I don’t have too much to add to Greg Sargent’s take on the “Jimmy Carter would have given the order” Romney claim, but just to summarize: 1. The mission that killed bin Laden was risky in operational terms, in international political terms, and probably in domestic political terms. It’s not quite right to say that […]
Month: April 2012
Reading the profile of Robert Caro Erik discussed earlier, I was immediately struck by this: Caro can tell you exactly how Moses heedlessly rammed the Cross Bronx Expressway through a middle-class nei
Jon Chait’s dissection of Paul Ryan is essential reading. Before getting to the heart of the article, there’s another point I’d like to emphasize. You remember James Stewart —
On April 30, 1894, Coxey’s Army, a rag-tag group of unemployed Americans, marched into Washington, D.C., demanding federal jobs for the unemployed. Articulating ideas that would be accepted by New Dealers forty years later, Coxey’s Army scared the nation’s political and capitalist elites, who feared hordes of the unworthy poor were attacking the fundamental tenets […]
Using control of the agenda to force the opposition into unpopular votes doesn’t have much of an impact on elections at the presidential level (although a little more at the state and local leve
Great stuff. Except for the part about Cobb entering the stands to beat a man who had lost his fingers in a printing press.
I referenced it briefly last Friday, but I have a column up at the Guardian about the potential for the Roberts Court to push the “federalism revolution” to much more indefensible ends than the Rehnquist Court did. The potential for upholding SB-1070 is actually the least bad of the three conservative arguments. The “sovereign immunity” […]
How many shows have reached such outstanding heights in the 5th season as Mad Men has done this year, episode after episode? The last 3 episodes especially have been just fantastic. And the comedic wr
And as an addendum to Paul’s post yesterday, it’s pretty easy to talk about the benefits of a retirement age of 74 when your job is to put on a bow tie and pontificate about things you may
Shorter Paul Ryan: When it comes to Ayn Rand, take the zombie-eyed granny starving, leave the atheism. The scene where everyone who was once guilty of an act of altruism gets asphyxiated, though, was awesome. And, to be clear, his Rand worship isn’t just something the Lamestream Media made up.
A couple of weeks ago, I slammed United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts for attacking the Environmental Protection Agency. I have a piece up at Alternet exploring this issue in greater detail. An
My brother was at the Cincinnati Reds’ game this afternoon, sitting a few rows up in the stands on the first base side. A ball was fouled off, and it bounced on one hop to a guy about five rows