Scott Lemieux

THE IDIOTIC SEASON. Eric Boehlert has an excellent (if depressing) rundown of the thoroughly phony Pelosi plane non-scandal. As recently as Sunday — although the House Speaker-At-Arms had released a statement saying she didn’t request the plane on Thursday, and even the White House had dismissed it as a “silly” non-story — Glenn Reynolds appeared […]

CLINTON AND HER ENEMIES. I was going to post a substantial reply to Garance‘s post below, but Yglesias largely beat me to it, noting that “Clinton, like her husband, is both hated by the right and treated unfairly by the press and not a very liberal politician, coming from the party’s more centrist wing and […]

PORTUGAL: LAW MATCHES REALITY. Good news for reproductive freedom today, as a referendum liberalizing abortion has passed in Portugal. Although the turnout didn’t meet the quorum — making it non-binding — President Jose Socrates has pledged to change the policy. It’s not a radical change — it only permits fully legal abortion in the first […]

THERE, THERE, DON’T WORRY YOUR PRETTY LITTLE HEAD ABOUT YOUR REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM. Sara Anderson brings our attention to another innovation in the irrational abortion regulation obstacle course, this one from the Idaho legislature: A North Idaho lawmaker wants to make it a crime to attempt to coerce a woman or girl into having an abortion, […]

SMALL STAKES ENSURE THE MINIMUM CREDIBILITY. Garance makes a very important point below. When evaluating assertions of great importance, it’s always useful to see whether people talking hysterically actually act in ways consistent with their rhetoric. I’ve said many times that I’ve never found the ethical question of abortion particularly troubling, for a central reason: […]

MORE FRAILER THAN THE FLOWERS, THESE PRECIOUS POLL LEADS. In discussing the many problems with the “Hillary is inevitable” meme, Jon Chait decides to bring out the heavy artillery by reminding us who was ahead in national polls at a comparable time in the last cycle: But national surveys, especially this early in the process, […]

SCALIA: BUSH’S ELECTION UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Antonin Scalia has done us the favor of explaining the equal protection theory behind the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore. (Which is handy, since the per curiam opinion for all intents and purposes failed to articulate anything that could be called a theory at all.) Says Justice Scalia: And […]

GLAD WE’VE CLEARED THAT UP. Jonah Golberg: In response Matt admits to “actually knowing nothing about the historical record of Lindbergh” but seems to take offense to the comparison nonetheless — even though I pretty clearly don’t buy the conventional mythology of Lindbergh as a virulent anti-Semite (nor, I would like to think, would any […]

THE EXCEPTION TRAP. The South Dakota legislature is planning to reintroduce an abortion ban that (unlike the law overturned by initiative last year) includes exemptions for rape and incest. Jessica Valenti notes that “this is going to mean a change of fighting words on our part. After all, a lot of what pro-choicers talked about […]

ARTICULATE! AND SUCH A GOOD DANCER! It would not be strictly accurate to say that Joe Biden (Sen-MBNA) killed his presidential campaign today; you can’t kill something that was stillborn to begin with. (In addition to racist condescension, his comments inadvertently remind us that the staunch Iraq hawk who advocated a perpetual cycle of Friedmans […]