Ben Adler

KENNEDY ON COLLEGE LOANS: Yesterday afternoon I participated in a blogger conference call with Senator Ted Kennedy about the soon to be passed Higher Education Access Act (HEAA). The bill will give an additional $20 billion in financial aid to students without costing taxpayers a penny by cutting excessive lender subsidies. That’s the good news. […]

THE RELEVANCE OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW: Over at The Plank Jason Zengerle acknowledges that the question of Barack Obama‘s experience is a canard but goes on to criticize Obama’s mention of his experience teaching constitutional law in describing his career in public service. Zengerle says, I don’t think it quite qualifies as public service … It […]

LIBERTARIANS AND FALSE EQUIVALENCE. In my review of The Simpsons Movie for The Guardian, I mentioned the libertarian impulse to falsely equate the harmless foibles of liberals with the nefarious proclivities of conservatives. As if to prove that point Michael C. Moynihan, a blogger for Reason, opines in response that the main argument of my […]

WAR ON TERRORISTS. I’m probably going to take some serious flack from TAPPEDers for saying this, but I think the most important idea to come out of Saturday’s candidate forum at Kos was Hillary Clinton‘s suggestion that the War on Terrorism be re-labeled the War on Terrorists. Like so many liberals I’ve been frustrated by […]

BUSH TO VICTIMS OF PAY DISCRIMINATION: DROP DEAD. Many progressives were shocked by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co to interpret workplace discrimination laws so narrowly as to throw out all cases that aren’t brought within 180 days of a discriminatory pay decision. This is obviously unfair because […]

PRIUS PUNDITRY: Robert Samuelson has achieved the impossible. As an anti-sprawl crusader who staunchly advocates higher gasoline taxes, I never thought I’d read a column arguing for a $1-2 per gallon increase in the gas tax that is totally obnoxious and illogical. And yet, the Washington Post‘s Samuelson did just that in his most recent […]

UNIONS OUTSOURCING: The Washington Post had an interesting front page story yesterday on the carpenters union’s habit of using unemployed people, typically pulled from homeless shelters or SROs and paid around $8 per hour, to picket outside buildings that use non-union construction labor. I tend to side with critics of this practice. I think that […]

GIULIANI THE PANDERER UPDATE. The New York Times ran a very long piece Sunday on Rudy Giuliani‘s complicated history with racial politics. Most of the information was not new to people familiar with recent New York history. One tidbit I hadn’t known, though, and found quite striking was that Giuliani initially attempted in his 1989 […]