Mori Dinauer

When Matt Yglesias describes the fact that Republicans are rewarded for obstructing good economic policy as “a major breakdown of the logic of the American political system,” he’s technically right. But to appreciate why it’s illogical, one must appreciate the fact that Senate Republicans are using any procedural rule they can to obstruct business. I […]

Last year, Ross Douthat was quoted as saying that while he opposed gay marriage, he couldn’t come up with an intellectually honest argument why. It was a telling admission that prejudice motivates opposition to gay marriage, one which the judge’s decision in the Prop. 8 case yesterday acknowledged. The reaction from the right wing has […]

It’s a bit sad that conservatives desperately want to believe that the public is motivated by ideological conservatism and votes accordingly. This is how the election of Barack Obama can be explained as a rejection of “big-government ‘do something’ conservatism of the Bush years,” and the enduring unpopularity of Republicans is explained by saying “it […]

It was only a matter of time before the Republican leadership in Congress — Mitch McConnell specifically — voiced support for hearings on birthright citizenship, established by the 14th Amendment. John McCain, forever loyal to the party line, commented, “I support the concept of holding hearings.” Funny a party so committed to an “originalist” Constitution […]

David Frum takes it upon himself to address the charge that Barack Obama is a “socialist,” the conclusion of Stanley Kurtz‘s upcoming book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism (discussed earlier here and here). Frum’s objection, in a nutshell, is that conservatives are wasting their energy hurling epithets at Obama and […]

The point has been made a bazillion times before, so George Packer‘s lengthy look at how broken the U.S. Senate is doesn’t break much new ground. One thing it does highlight is that the Senate lacks a clear identity. An attempt at achieving an aristocracy in America? A bad imitation of the House of Lords? […]

I wouldn’t read too much into Gallup’s weekly average of the generic congressional ballot, which has Democrats surpassing Republicans for a second consecutive week. But it does raise the question of what the ceiling of support is for Republicans, and whether that ceiling has already been reached. It’s not as if Republicans face the same […]

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) is mighty confused about deficit reduction, suggesting that we should reduce the deficit by 10 percent every year. Perhaps if Thune had majored in philosophy instead of earning an MBA, he would be aware of Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox, whereby reducing the distance between yourself and a goal by a fixed percent […]

The cover of the latest issue of Time features Aisha, an 18 year-old Afghan girl whose face was mutilated by the Taliban because she fled her abusive in-laws. But this story isn’t about Aisha or the monsters who wish to take Afghanistan back to the Dark Ages — it’s about the moral responsibility of the […]

The takeaway point from a new analysis of the government’s response to the economic collapse in 2008 isn’t that any of the individual programs were instrumental in preventing an economic depression but that taken together they were. I don’t expect this to change anyone’s opinion about government intervention, but it’s worth considering what the alternatives […]