Matthew Yglesias

TRIUMPH OF HOPE OVER EXPERIENCE. I’m really eager to be convinced that Jacob Weisberg is right and that the gay marriage issue won’t work for the GOP this time around. But man oh man am I not convinced by his reasoning: A second reason the issue won’t work again is that Democrats have by now […]

WHO COULD HAVE GUESSED? What’s that you say? A covert CIA operation backfired and accomplished roughly the reverse of what was hoped for? Stuff like that never happens. Except, you know, it happens all the time. For some reason, though, nobody ever seems to catch on to the idea that the odds of success in […]

THE HARD TO SPLIT DIFFERENCE. Jacob Sullum notes an abortion prohibitionist going off-message in Louisiana. “I had a strong belief that we could finally protect the innocent life of an unborn child,” said state Senator Ben Nevers. “This is about the U.S. Constitution granting every person the right to life.” It’s politically inconvenient for all […]

CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG? For a dreamy-eyed globalist, Tom Friedman often seems seduced by a weirdly dark and apocalyptic view of the international scene. After witnessing the great diversity on display at his daughter’s high school graduation, he chooses to celebrate this bit of cosmopolitanism with the observation that “Our greatest asset is […]

JIM LEACH IS MAKING SENSE. Turns out the moderate Iowa Republican has a bunch of stuff to say that, as Heather Hurlburt observes, “many Democrats, and nearly all Republicans, are either afraid to say or not thinking hard enough about.” The thing about Leach, though, is that I’ve heard him say a number of smart […]

MORE PARTY OF DEATH. The liberal media’s sinister conspiracy of silence regarding Ramesh Ponnuru‘s Party of Death continues apace, but diehard rightwinger John Derbyshire got a review copy and is even less impressed than Peter Berkowitz was. –Matthew Yglesias

ANOTHER BORING POST ABOUT IRAQ. After reading it, Al Gore‘s actual statement on Iraq strikes me as significantly more open-minded and conciliatory than Garance‘s gloss below or the one ABC News gave to it made it sound. By which I mean that, as a member of the anti-war base, I find Gore’s take on this […]

KRISTOL ON HADITHA. This article is rather repugnant, but I think it contains a pearl of accidental wisdom: “Liberals may want to win a war on terror without fighting, and are shocked that in a war, crimes and abuses occur. But here’s the hard, Trumanesque truth: In war, terrible things happen, including crimes and abuses […]

ENFORCEMENT FIRST. Tyler Cowen makes a valuable point in the immigration debate, noting that the seemingly commonsense principle that “at least we should enforce the law” is actually a bit odd. Lots of laws are very imperfectly enforced and this isn’t necessarily a problem. The police deliberately downplay the level of resources they dedicate to […]