Guest-posting at Nate Silver's 538, Mark Smith makes a point that is not made nearly often enough. Pundits talk about the potential costs of Roe v. Wade and the Democratic Party's embrace of womens' reproductive freedom—lost votes among social conservatives who might otherwise be more sympathetic to Democratic economic policies. But as Smith points out, there's another side to it: relatively affluent states such as Washington that have gone from swing states to solid blue states in large measure because of Republican positions on cultural issues.
President Bush, right, stands alongside his nominee for the Supreme Court, John G. Roberts Jr., after having breakfast at the White House Wednesday, July 20, 2005 in Washington.
On New Year's Eve last year, Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012. Among many other provisions, the Act authorized indefinite arbitrary military detention on American soil for people suspected of ties with al-Qaeda or affiliated groups.
In the wake of 9/11, dozens of people were arbitrarily detained and tortured by the American government, sometimes with lethal consequences. These practices were not only grotesquely immoral but illegal. Last week, the Department of Justice announced that nobody would be held legally responsible for these reprehensible crimes. This decision culminates a series of failures that will be a permanent black mark on the Obama administration.
When news broke in November 2011 that former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was about to be indicted for 52 counts of sexually assaulting children, Joe Posnanski—perhaps the most celebrated sportswriter in America—happened to be at State College in Pennsylvania working on a biography of Sandusky's former boss, legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.
