Scott Lemieux

Bob Somerby: This is off our usual beat, but yesterday morning’s Washington Post included a truly remarkable number. It appeared in a graphic we can’t find on-line, but here it is: In January 2000, four percent of Iowa’s voting-age population took part in the two parties’ caucuses. That was the last campaign in which both […]

With respect to With respect to Mike Huckabee agitating for the release of serial rapist and future murderer Wayne DuMond because of pressure from anti-Clinton conspiracy nuts, a commenter chez Yglesias helpfully points us to a reprint of a 1996 Steve Dunleavy column about the horrible injustices perpetrated on the poor, poor, pitiful serial rapist […]

A couple of things: A couple of things: Melissa McEwan makes a good point with respect to Huckabee wanting to have it both ways when it comes to religion and politics. You can’t both repeatedly stress your background as a preacher and your religious values and muse about teaching the non-science of “intelligent design” in […]

“I’m waiting for pro-life voters to remember this guy named “I’m waiting for pro-life voters to remember this guy named John McCain,” says Yglesias. Relatedly, Tom lays out the case that McCain could be the Republican Kerry, the guy who slips up the middle when the frontrunner implodes. There are a couple things to be […]

Via Brad Plumer, Adam Liptak discusses the case of a 20-year-old in Florida serving life without parole for lending some friends his car. What’s particularly useful in the article is that Liptak makes clear how unusual it is for the U.S. to have retained the concept of felony murder that holds accomplices equally responsible for […]

Franklin Foer has officially withdrawn his support for the reporting of Scott Beauchamp. I’m not terribly surprised with how this turned out, having thought from the beginning that the stories had a certain…Glassian quality about them. It still hasn’t been proven that Beauchamp has a Glass-like fabulist, but believing difficult-to-prove-or-disprove stories comes down to the […]

Via Ann, Megan Carpentier finds that the “Medicare program spent $450 each on about 47,000” penis pumps, although “Medicaid (which serves low income Americans) only covers abortions in the case of rape, incest or the health of the mother.” Although an amusing tale of government waste — maintaining erections is a legitimate medical problem, but […]

I see that Rudy Giuliani — who Ann Althouse assured us in the august pages of the New York Times was a deeply principled federalist — has come out in favor of federal abortion regulations as long as he favors the regulations. States’ rights! Admittedly, if he were a truly principled federalist like Ron Paul […]

Ramesh Ponnuru objects to my post about Ron Paul and abortion, but fails to address most of the points. To respond to each of his arguments in turn: Ponnuru calls my argument that bans on “partial birth” objection do not protect fetal life — and hence (unlike a general ban on the procedure, at least […]

Reading the Paul Waldman piece that Dana discusses below, one interesting thing is that Paul doesn’t consider Huckabee to be an ideal matchup for any of the major Dems. I think this is right; he strikes me as easily the toughest of the major Republicans to beat in ’08. If he were to somehow to […]