Scott Lemieux

Most of this lament for the polarization of the Roberts Court I addressed in a TAP article recently. The short version is that 1)Roberts will certainly fail in his attempt to create a consensual Court that papers over major substantive divisions, and 2)since I don’t think the Court is entitled to a fixed degree of […]

The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal seeking to nullify a New York law, upheld by state courts, that requires Catholic Charities to provide contraception to women as part of health coverage requirements. I think this point is especially important, and often distorted when debates on the subject come up (the question of whether […]

Ankush notes that Frank Rich is once again trotting out asinine tautologies about the meaningless issue of Hillary Clinton’s “authenticity.” As Bob Somerby elaborates, it’s amazing to see Rich discussing the “conventional wisdom” of the 2000 campaign without discussing is own considerable role in the kneecapping of Gore. For some reason, Rich’s belated, not-telling-you-anything-you-don’t-already-know criticisms […]

A couple of Matt‘s commenters beat me to it, but I don’t think it’s really accurate to say that Thompson is taking a stand on “federalist” grounds. He’s never met a federal abortion regulation he doesn’t like, for example, so as with 99 percent of the population “federalism” matters to him at most in the […]

Matt highlights this genuinely bizarre passage in a Times article about the labor dispute at GM: Beyond the bookkeeping effect of VEBAs, the health care funds could create a kind of incentive for Detroit companies and the union to modify their behavior.Paying the high borrowing costs caused by their low debt ratings meant the Detroit […]

Michael Gerson, in a column about Hillary Clinton and religion, says that: She has attacked pro-life people as enemies of “evidence,” “science” and “the Constitution.” And she has blamed pro-life “ideologues” for the prevalence of abortions because of their “silent war on contraception” — a remarkable accusation that Roman Catholic opposition to birth control is […]

I’m not really sure I understand the distinction that Matt is trying to draw here. As always when questions of motivations rather than actions come up, I think we have to return to George Wallace. Even politicians who make overtly racist appeals may be much more committed to winning elections than to racism. So I’m […]

IN PARTIAL DEFENSE OF OBAMA. Greg Sargent reports, with respect to Obama skipping the vote condemning MoveOn, that Obama “claims that by skipping the vote, rather than voting against it, he was registering his protest against the vote’s triviality.” If he’s forceful about articulating what a silly kabuki this was, I think it’s actually a […]

COURT GOSSIP. From a (generally unfavorable) David Garrow review of Jeffrey Toobin‘s new Brethrenesque book about the Supreme Court: Toobin devotes two chapters to Bush vs. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 presidential election. He asserts, based on unidentified sources, that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was overly eager for the court to resolve the […]

IS CLINTON EVITABLE? To follow-up on Ezra or Dana, Matt said recently that he “feels like Clinton is drawing close to checkmating her opponents.” I wish I could say that this would go down with Matt’s “Dean is Inevitable” prediction … but… Taking Dana’s point that it’s early and a lot can happen, etc., and […]