Scott Lemieux

ANNE APPLEBAUM, YOU GOTTA BE PUTTING ME ON. Henley and Yglesias say most of what needs to be said about today’s bite of banality. As the former points out, the actual effect of this pox-on-all-their-houses-but-not-my-house High Broderism is to implicitly advocate the status quo without having to bother to make an argument in its favor. […]

A DILEMMA. I suppose some small part of me should think, in regard to the latest idiotic non-story from the internet’s premier source for political haircut gossip, that if they’re going to write these kinds of stories about Democrats at least they should write them about Republicans too. But, really, I can’t; all you can […]

JOHN YOO TORTURES THE LAW AGAIN. He’s baaaack, with another crackpot theory justifying arbitrary executive power in defiance of the plain language of several constitutional provisions as well as the structure and underlying theoretical basis of the Constitution. As Stephen Holmes points out (and expands on in his new book), it’s not just that Yoo […]

THE WAGES OF DISGRACEFUL COMPROMISE. I recently posited elsewhere that the exceptionally odious Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act was the worst legislation signed by Bill Clinton, although there are many more candidates for the title than a Democratic President should allow. At any rate, a man who is very likely innocent is about to […]

WHY DO LIBERALS REJECT REALITY? Kevin Drum, writing about the Most Dishonest Editorial Ever, argues that “a junior high school geometry student would be embarrassed to produce work like this.” Apparently he hasn’t gotten the latest memo from the Intellectually Serious Yoosta-Bees of the blogosphere — everything that appears in any part of the Wall […]

ANTI-MARKET, PRO-RICH PEOPLE. Atrios discusses one relevant part of Krugman‘s terrific column today: taxing some of the fees of fund managers at lower rights to incentivize risks although they aren’t actually taking risks. I think it’s also worth noting this argument: There’s a larger question one could ask: should we even be giving preferential tax […]

“ONCE THE FIRST BABY COMES ALONG, HE’S BOUND TO SETTLE DOWN AND START TREATING ME RIGHT.” Matt beat me to the most obvious response to Jeffrey Rosen‘s modified limited hangout on Chief Justice Roberts. Although it’s indeed reasonable to have claimed that Roberts was better than some of the other alternatives, this is quite different […]

UNITY BEHIND IDIOCY. It’s good to know, if thoroughly unsurprising, that when David Ignatius wanted us all to agree (i.e. with him) about how to respond to security threats, the consensus we’re all supposed to rally around to is to stay in Iraq forever to accomplish nothing except to make all sides in the ongoing […]

HOW MUCH OF A PROBLEM? Mark recently reminded us of his largely prescient analysis of the decrepit 2008 GOP field. It compelled me to look up Amy Sullivan‘s old article about the potentially deleterious effects of his faith on Romney‘s chances of winning the primary. Like Mark, I will obviously defer to her expertise here. […]

THE VACUITY OF THE “JUDICIAL ACTIVISM” CHARGE. One one level, I’m sympathetic to Ilya Somin‘s response to Adam Cohen‘s “gotcha” column about “judicial activism.” It’s true that most conservatives have never claimed that the Courts should never overturn laws or applications of laws by the executive branch, and in this sense individual cases of conservative […]