Scott Lemieux

Looks like the idea of stripping Joe Lieberman of his Homeland Security Chairmanship is being floated publicly. Obviously, given his stumping for McCain (including at the GOP convention), the Democratic leadership should show no mercy towards him; the only question is which punishment is most consistent with the party’s interests. I still like the idea […]

Steven Calabresi waxes hysterical and ludicrously implausible: If Mr. Obama wins we could possibly see any or all of the following: a federal constitutional right to welfare; a federal constitutional mandate of affirmative action wherever there are racial disparities, without regard to proof of discriminatory intent; a right for government-financed abortions through the third trimester […]

Mr. Trend doesn’t like the New York City Council’s decision to permit Michael Bloomberg to run for a third term. I’m not really persuaded by the arguments against, however. A couple points: Term limits (especially term limits this short) seem, for the reasons Dana cites, highly unlikely to have progressive implications over the long term. […]

Clarence Thomas makes a typical argument in favor of originalism: Let me put it this way; there are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution — try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it up…To be sure, even the most conscientious effort to adhere to the original intent […]

I think Dana makes two very good points here. Indeed, not only are health exceptions popular, the dismissive tone of McCain‘s scare quotes were instructive in a way that (to put it mildly) isn’t going to help him among moderate women. Obama was also clever to follow-up with the Ledbetter case, which McCain was equally […]

This is exactly right: Not me. Or, rather, I think the evidence suggests that mandate is a meaningless concept. America went to the polls in 2000 and whatever you think of what went down in Florida, clearly more people overall voted for Al Gore than for George W. Bush. What’s more, a substantial minority of […]

Yglesias says most of what needs to be said about the winger hysteria about the fact that large-scale voter vote drives inevitably lead to some errors. The rhetoric notwithstanding, registration “fraud” is very different from vote fraud, and in fact the former is extremely unlikely to lead to non-negligible amounts of the latter. Even if […]

Excellent news. Or, at least, it’s excellent news from my non-contrarian perspective. Maybe this will be a counterproductive decision that will also lead to a Republican landslide. After all, surely Peter Beinart‘s claim that the rejection of same-sex marriage rights by New York state courts would be good for same-sex marriage rights in the state […]

From the standpoint of a supporter of reproductive rights, Ann Bartow brings a pessimistic perspective while Neal Devins is more optimistic. I have agreements and problems with both arguments. I do disagree with Bartow that the five votes to overturn Roe “are already there.” In particular, I don’t agree with her claim that Kennedy “has […]

Adam Liptak has a useful roundup, noting that the Court does not have any “blockbusters” comparable to last year’s Second Amendment, death penalty, and war powers decisions. There are, however, some cases that indicate the likely direction of the Roberts Court and why many of his holdings will matter more than you might think. In […]