Does the federal government need to regulate enrollment in Women’s Studies programs based on how their graduates fare in the job market? What about Chinese Literature? Religious Studies? Last week’s announcement of new rules to bear down on career colleges like the University of Phoenix, which offer degrees in programs like Health Administration and Criminal […]
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What Larry Summers Can’t Bring Himself to Say
If you want to understand why the Obama administration’s heart is in the right place but it suffers from a chronic lack of political nerve, you need look no further than former chief economic advisor Larry Summers. On Sunday, Summers published a piece in the Financial Times warning that the recovery was at risk of […]
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Light Bulbs and Last-Ditch Climate Solutions
[Via Andrew Sullivan](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/let-there-be-100-watt-incandescent-light/240320/), I’m reminded that a lot of conservative-minded people are annoyed about the impending switch away from incandescent bulbs. Their argument is that the government is taking away small freedoms and the power of the market by restricting bulb choice. At Bloomberg Views, [Virginia Postrel suggested](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-10/need-a-light-bulb-uncle-sam-gets-to-choose-virginia-postrel.html): > What matters, from a public policy […]
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Secure Communities, SB 1070 And Racial Profiling
Jesse James DeConto has an excellent overview of the Secure Communities Program, the federal anti-illegal immigration effort that turns local police into enforcers of federal immigration laws: Because they lead to incarceration, 287(g) and Secure Communities effectively criminalize immigration violations, which the U.S. had historically handled as civil matters in special administrative courts. Immigration courts, […]
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Does the GOP Field Need a Good ‘Ol Boy?
In my column today about the GOP candidates and religion, I mention an event that Rick Perry is organizing called The Response, which follows up on Perry’s previous call for Texans to pray for rain by getting folks together to pray for God to solve a whole range of public policy problems. Some in the […]
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Sharia Panic And The GOP Debate
Mitt Romney didn’t take the bait, while Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich tried to defend their latter day McCarthyism: There’s a difference between the oath of office, where everyone takes an oath to defend the Constitution, and the sort of oath Cain and Gingrich are proposing, which singles out a single religious group as disloyal. […]
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Today at The Prospect
Jamelle Bouie breaks down the Republican debate. His conclusion: Rick Perry won, without even showing up. Yannis Palaiologos writes about the strained relationships in the European Union. Chris Mooney explains how the science-based community has found a home in the Democratic party. Paul Waldman argues that the Republican frontrunners are the Christian superstars.
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Not “Looking Forward” After All?
Adam Zagorin reports that John Durham, the prosecutor Attorney General Eric Holder assigned to probe the Bush administration’s torturous interrogation program, may be coming back with some indictments: It has been nearly a decade since Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi prisoner known as “the Iceman” — for the bungled attempt to cool his body and make […]
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Do Debates Tell Us Anything?
Televised debates are on one hand the best opportunity most citizens have to get an extended, longer-than-a-soundbite view of presidential candidates, and on the other hand impossibly trivial and inane. For instance, in last night’s debate in New Hampshire, Tim Pawlenty looked anxious and tentative, while Michele Bachmann was confident and crisp. Does that mean […]
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Loving And Prop 8 [draft]
Dahlia Lithwick writes about Prop 8 supporters effort to disqualify Judge Vaughn Walker, who ruled that Prop 8 was unconstitutional, because he is gay and in a committed relationship: And what of the argument that Judge Walker stood to benefit personally from his own ruling in the Prop 8 case? Wouldn’t—by this logic—a straight judge […]
