Scott Lemieux

It’s been a bad week for airline/gym reading. First, the New York that seemed (foolishly in retrospect) like the best option in the gym’s magazine rack when I forgot to put reading material in my bag featured the lengthy Phillip Weiss article sharing with us the news that middle-aged men sometimes feel sexual desire for […]

I swear that Richard Cohen starts his latest serving of pox-on-all-their-houses pablum this way: Wherever I go — from glittering dinner party to glittering dinner party — the famous and powerful people I meet (for such is my life) tell me how lucky I am to be a journalist in this the greatest of all […]

I’m not going to get into whether any rational progressive could think it makes sense to prefer John McCain in the White House to having it occupied by Hillary Clinton‘s virtually ideologically indistinguishable colleague. But one thing that should be said is that focusing entirely on Roe v. Wade as a reason to oppose third-party […]

I would like to think that Barr’s candidacy will help Democrats in the fall, but even if we assume that Barr can attract more support that the typical Libertarian candidate I doubt he will. The biggest reason is that one would assume a serious Libertarian candidate transcends our existing political cleavages in the way that […]

I’m very ambivalent about the smashing opening weekend of Sex and the City. On one hand, it is likely to mean multiple future film versions of a show that I found entirely devoid of aesthetic merit or interest. On the other hand, maybe it will stop idiotic stories about whether a movie that primarily appeals […]

An outraged California populace has reacted to the Outrageous Judicial Activism of their unaccountable unelected state court. As you remember, the court, with only the support of other unrepresentative and undemocratic institutions such as the state legislature and governor but in the teeth of strong opposition from pundits who support social change in theory and […]

Jon Chait makes the first obvious point about Rich Lowry‘s silly attempt to claim that there’s some contradiction between Democratic arguments that ballots that indicated the intent of the voter should be counted in Florida 2000 and the position of many Democrats about current dispute over the Democratic nomination: the argument was that Gore was […]

The Supreme Court yesterday, in 6-3 and 7-2 decisions, interpreted anti-discrimination statutes to include retaliation against employees as “discrimination” even when this was not explicit in the statutory text. The latter case, Crocs West, was a relatively easy case upholding long-standing precedent and the unanimous holdings of circuit courts. Roberts differed in the first case […]

Glenn Greenwald makes the obvious point about Ben Wittes‘ critique of the California gay marriage decision: for all intents and purposes, there’s no argument in it. The shallow, bumper-sticker version of democracy Wittes invokes — that the decision represents the “undermining of the right of people to govern themselves” — prove too much unless you […]

In response to Eugene Volokh, I should say that I’m perhaps making a slightly different argument than the one he’s addressing. My point about the vote in the legislature, as well as the support for same-sex marriage signaled by the governor urging the courts to resolve the issue and opposing a referendum to overturn it, […]