Scott Lemieux

GOP: MAGNA CARTA PLACED TOO MANY RESTRICTIONS ON EXECUTIVE POWER. The Habeas Restoration bill failed 56-43; Christy Hardin Smith has the tally. Unless I missed one, no Democrat voted “naye,” including Nelson, Landrieu, and Conrad. The ever-more-disgraceful Joe Lieberman, of course, did. My question: Where exactly is the ongoing “Rebellion or Invasion“? Hopefully the Supreme […]

LEGISLATIVE PROTECTION FOR ABORTION ACCESS. A good article here about the conflict surrounding a new Planned Parenthood clinic in Aurora, IL. The clinic has been delayed by zoning issues with the local government, which is also threatening to pass an inevitably useless parental involvement regulation. The tactic of arbitrarily using zoning or other regulations as […]

CONFIRM MUKASEY? Scott Horton makes the case, which I think is correct. I certainly agree with Kate that Mukasey isn’t someone I would prefer to see appointed as AG. But the relevant universe of options here is not “people qualified to be AG,” but “people George Bush would appoint as Attorney General.” Given that last […]

WHY NOT MERGE WITH THE AEI AND BE DONE WITH IT? Matt points us to this remarkable panel at a think tank often described as “liberal.” Not only does it seem to define Joe Biden as the leftmost acceptable opinion on the Iraq catastrophe, and is it chaired by Brookings scholar and the dead-ender’s dead-ender […]

SHOULD OPPONENTS OF SAFE, LEGAL ABORTION SUPPORT RUDY? Eric Johnston‘s op-ed making the “pro-life” argument for Giuliani is awful in many respects. It repeats many plainly erroneous assertions common to Republican opponents of reproductive freedom. Most notably, it recycles the myths that abortion would 1)”leave abortion to the states” (a particularly ridiculous argument in light […]

CHECKS, BALANCES, AND NATIONAL SECURITY. Ben Wittes points out, correctly, that although Jack Goldsmith has been critical of some aspects of the Bush administration, he remains a statist conservative. (“Jack Goldsmith is no human-rights lawyer,” says Wittes; he means this as a compliment.) But while I certainly agree that expanding executive power via Congress is […]

DEALS GONE BAD. Marcy Wheeler and John Marshall on the role of Bush crony Ray “Son of Howard” Hunt in the collapse of the Iraq oil deal, which would seem to ensure that nothing remotely resembling a viable Iraqi state is on the horizon. The frightening thing about Iraq has always been that it would […]

A GOP CLARK? As with Publius, it’s occurred to me looking at the less-than-rapturous reception to Fred Thompson in some of the blogosphere’s conservative precincts that there are may be a loose parallel between Clark‘s campaign in ’04 and Thompson in ’08. The surprising early decline in support for the war created an obvious structural […]

MORE ON VANITY FAIR ON GORE. There are a couple more passages worth highlighting from Evgenia Peretz‘s fine Vanity Fair article about the War on Gore. First, some of you may have seen this quote, but the wider the circulation the better. If you don’t believe me that 2000 campaign coverage was scandalously lazy, shallow, […]