nicole

You probably won’t be surprised that some members of Congress are trying to use the necessity of health reform to not only continue to exclude abortion from the funding given to most ordinary medical procedures, but to prevent individuals from getting insurance that covers abortion on the private market if they’re eligible for subsidies. What […]

It’s bad analogy week among the nation’s pundits! What’s the very worst one? It’s a hard, hard call: According to Michael Gerson, asking a pro-choice politician to help implement pro-choice policies is like…asking a rabbi to serve pork. Apparently, this is because Michael Gerson has a monopoly over determining what the legal implications of certain […]

In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled in Apprendi v. New Jersey that under the 6th Amendment’s right to a jury trial, any factor that increased a defendant’s sentence had to either 1)be admitted in a plea agreement or 2)proven in front of a jury. (The case was later held to make federal sentencing guidelines advisory […]

Michael Stokes Paulsen, in the fine tradition of Bush v. Gore itself, attempts to argue that the recount that gave the Minnesota Senate election to Al Franken “is an obvious, embarrassing violation of the Constitution.” This argument, as you would expect, consists almost entirely of blatant mischaracterization of the facts: Despite Paulsen’s repeated assertions, Bush […]

I don’t know if any fellow TAPPERS want to play along, but since I always feel the urge to make unreliable predictions I thought I’d throw my calls out there: President: Obama 326, McCain 212 (Obama gets all Kerry states + NM, CO, NV, OH, VA, IA, NC) Senate: Dems +7 House Dems +31 Regardless […]

I think the McCain campaign’s sudden discovery of the importance of funding for special-needs children (but not other children in need) demands a revisiting of Bossman Schmitt‘s classic analysis of “Miss America Conservatives”: Second, I’m tired of giving quasi-conservatives credit for what I call Miss America compassion (I’ll explain in a minute). Smith’s son’s suicide […]

Like Andrew Golis and Glenn Greenwald, I’m puzzled by this argument by Sacha Zimmerman. It’s not as if Fox News is suddenly going to become ideologically heterogeneous, so essentially the argument amounts to saying that conservatives should have a network that reliably represents their views and liberals should not. What possible defense could be mounted […]

This is indeed amazing: McCain‘s decision to leave the platform untouched follows a warning from a prominent social conservative. “If he were to change the party platform,” to account for exceptions such as rape, incest or risk to the mother’s life, “I think that would be political suicide,” Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative […]

I generally agree with Mark Tushnet about Robert Jackson‘s much-cited and lauded concurrence in Youngstown being overrated. Jackson’s opinion in the landmark case in which the Supreme Court ruled Truman’s seizure of steel factories during the Korean War unconstitutional — which has been much more influential than the majority opinion — effectively describes the puzzles […]

Shorter Verbatim Maureen Dowd: “Fictionalizing historical figures is fine. Fantasies about public figures are inevitable.” Unlike (it seems) Somerby, I don’t see the slightest problem with Curtis Sittenfeld using Laura Bush to write a roman a clef. I can’t say it sounds especially promising, but the idea will rise and fall with the quality of […]