By Kat Stoeffel 3/06/12 10:54am

Morningside Fights

(image via Flickr user sodapop81)

Barnard Gives Jill the Bump for Incumbent Stump, Ob-alma Mater Says ‘Get Off My Campus’

Over the weekend Barnard College bumped New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson from her spot as 2012 commencement speaker for a better offer—the trump card in the commencement bookings game, some might say: President Barack Obama.

It’s surprised no one that President Obama had zeroed in on the Manhattan women’s college for a spring speech. Facing a slate of pro-life GOP rivals and a Congress thrown into old school culture wars over his contraception-mandating health care bill, the President has publicly allied himself with women’s interests groups. Read More

By Steve Huff 1/28/12 11:55am

Political Theater

President Obama.

Take a Presidential Cruise in Obama’s Million-Dollar Car

Before he was leader of the free world cruising around in armor-plated vehicles with a Secret Service retinue, then-legislator Barack Obama allegedly tooled around in this tasteful gray Chrysler sedan. This is apparently a legitimate auction for the 2005 Chrysler 300C the President used while he was an Illinois State senator. Lisa Czibor, who has told reporters that she is holding the auction for someone else, says the  first 19,000 miles were all [future] presidential powered.

The auction holders are also a little defensive about the $1,000,000 asking price: Read More

By Lee Siegel 9/22/10 3:06am

The Last Critic

Dinesh Does Dallas

No one cares to make the connection, but it’s a glaring fact: Our most recent two presidents have whopping daddy problems. All men have some kind of daddy problem, but not all men have a whopping daddy problem. The Oedipal difference between George Bush Jr. and Barack Obama Jr. is that the former’s father was Read More

By Joe Conason 6/16/10 1:36am

Op-Ed

A Green New Deal

If the right-wing chorus insists that the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico is “Obama’s Katrina,” then let us hope the president will make the most of that slogan. The comparison between the utter failure of the Bush administration and the missteps and errors of the Obama White House is fundamentally Read More

By Reid Pillifant 9/25/09 4:21pm

White House Left Sonia Waiting

The first interview with Sonia Sotomayor since her confirmation is up on CSPAN, and–with the interviewer prodding her to describe how she received news of her nomination, “for history”–Sotomayor says, basically, that she sat around her office in New York all day, waiting for the White House to call and then they never did. Read More