Scott Lemieux

Jon Chait says most of what needs to be said with respect to billionaire Clinton fundraiser and esteemed upper-class party-giver Lynn Forrester de Rothschild‘s latest assertions in the highly populist Wall Street Journal op-ed pages that Obama lacks the populist touch of her fellow plutocrat John McCain. And since it’s a common argument, it’s also […]

It’s not surprising to see Rachael Larimore make excuses for Palin‘s baldfaced lies about the Bridge to Nowhere by 1) carefully omitting her actual statements (she didn’t merely claim to have “nixed” the project) and then 2) claiming that all politicians “exaggerate” anyway. Distorting and then making up reasons to ignore Palin’s egregious howlers is […]

To amplify what A. Serwer says below, I think this is the key part of Greenwald‘s post about Gregory replacing OberMatthews: Finally, and perhaps most notably of all, Olbermann’s role as anchor somehow destroys the journalistic brand of both MSNBC and NBC, while Fox News continues to be deemed a legitimate news outlet by our […]

Family visitation and work commitments meant that I didn’t see any speeches at the GOP convention last night; I can’t say I was terribly disappointed. Nonetheless, I did look at some transcripts and clips. We could do this all day, but consider the density of lies and nonsense packed into this sentence from McCain: [Obama’s] […]

This ad seems like a good start, although it says something about the way pundits see abortion that cutting an ad supporting a Supreme Court decision supported by 2-to-1 majorities can be described as a “counterintuitive” move. The next step: include in an ad the fact that both John McCain and the Republican platform support […]

Bob Somerby correctly notes that Palin‘s extravagant claim that she “told Congress thanks but no thanks on that Bridge to Nowhere” is simply an “outright lie.” And this is true not only in the sense that she was for it before she was against it, but also because by the time she become governor Congress […]

Monika Bauerlein is, of course, correct that it would be grossly sexist to bring up Sarah Palin‘s youngest child or his disability with any implication that this makes her running for vice president inappropriate. To state the obvious, nobody would bring such things up about a male vice presidential candidate, just as when people bring […]

Ann Althouse watched Lily Ledbetter last night at the DNC and claims “what she should say, to be honest, is: ‘Our Court declined to rewrite the statute to be fair to me.’” To be honest, this is utter nonsense. It might be fair to say that Ledbetter wanted to “re-write” the statute if she simply […]

Richard Posner has an interesting article — essentially an application of his recent Harvard Law Review Foreword — critiquing the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller, the D.C. gun control case. It’s a useful corrective to the glib certainty of the majority opinion and its strongest supporters. And yet, it’s frustrating in its own right. One […]

Since the debate schedule was released yesterday, it’s worth revisiting how persistent the idea that Al Gore was an awful candidate is — with special focus on his allegedly bad debate performance. Let’s remember this simple fact: But without question, “Al Gore’s [alleged] operatic sighs” played a key role in Campaign 2000. In the wake […]