Matthew Yglesias

THE CONSERVATIVE NANNY STATE. There�s a new book from Dean Baker available as a free PDF download or in paperback if you’re so inclined. It’s fantastic: “In his new book, economist Dean Baker debunks the myth that conservatives favor the market over government intervention. In fact, conservatives rely on a range of �nanny state� policies […]

FUN WITH SURVEILLANCE. Turns out the NSA, with the collaboration of every phone company except Qwest, is monitoring all of our calls — not to listen in to what’s being said, but simply to gather data about the calls and draw inferences from that. It’s important to link this up to the broader chain. One […]

TRUTHINESS IN THE STYLE SECTION. Inspired by Friends With Money, The New York Times decided to inflict a little ignorance on the American people, informing their readers that economic barriers to friendship are growing in salience because “other barriers have been broken down.” After all, people make friends in college where “Students from country-club families […]

A SIMPLE PLAN. Pondering the common good versus individual rights while in line for a burrito just now, a thought occurred to me: Why do you need to opt-in to be an organ donor? I’m not going to take such a stridently collectivist line as to suggest that we harvest organs against people’s wills, but […]

A COUNTERINSURGENCY TACTIC BY ANY ANOTHER NAME. I think there’s more heat than light to my disagreement with Fast Leon, since we’re in pretty close agreement about reasonable policy responses to the situation in Sudan. On the semantic issue, I — and the U.N. — want to say that a given mass killing is either […]

WHERE MY HO’S AT? While we’ve been busy with blogosphere inside baseball, Laura Rozen points out that the MSM has been mighty quick to swallow the White House line that Porter Goss‘s rapid and unexpected departure has absolutely nothing to do with the burgeoning investigation into Hookergate. To review the contrary case quickly, we’re talking […]

MORE CIVILITY. Ramsey Clark‘s obviously a bit ’round the bend, and I have a personal grudge against Howard Zinn, but at least here on the left we don’t toss around unsubstantiated allegations of treason as a once-a-week rhetorical gambit against folks we don’t like. –Matthew Yglesias

THE NEW COPYRIGHT. Warner Brothers is going to sell movies over the Internet, which seems sensible. Sadly, once you download one of their movies, you won’t be able to burn it to DVD. Of course, it’s the studio’s right to sell a product that works that way if they’re so inclined. But here’s the rub. […]

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD IS MAKING SENSE. It’s probably contrary to interest to point this out, but I think Iran’s president is making a lot of sense in at least this portion of his letter: If billions of dollars spent on security, military campaigns and troop movement were instead spent on issues including health and aid to […]

THE NEW NEW LEFT? After reading two rather similar complaints from Richard Cohen and Jon Chait about, in essence, people on the internet being mean to them, it occurs to me that it might be worth pointing out that blogosphere luminaries like Duncan Black and Markos Moulitsas don’t actually resemble their online personae Atrios and […]