Silicon Valley popped corks to celebrate Facebook’s 10th birthday. What began as a relatively exclusive event for the East Coast elite, very soon hit a central nerve and changed the way 1.23 billion people worldwide communicate, interact, engage, catch up, and bristle. Let’s think about those two numbers for a moment: A company that didn’t even exist 10 years ago, has as many users as India has denizens.