Scott Lemieux

AL THE PRESCIENT. In comments to my previous post, a commenter brings up an obvious example of a critic of the Iraq War who made many clearly correct arguments: Al Gore. Read his September 2002 speech, and you’ll immediately see that claims that the war’s critics were inevitably as wrong as its supporters are beyond […]

ARGUMENTS THAT WERE MADE. Ezra points us to Julian Sanchez‘s excellent rebuttal to Megan McArdle‘s claim that critics of the war were just a wrong as the supporters. For my part, it’s somewhat difficult to respond to McArdle’s post, since not only does she argue strictly from anecdote but she also declines to specify most […]

“FIRST YOU DIDN’T WANT ME TO GET THE PONY, NOW YOU WANT ME TO TAKE IT BACK, MAKE UP YOUR MIND!” Via Yglesias, we see that “liberal hawks” (at least as defined as liberals who think that replacing a bad dictatorship that posed no security threat to the United States with an Islamist quasi-state was […]

THE DREAMLIFE OF DEAD-ENDERS. Via K. Drum, I see that Jonah Goldberg (just like Josh Trevino) asserts that Bush is superior to his critics because at least he’s “forthrightly trying to win a war.” Kevin deals with the first problem with Goldberg’s argument, which is claiming contradictions in the Democratic position that don’t exist. But, […]

THEY WERE AGAINST SOMETHING AFTER THEY WERE FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT! Glenn Reynolds approvingly links to this silly post by the Anchoress (while calling John Kerry a flip-flopper for–like Bush–supporting one funding plan and not another, ha ha, that never gets tired!). Noam Scheiber (discussing a similar use of this sophistry by Rich Lowry) has […]

THE PURSE AND THE SWORD. Marty Lederman argues (correctly) that the Constitution plainly gives Congress the formal powers to prevent the senseless escalation of the Iraq conflict. Matt brings up another question: would the courts actually provide a remedy if Bush simply decided to ignore a Congressional enactment preventing the escalation? Unfortunately, history strongly suggests […]

“ALL ABOUT VANITY”: Following up on yesterday’s post, Greg has the definitive takedown of Joe Klein‘s infinitely irritating “OK, liberals may be right, but since they become wrong if you attribute the motives I just made up out of whole cloth to them, really I’m right and they’re not” shtick. (As Jon Chait pointed out […]

THE FORGOTTEN TERRORISM: Garry Wills‘s fine recent New York Review of Books article about the Bush administration’s systematic evisceration of the separation of church and state recalls this important story: After his nomination but before his confirmation, Ashcroft promised to put an end to the task force set up by Attorney General Janet Reno to […]

LATE NOTES ON FEDERALISM AND JIM CROW. I’m very late in wading into the Jim Crow/federalism debate, but a couple of points I haven’t seen anyone else make yet: Eugene Volokh is right that the “federalism permitted Jim Crow, and hence it’s bad” argument is fallacious. Just as no constitutional theory can consistently prevent normatively […]

WHEN DID RULINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS COURTS BECOME NATIONALLY BINDING? Mickey Kaus has the latest iteration of the countermobilization myth: Even in a highly Republican town like Plano, in other words, the religious objection to gay marriage isn’t the crucial objection. Fear that moral entropy will envelop your family’s children is the crucial objection. I […]