Scott Lemieux

Although the outcome was no longer in doubt after the craven actions of Feinstein and Schumer at the Judiciary Committee, Michael Mukasey was officially confirmed as Attorney General. Granting that there were no good options, I’m still inclined to believe that — barring better answers on torture or arbitrary executive power — rejecting his nomination […]

This is indeed depressing. In the debates, it was possible if one was inclined to excuse Obama‘s comments because he disavowed the fake “crisis” before spouting nonsense on Social Security. But he’s now repeating it and explicitly using the crisis language. Ugh. There’s no way around it –and I say this as someone who’s leaned […]

Garance has an interesting excerpt from a speech by John Kerry, in which he asserts that the Democrats are “too pro-choice” and E.J Dionne asks “Why do you think you didn’t give a speech like this in, say, May or June of 2004?” Dionne’s implication is that such a speech would have been politically useful. […]

As several of my colleagues have noted, Rudy Giuliani has been endorsed by Pat Robertson, which according to smart conservative commentators is a “big plus.” A depressing, if unsurprising, thought. Not only is Robertson an arch-reactionary who thought that with respect to 9/11 that the U.S. had it coming (especially ironic for Mr. “Noun-Verb-9/11”), Robertson […]

Jill Morrison, Amanda Marcotte, and Bean write about the new TRAP law in Wisconsin, this one an “informed consent” provision. The provision is tied to the state’s mandatory 24-hour waiting period, which accomplishes nothing other than make it more difficult for poor and rural women to obtain abortions. In itself, this new “informed consent” provision […]

Henley and DeLong start the discussion, both choosing dsquared‘s immortal attempt to show that an MBA might actually be useful after all. Like one of Henley’s commenters, I have to add Holbo‘s epic dissection of Dead Right to the mix. Rather than just adding well-known examples of brilliant analysis, I’d like to also add major […]

David Nieporent says: But a right means the government can’t stop you from doing something; it doesn’t mean that you have some claim on anybody else’s wallet to give you that thing. There are a number of potential misconceptions here. First, not all rights are constitutional rights. Second, there’s nothing inherent about rights that they […]

As a follow-up to the debate that various TAPPEDers and ex-TAPPEDers and are having with respect to conservertarian claims about the efficacy of school vouchers, this from Justice Stevens‘s dissent in Zelman (although peripheral to the question of whether voucher programs that will cause funding to go almost exclusively to parochial schools are constitutional) seems […]

Molly Ivors does a good job with the latest bit of vacuous misogyny from Maureen Dowd, whose presence on a major op-ed page remains and will always be an absolute disgrace. A couple more points are worth emphasizing. First, none of this has the slightest shred of substantive significance; the idea (also now being propounded […]

It’s all but official: the Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for a prisoner in Mississippi, “and thus gave a nearly indisputable indication that a majority intends to block all executions until the court decides a lethal injection case from Kentucky next spring.” Scalia and the man who put the doctrinaire conservative in “moderation” […]