To state the obvious, this non-action is awful both on the merits (making the permanent extension of Bush's upper-class tax cuts more likely) and as politics (name me the district where voting for middle-class tax cuts and against upper-class ones is "politically risky.") The only...
Month: September 2010
The odds that I will agree with David Bernstein over Dahlia Lithwick are...not good, but in this case Bernstein is right. I've been trying to condense the paper I presented.
Krugman makes a good case. And, yes, the idea that the "messaging" from someone no non-professional pays any attention to is more important than their ability to do the job.
Jon Chait points out that for a generation now GOP proposals for Doing Something About Big Government have followed a predictable not to say neurotic pattern: Republicans keep running on platforms consisting of specified measures to increase the deficit and unspecified pledges to reduce it....
"Comedian" Tim Slagle wrote a post slagging Morrissey for calling the Chinese a "subspecies" for "their" treatment of animals. I'm with Slagle on the condemnation, though I'm not as surprised.
I think an ad campaign like this is just what the United Nations needs to get the US to pay its dues. Or to fulfill pledges to fund the Millennium.
It never ends.
In convenient video form: Hyde: The Status Quo Is Not OK from Center for Reproductive Rights on Vimeo.
Joshua Busby has a new book out on transnational campaigns that might be the best new contribution to the advocacy networks literature since Keck and Sikkink's original Activists Beyond Borders..
Adam Cohen notes Antonin Scalia once again asserting that the Constitution does not protect gender equality. His reasoning is superficially "originalist": Indeed, Justice Scalia likes to present his views as highly principled — he's not against equal rights for women or anyone else; he's just...
I strongly recommend Dahlia Lithwick's article on the pending execution of Teresa Lewis, which covers some of the same issues of paternalism and the law I alluded to yesterday. I.
It's hard to argue against the proposition that Peretz benefits from one.