Pieces of the Legislation We Love
At the risk of boring everyone with arcane institutional trivia (which I’m sure I did with the reconciliation post), I’m not quite sure what to make of the “two bill” idea being floated around...
Monthly Archive: August 2009
Idea of the Day
From Daniel Gross at Newsweek: After the stock-research scandals of the 1990s, analysts were required to disclose whether they or their families owned stock in the companies they were talking about. That has since...
This seems like it should be a bigger deal
Tom Ridge claims that Bush pressured him to raise the terror alert level to help win the 2004 election.
the unintended consequences of economic populism
“POPULIST, n. A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found in the old red soapstone underlying Kansas; characterized by an uncommon spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the power of...
How I would have written Scalia’s dissent
Troy Davis, originally convicted of murdering an off-duty cop under questionable circumstances, will now have his case reviewed by order of the Supreme Court. Justice Scalia dissented, however, and his opinion isn’t exactly a...
quote of the day
from Gregg Easterbrook: “While the fixed vote in Iran received extensive international attention, the world paid no notice to an honest election in Indonesia — the world’s largest Muslim nation. As recently as the...
health care on the radio
If you have time, check out James Joyner and Dave Schuler on OTB radio this evening, discussing “the latest developments in the health care debate, the evolving situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, furloughing government...
Time Travel
My favorite movie that involves time traveling is Twelve Monkeys. Anybody know a better time-travel flick? And, beyond that, has anyone ever seen a time traveling film that made enough sense to be believable? ...
reminder
We have a COMMENTING POLICY by the way, y’all. Newbies and old timers alike are more than welcome to read it. It’s more of a suggested guidelines deal, but it really does work to...
I ain’t got time for this jibba jabba
Among many – many – other things, I wish political commentators would stop explaining away our near-constant legislative gridlock as some inevitable, quasi-mystical part of the democratic process. For instance, here’s Peter Suderman (guest-posting...
‘Graf for the Day
From Religion News at Pew Forum: The three men were locals who were said to have once crossed into nearby Afghanistan to wage war alongside the Taliban. They then returned, militant wayfarers apparently bent...
Other Good Ideas Nobody is Voting For/Against
Steven Pearlstein in his op-ed makes a fairly dumb classic Washington Post (false) moral equivalence between death panels hysteria on the right and the public option on the left. That said, he makes some...
Three Things to Remember About The Prez’s Role in Healthcare
Ezra Klein writes: What’s been striking, however, is the implicit argument that this is somehow a simple failure of liberal will. Rachel Maddow called it “a collapse of political ambition.”…The unifying idea here is...
Objectively Pro-Death Panel
I’m sure someone has already made this point, but if you take the idea of a “death panel” seriously, it doesn’t really seem like that terrible of an idea. As I’m sure most of...
Guest Post: Large Group, Small Group, and Individual Health Insurance
by David Lemire (David Lemire worked for over 30 years as an underwriter at a large, multi-state HMO.) Now that President Obama has changed his rhetoric from reforming health “care” to reforming health “insurance,” you...
on the field of reason ctd.
In the comments to this post discussing David Frum’s recent column on the talk-radio right, several commenters thought Frum had said a bit too much in his hypothetical:
Medicare vs. Obamacare
[updated below] Andrew Biggs crunches some numbers on Medicare over at the AEI blog. Contra Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann and others adopting the new “Obamacare vs. Medicare” talking points, Biggs rightly points out...
Selling Out
Byron York’s column on the decline and fall of the antiwar Left makes for a depressing read.
