The Changing Power Dynamic Between Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan
When the former presidential nominee sits down with the House Budget Committee chair on Thursday, their standings will be reversed. More »
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Erik Tarloff is a novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. More
Erik Tarloff has written extensively for television (including M*A*S*H, All in the Family, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Jeffersons) and the movies. He has published two novels, Face-Time and The Man Who Wrote the Book; written for Slate, Prospect magazine, and other newspapers and magazines; and contributed speeches to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and others.
When the former presidential nominee sits down with the House Budget Committee chair on Thursday, their standings will be reversed. More »
What happens when your novel comes to life -- before you've even finished writing it? More »
Romney's own health-care legislation was nearly identical to Obama's. So why has the president gotten so much more flak? More »
Two unsettling thoughts on U.K. lawmakers' condemnation of the media mogul More »
They may have flirted with other, spicier candidates, but Republican voters will return to the one who is stable, reasonable, and thoroughly unexciting. More »
The former Speaker for the House may enjoy support as an alternative to Mitt Romney, but one way or another, he will be brought down by the party establishment More »
Public protest isn't about anything as mundane as ten-point programs and lists of demands More »
In the 1950s, the author's father was interrogated by the House Un-American Committee and blacklisted by his profession. Years later, too many Americans fail to grasp the moral of his story. More »
If he wants to win reelection in 2012, the president will have to stand for something. He needs to get angry -- eloquently angry. More »
Obama made the better argument Monday night, but that doesn't mean he's going to come out on top once the battle over the deficit winds down More »
Some Republicans are having a hard time distinguishing the serious part of politics from the posturing, just like in 1995 More »
Charlie Kaufman's "Adaptation" and Fowles's "The French Lieutenant's Woman" prove there are creative ways to recreate books on screen More »
Some controversies, like Don't Ask Don't Tell, warrant debate, while others -- like gay marriage and the Cordoba House -- don't More »
A clip from the BBC comedy TV series "Not Only...But Also" ushered in a new type of humor—one that has no purpose or logic More »
Can we judge a book, opera, or symphony by its creator's racist, sexist, or anti-Semitic views? More »
What we shall take as a given is the incredible vacuity of the opposition. By now, everyone is surely familiar with the dishonest, fear-mongering arguments peddled by opponents of health care reform; it shouldn't be necessary to rehearse (or refute) them here. I don't mean to suggest there weren't reasonable arguments to be made, merely that, by and large, and for whatever reason, they weren't. Instead, the other side chose the route of hyperbole and hysterical… More »
The world has changed a lot since the poet wrote his seminal "Annus Mirabilis." Why 22nd-century audiences might be confused when they read it. More »
About a decade ago, when I was a frequent contributor to Slate, two horrifying events occurred in the Middle East that occasioned a great deal of commentary in the magazine's free-form, unrefereed letters-to-the-editor feature, "The Fray." One involved Israeli soldiers repeatedly firing their rifles at a young unarmed Palestinian boy in the West Bank as he desperately scrambled to find cover. The other involved the lethal bombing of a Tel Aviv pizza parlor where a… More »
