US politics on Vice

America’s Not-So-Secret Paranoid Underbelly

Chatting with Jesse Walker About His New Book

Free-floating fear and half-baked ideas about what’s REALLY going on have been a more significant part of American history than is generally accepted, according to Jesse Walker’s thorough, meticulously researched book The United States of Paranoia. I recently chatted with Jesse about conspiracies, rumor, and how people come to believe the things they do. Full story

Road-Tripping with Rand Paul

I followed the guy who's probably running for president in 2016 as he gave speeches to evangelical Christians, hobnobbed with rich Silicon Valley techno-libertarians, and continued his effort to form a voting coalition of black conservatives, disenchanted young Obama voters, and Full story

After Michele Bachmann, America Needs Another Outrage Machine

Michele Bachmann made a career out of saying "crazy" and "controversial" things and pissing off Democrats while giving a symbol for Republicans to rally around. She raised money for Republicans and Democrats by energizing both sides. If she didn't exist, the political ecosystem w… Full story

How Are We Supposed to Know What the Government Does?

The most important reason that the media exists is to tell the public what’s happening and what the people in power are doing about it. That’s increasingly difficult when the decisions that matter are shrouded in multiple levels of secrecy. Full story

The Department of Justice Secretly Spied on the Associated Press

In what is being called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into a news organization, the Department of Justice has admitted that it seized two months' worth of phone records from the Associated Press. That's bad. Full story

Big Money's Obama

Once upon a time, Obama was apparently devoted to reining in the influence of money in politics, but after a couple of elections and some time inside the machine, he doesn’t seem to care about it at all. Instead of fighting against casual corruption, he’s been complicit in it… Full story

I Guess We Need to Say It Again: George W. Bush Was the Worst

The important things he did and didn’t do when he was the most powerful elected official in the world were all pretty much uniformly awful. He had a chance to change the world in a real way and he made in demonstrably worse. Fuck him and his library. Full story

Forget Gun Control, Let’s Ban the Senate

The failure of the gun control bill isn’t an example of cowardice on the part of senators who didn’t vote for it, or some fatal flaw on behalf of its sponsors. It’s just another case of the Senate being cripplingly, pathetically gridlocked and unable to do anything for anyone… Full story

The AP Style Guide Finally Deported 'Illegal Immigrant'

Yesterday, the Associated Press declared that the phrase 'illegal immigrant' was no longer kosher, which is a big deal, since when the AP changes its style guide, newspapers around the country go along with it. Naturally, many people (mostly conservatives) responded to the tiny t… Full story

After Gay Marriage, Why Not Polygamy?

The idea that after gay marriage is legalized, polygamy will be next—and then bestiality and legal unions between lawn mowers and volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica and so on—is one of the main arguments that social conservatives trot out to “defend traditional marriage.” But… Full story