christopher_hallam

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has signed a law mandating DNA collection for people who are merely arrested for a crime. Now while the retention of DNA information of people convicted of crimes is, for obvious reasons, less controversial, it’s not clear whether or not doing so in the case of arrestees is constitutional. A […]

I suppose it’s counterintuitive to argue that we’re less militaristic than we used to be, but I think this piece from William Deresiewicz gets at the strange dynamic at play with regard to Americans’ recent deference to the military: As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dragged on, other purposes have come into play. […]

Reihan Salam, writing about the conservative quest to unravel the Great Society, makes this observation: As Steven Teles has argued, in Conservatism and American Political Development and elsewhere, opponents of the expansion of the welfare state have had an impact on the shape and structure that the welfare state happens to have taken. The peculiar […]

I know, I know. But populism isn’t a cure-all, and it’s worth pointing out that with all the Harry Truman comparisons that the economy helped rescue Truman, and his reelection isn’t proof of the power of forceful rhetoric: Harry Truman, who ran against an unpopular “do-nothing Congress” like the one we have today, is kind […]

With all the talk about federalism these days, the conflict between the states and Obama administration’s secure communities program has gone largely unnoticed. Jurisdictions covered by Secure Communities forward the biometric information of anyone arrested by local law enforcement to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in order to determine whether they’re in the country legally. What […]

Agree with what Jon Chait says here–if a Republican wins in 2012, we’re getting stimulus. The GOP will want the guy to get reelected after all. Here are my premises. Most Republican embrace of contractionary fiscal policy reflects conscious or unconscious partisanship rather than a sudden conversion to Austrian economics. You do have some genuine […]

So I initially bought the excuse given by Ombudsman Patrick Pexton for why Jennifer Rubin didn’t update her post assuming that the Oslo attacks had been committed by Muslim extremists–that she was observing the Sabbath. Eric Alterman and Ron Kampeas did a little digging and found not only does the timing not add up, but […]

The immigration policy debate in this country is taking place in two distinct universes: A bizarro world where Obama is president amnesty, granting citizenship to undocumented immigrants by fiat, and planet Earth, where Obama is deporting more undocumented immigrants than ever and being stingier about deferring deportations than his predecessor. Rep. Lamar Smith’s HALT Act […]

I think Christine Fair’s criticism of Nicholas Schmidle’s tick-tock on the Osama bin Laden raid makes some fair points about sourcing, but her objection to Schmidle reporting that the Navy SEAL who took down bin Laden whispered “for G-d and country” to himself before pulling the trigger isn’t really relevant: Finally, whether or not the […]

In his own mind.