Banning Burqas: Yea or Nay?
I fall squarely in the “nay” camp, but here’s a nice summary of the debate over burqas in France from The Economist.
Monthly Archive: May 2010
As American as Passover
A few more idle thoughts on the preeminence of American Jewry: It’s not as if Jews haven’t played important roles in government before now – I once read that Charlemagne relied heavily on Jewish...
Your quote for the day
“If I’m a war criminal, then Barack Obama is a war criminal,” Rove said. Words every civil libertarian Democrat ought to chew on, I think.
Fringe bipartisanship
Ben Smith points to the first real bipartisanship we’ve seen for quite some time: Bipartisanship is a rare thing in Washington, but the Senate just 96-0 to pass a bill to "Audit the Fed,"...
Kagan and the Conservatives
I haven’t had enough time to dig into soon-to-be-Justice Kagan’s record in nearly the depth that I would like, and I’m not expecting to have all that much time to provide a fitting analysis. ...
Red families & blue families
My wife and I lived together for two years prior to tying the knot, though we were both still in college when we finally made our vows. We’d known each other and dated for...
Your Friday evening brain teaser
This dialogue between David Frum and Jonah Goldberg has been getting some attention: Let’s bracket the “Is Obama a socialist?” question in favor of something a little less contentious. What, if anything, is the...
Hooray for the Pill
The fiftieth anniversary of the birth control pill is reason to celebrate, says Susan Jacoby. Agreed in full.
Was Jesus a Canadian?
Since Will decided it was appropriate to create a post tag entitled “Steve Nash is baller status” the other day, I think I’m obliged to ensure that said tag is used more than once...
All the American Tories
Daniel McCarthy has perhaps the best take on Red Toryism and its incompatibility with the realities of American politics I have seen yet. One important factor behind the success of traditional, pre-liberal Toryism in...
Plato: Euthyphro, Confucius, and the Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey
In Euthyphro, Plato deals with piety and the mystery thereof. As the dialogue opens, Socrates encounters Euthyphro on the porch of the king Archon. Socrates is there because the young man Meletheus has brought...
Wise Words
I thought this comment, from Boegiboe, deserved a place of prominence, especially since the threads on the tactics involved in the War on Drugs are winding down. Comments at LOG and elsewhere have often noted...
Progressives should take a second look at competitive federalism
In the comments the other day Jivatman asked what sort of system of governance I would prefer. More and more I think I’d fit in nicely in a modern Northern-European style social-democracy – open...
Reading comprehension was never his strong suit
The Weekly Standard puts out some great long-form journalism, but goddamn is their blog spectacularly annoying sometimes. Here’s Daniel Halper, criticizing The Washington Post for hiring David Weigel to cover the conservative movement: If...
Words and Deeds
Faced with the unassailable fact that Obama’s much-ballyhooed foreign and counter-terror policies differ very little from the Bush Administration’s, Victor Davis Hanson is left spluttering: So when Obama and his team were dreaming up...
Gillespie rants; Los Suns win
I usually shy away from linking to Reason, mainly because you’re probably reading them already. But this brilliant rant from Nick Gillespie on immigration and the Phoenix Suns deserves top billing.
Desire and Deviance, again
A few weeks (months?) ago, David kicked off an interesting discussion on gay culture and sexual orientation. From The Utne Reader, here’s a smart take on the political logic of presenting sexual preferences as...
Department of Useful Concepts: The Corner Solution
A corner solution arises whenever, when faced with a tradeoff among two or more variables, we declare that one of the variables is to be minimized regardless of the state of all of the...
Will the Tories take back 10 Downing Street?
I’ve been watching the lead up to the parliamentary elections in the UK fairly closely. I only caught bits of the three debates, and at the end of the day I’m rooting for Cameron...
