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Scott Lemieux

Scott Lemieux is an assistant professor of political science at the College of Saint Rose. He contributes to the blogs Lawyers, Guns, and Money and Vox Pop.

Recent Articles

AGAINST FALSE COMPLACENCY.

Scott LemieuxFeb 27, 2007

AGAINST FALSE COMPLACENCY. Brad Plumer has a good piece about how any Republican President will almost certainly try to replace John Paul Stevens with a doctrinaire reactionary in the mold of Sam Alito. To add to his point, I think it's easy to be lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that most landmark liberal precedents survived a significant number of Republican appointments (even leaving aside the fact that this is, as Brad notes, a misleading metric - -the Rehnquist Court's strategy was to largely drain precedents of substantial content rather than overturn them outright).

POLITICS IS CONFLICT.

Scott LemieuxFeb 26, 2007

POLITICS IS CONFLICT. I see David Broder has penned yet another paean to the "bold" Unity '08 project. (Broder's next column: it would be a really "bold" idea to have a sitcom in which a dumb fat guy is married to a supermodel.) This whole thing is so stupid that it almost lends it too much dignity to even criticize it, but it is instructive of the way in which High Broderism simply can't understand that people strongly disagreeing isn't some sort of social crisis -- it is simply inherent to politics.

THANK GOD FOR THE RAIN TO WASH THE TRASH FROM THE SIDEWALK.

Scott LemieuxFeb 26, 2007

THANK GOD FOR THE RAIN TO WASH THE TRASH FROM THE SIDEWALK. When it came out, I assumed that The Departed was too good and too alive to be competitive for Best Picture; I'm happy to be wrong, and it's good that the greatest living American director got his award. I still can't quite believe that this happened with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but it's gratifying that he won for his best film in nearly two decades rather than for something like The Aviator.

FRED HIATT: NOT THE MEDIAN DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTER.

Scott LemieuxFeb 22, 2007

FRED HIATT: NOT THE MEDIAN DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTER. In addition to being bad on the merits, what puzzles me about Tom Vilsack's decision to end his campaign yesterday by endorsing price indexing for Social Security is what makes him think it would work. I'll admit that I'm no political consultant; I don't have a strong idea of what would appeal to Middle America (TM) except to say that you probably want to analyze how I express ideas and do the precise opposite.

PAGING HARRY FRANKFURT.

Scott LemieuxFeb 21, 2007

PAGING HARRY FRANKFURT. A good post about the Pelosi non-scandal by ex-TAPPER Greg Sargent. GOP Rep Adam Putnam "now acknowledges he had no personal knowledge of any Pelosi request," and remains unapologetic about having spread the false smear. As Greg said, this is even more worse for the media (including various bloggers) promoting the non-scandal, especially after the letter from the Sergeant at Arms was released.

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