American Politics

Louisiana state Rep. Noble Ellington is the national chairman of ALEC, a membership-only group that brings together state legislators, interest groups and corporate representatives to draft model bills. He responds to a series of pieces about the organization recently published in The Nation.

A group called ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — "is at the forefront of an effort to push business-friendly, conservative legislation at the state level," says reporter John Nichols. He discusses what recently leaked documents reveal about the organization.

In December 2009, an al-Qaida mole believed to be a CIA informant detonated a suicide bomb inside a fortified military base in Pakistan, killing seven CIA employees. Reporter Joby Warrick writes about the man who pulled off the attack — and explains how he did it — in The Triple Agent.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg says the compromises we refuse to make say the most about our character. "Sometimes we stand on principle for the heady satisfaction of showing that we can't be pushed around," he says.

New York Times financial reporter Louise Story explains how guidelines issued by the Justice Department in 2008 have allowed prosecutors to take a softer approach to corporate crimes. To this day, no high-level executive has been charged in a case related to the 2008 financial crisis.

Sally H. Jacobs' new biography, The Other Barack, follows the troubled life of Barack Obama Sr. — from Kenya to Hawaii and back. Jacobs believes that if Obama Sr. had played a larger role in his son's life, Obama probably wouldn't have become president.

Mark Krikorian runs the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for "low immigration" and "high enforcement" of current laws. He explains why the journalist who recently came out as an undocumented immigrant in the New York Times Magazine should return to the Philippines.

Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, recently revealed he has been living in the U.S. illegally since he was 12. "This country is not going to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants," he says. "What are we supposed to do with them?"

In the media, Stanley Ann Dunham is often identified simply as "a white anthropologist from Kansas," or "a single mother on food stamps." But biogrpaher Janny Scott argues that those descriptions don't do justice to the president's mother -- a complex, intellectual woman who led an "unconventional" life.

Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch explains why she was once an early advocate of No Child Left Behind, school vouchers and charter schools — and what changed her mind.