John Oliver’s new program Last Week Tonight is the most recent addition to the parody news genre. Like its predecessors, the show frequently mocks American politics; for example, an attention-grabbing…
The US midterm elections will decide who gets control of Congress for Barack Obama’s last two years in office. A hugely decisive moment at first glance – but in reality, the 2014 midterms have devolved…
Voters going to the polls in Illinois’s 12th congressional district in this year’s US midterm elections have a choice to make. Do they want a Congressman who is reserved, calm, the model of a modern politician…
If the polls are correct, the headlines on November 5 following the US midterm elections will proclaim that Democrats have suffered a major defeat. The Democrats will likely lose the Senate. President…
Ben Bradlee, the former editor of the Washington Post, who has died at the age of 93 was a crusading and courageous editor. He played a central role in exposing duplicity and deception at the highest levels…
Foundation essay: This article is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look…
“There is no such thing as too big to jail,” Attorney General Eric Holder announced in a sternly worded video message last May, underscoring that no financial institution “should be considered immune from…
Foundation essay: This article is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look…
A Twitterstorm about Barack Obama’s tan suit can hardly have been what the president was expecting as he spoke at a press conference about foreign policy issues ranging from the IS insurgency in Iraq…
Anyone watching the footage coming out of Ferguson, Missouri in recent days would be forgiven for thinking they had tuned into a scene from a combat zone, rather than suburban America. There has been a…
Few people expected the opening shots of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to be fired across the bow of the Obama administration. Yet in a recent interview, the former secretary of state took aim…
The death of Michael Brown is heartbreaking, and Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family and his community at this very difficult time … I know the events of the past few days have prompted…
On the occasion of US Secretary of State John Kerry trip to Australia for AUSMIN talks, I reflect upon the role of Australia in America’s democracy. Meetings such as AUSMIN focus on military contributions…
Between 2003 and 2011, 8,000 to 40,000 unaccompanied migrant children from Central America were stopped every year on the southern border of the US. When this number boomed to more than 57,000 during the…
The tragic circumstances surrounding the downing of Malaysia Airlines’ flight MH17 remain unclear. The three parties who might be responsible – the Ukrainians, the Russians and the rebels – all blame each…
July 2 2014, halfway through the second term of America’s first African American president, marked the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act being signed into law by US President Lyndon Baines Johnson…
It’s scarcely a surprise that, a decade on, we’re still interested in hearing from a president’s mistress. It’s even less surprising that, a decade on, that mistress still wants to talk. The whys of our…
Every year I ask my class on “Wealth and Poverty” to play a simple game. I have them split up into pairs, and imagine I’m giving one of them $1,000. They can keep some of the money only on condition they…
On March 14, in an address to the Oxford Union supposedly about “innovation”, Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann talked about her 2012 presidential run, and went so far as to hint she might consider…
When US Vice President Joe Biden complained recently that “There isn’t a Republican Party,” nobody thought to reply, “Well, it takes one to know one.” Not so long ago, a Republican might well have said…
Professor of Economics and Finance. Director of the Betting Research Unit and the Political Forecasting Unit at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University