Domestic Policy
Can anything good come of this?
In my last post I promised to look for silver linings in this catastrophic election. I’ll try to make good on that promise, but I do want to emphasize that I am grasping at straws (and, I guess, mixing metaphors). ...
Read MoreUnbelievable
It is hard to believe. The White House will soon be home to a hatemongering, chronically mendacious caricature of a textbook narcissist, a con man who is totally unfit for the presidency. I’m glad that I don’t have any small ...
Read MoreThe Hillary and Bernie Show
I didn’t expect much enlightenment from last night’s debate and I didn’t get any. I was a bit disturbed to see the tone become noticeably sharper than in probably all the previous debates, and I thought the weight of the ...
Read MoreTerror and Politics
It is the nature of terrorism to have greater psychological than physical impact. That is the point: to sow fear—terror, after all, is pervasive, randomized fear—that far exceeds the death and destruction that the terrorists are actually capable of inflicting. ...
Read MoreAbortion: A Note on The Language We Use
Cecile Richards did a generally good job of defending Planned Parenthood in an interview last night with Chuck Todd, but I was disappointed to watch her decline to push back on one badly loaded question. Todd put it to her ...
Read MoreShouting About Abortion
“Yes! I’ve had an abortion and I’m glad I did. I am a happy person as a result.” That is the message that Amelia Bonow, aged 30, has trumpeted on Twitter at #ShoutYourAbortion the past couple of weeks. Reacting to ...
Read MoreJeb the Populist
Jeb Bush has come out with a proposal for re-vamping the tax code. You can get a pretty good idea of the substance of his proposal by reading the article in today’s New York Times. But people typically don’t read ...
Read MoreThe system… (1) is (2) isn’t…rigged.
Some time ago I described two competing tendencies in the Democratic Party: a populist tendency, most vocally represented by Elizabeth Warren (and now, by outsider Bernie Sanders) and a centrist tendency, probably best exemplified by Bill Clinton. Populists are appalled ...
Read MoreTalking About Abortion
Katha Pollitt begins her op-ed. column today with an excellent question: “Why does the pro-choice movement so often find itself in a defensive crouch?” She is reacting to the apology issued by the president of Planned Parenthood for the PP ...
Read MoreObamacare and the Court
The US Supreme Court is a supremely political institution, and no case illustrates that reality better than the just decided King vs. Burwell. Strictly on its merits, KvB should never have gone to the Court, because the plaintiffs’ case against ...
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