Ben Adler

SELF-HATING LIBERTARIAN. Julian Sanchez poses an interesting question, in response to my earlier post on the nasty comments of Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-WY) to her wheelchair-bound Libertarian opponent Thomas Rankin (“If you weren’t sitting in that chair, I’d slap you across the face.”) I asserted that Cubin’s obnoxious remark was evidence that Republicans have it […]

GEORGE WILL, MAKING SENSE. Say what you want about George Will, he’s always taken a rational approach to analyzing the business side of sports, and his column today on college football is no exception. Will beats the usual dead horses about what’s wrong with Division I-A men’s college football and basketball: they’re run for business […]

FALLING OUT OF LOVE. Back when The New York Times endorsed Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary, I wondered whether the Times would break from their tradition of high-minded endorsements for moderate Republicans this fall. It would seem strange, after all, if the same page that opposed Joe Lieberman on the grounds that […]

MORE ON THE COLLEGE BOARD REPORT. Just to add a bit to Ezra‘s post: As James Surowiecki recently explained in The New Yorker, the cost of college rises faster than inflation because it is so labor intensive that the technological advances that reduce the costs of production in other industries do not have nearly the […]

BUT HE STARTED IT. I’ve long been of the opinion, in all seriousness, that Republicans have it in for the disabled. First there is their positioning regarding discrimination against people with disabiilties in the workplace (President Bush, for instance, has repeatedly appointed judges who are extraordinarily hostile to discrimination claims). Then there is their desire […]

WAPO CONTINUES CAMPAIGN FOR GALLAUDET ADMINISTRATION. I have previously criticized the Washington Post‘s coverage of the Gallaudet protest movement against the university’s new president as being slanted towards the administration and against the protestors. Well, case in point: today at 2pm they are doing a live chat with the new president, Jane K. Fernandes, on […]

BROOKS’S BOBOS ABANDON GOP. Elsewhere in TimesSelectland, it must be said that David Brooks makes an insightful and valuable argument in his column on Sunday. Brooks, who has earned much-deserved mockery for his red and blue America shtick, in which he typically lambasts the coastal intelligentsia that he writes for and belongs to (“they can’t […]

THEN AGAIN… Contra my assertion that Barack Obama hasn’t been a leader on any contentious issue and Tom‘s lament this morning, Frank Rich made a solid point in his column yesterday. Says Rich, [I]t’s important to remember that on one true test for his party, Iraq, he was consistent from the start. On the long […]

A BITE SIZED SOLUTION. I’m not sure how to feel about economist Martin B. Schmidt‘s New York Times op-ed from yesterday. In it he argues for a 10% tax on food ordered from drive-throughs on the grounds that it will encourage people to get out of their cars, and raise money to off-set the social […]

OUTREACH. Rep J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) thought he might feel just a tad unwelcome at Shul recently after he expressed support for notorious anti-Semite Henry Ford‘s “americanization” program, and refused to apologize after protests from the Jewish community in his district. So on Tuesday he backed out of a scheduled campaign appearance at a local synagogue […]