US Politics
Obamacare 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 ...
Read MoreCharleston, etc.
So, the Confederate flag will probably come down from the South Carolina state capitol grounds, as it should. I have no patience with those who assert that the flag is a legitimate symbol of the South’s heritage. Yes, it is ...
Read MoreMore on how we got the TPP that we got
For those of you interested in learning more about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), this article by David Deyen in The American Prospect is must reading. Among other things, Deyen does something I haven’t seen anybody else do: scrutinize the ...
Read MoreOnce Again: Why is the TPP bad, and Why is Obama Promoting it?
I’ve dealt with both of these questions already, but re-reading the relevant posts, I realized there were points I would have liked to develop but left at best implicit, so here I go again. First: what’s wrong with the TPP ...
Read MoreThose Lefty Democrats
The New York Times has long included among its columnists a number of conservatives, presumably out of a desire to demonstrate an openness to diverse viewpoints by the otherwise liberal newspaper. Its two most prominent house conservatives, David Brooks and ...
Read MoreThe 2016 Horserace
The horserace, of course, is for the presidency. We are still 18 months away from the election, but the many aspirants and pretend-aspirants to the top job in the US are already busy raising money and running around the country, ...
Read MoreDemocrats Divided
The surprising rebuke that Senate Democrats delivered to President Obama on Tuesday has been reversed. A bi-partisan agreement among supporters of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) will enable debate to proceed on the president’s requested fast-track authority. Whatever its outcome, ...
Read MoreFriedman on the TPP
Surprise! Thomas Friedman is in favor of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). I‘m kidding about the surprise, of course: Friedman’s support for the TPP was entirely predictable. The TPP, as I argued in my earlier post, isn’t mainly about trade; ...
Read MoreThe American Prospect at 25
After citing The Nation’s 125th Anniversary issue in my last post, I realized that I really ought to give a shout-out to another of my favorite magazines that has just had an anniversary. The American Prospect, a monthly journal of politics ...
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