A brief aside on yesterday’s election in Virginia
I live in Virginia (albeit one of the commonwealth’s few liberal strongholds*) and got my start in the blogosphere as a Virginia politics blogger, so if you’ll forgive me, I’m going to indulge my...
Author: Jamelle
Worse Than Terrorism?
Rep. Virginia Foxx thinks that the health care bill is “worse than terrorism“:
Two Quick Responses
At the risk of sounding overly nitpicky, I think E.D. is being a little imprecise when he attributes minority voting preferences to simple “populism”: I think a lot of minority voters aren’t so much...
We Are Experiencing Institutional Difficulties
At least among liberal bloggers, it’s become a matter of conventional wisdom that Congress – and particularly the Senate – is fundamentally broken. Matthew Yglesias regularly points out our system’s absurdities, and various commentators have...
The Big Picture
I don’t really have anything insightful to add to Hendrik Hertzberg’s most recent post, but this is certainly worth repeating:
Stuff White People Americans Do
Over at Stuff White People Do, Nikki has a great guest post explaining one of the tactics (some) white people use to justify or explain their opposition to affirmative action and other forms of...
Libertarians and Diversity (or lack thereof)
The forthcoming issue* of Reason features an exceedingly thoughtful essay by Kerry Howley, in which she argues that libertarianism would be well-served by widening its scope and paying far more attention to infringements on...
Weak Become Heroes
Via Sociological Images is this pretty awesome “pro-capitalist” propaganda cartoon from 1948: The Miller Center of Public Affairs (my employer) is holding a conference on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin...
It’s a hard knock life, for unions
E.D. has a new post up at his True/Slant digs asking why John McCain hasn’t done much to participate in the health care debate. I don’t have much to say about the main substance...
Progressives for a value-added tax?
Via Megan McArdle is this interesting graph from the Congressional Budget Office showing the impact the recession has had on tax revenues, organized by type of tax: I am also surprised to see that...
In which Jamelle complains about the Senate, again
In an otherwise decent piece about Harry Reid’s continuing attempt to corral support for the public option, this paragraph sticks out like a sore thumb: Just six weeks ago the public option appeared to...
Dick Cheney Gives a Speech
And predictably, it’s filled with distortions, half-truths and misrepresentations (full transcript here):
One Step Closer*
As much as I hate to say it, Newt Gingrich does have a point here: Through my experience as Speaker of the House and building a Republican majority in 1994, I have learned that...
Only Lovers Democrats Left Alive
This is a good point (via Cogitamus): As long as there was still a good distance to go before a bill was passed, Business Dog Dems could afford to be Business Dogs – to...
Christopher Hitchens and moral glibness
Sometimes I wonder if Slate knows that they’re being ripped off by Christopher Hitchens. After all, he’s been writing the same two columns for while now: either he complains about how oppressive it is...
Things you can do/Some can’t be done
In his column today, David Brooks makes an error which I think is pretty common of conservative commentators who look to Great Britain for political inspiration. But first, Brooks: The Conservatives have treated British...
How to Sell a Tax Increase
I am nowhere near informed enough to offer any intelligent commentary on economic policy, but I am pretty good at political analysis. And so instead of focusing on the economic part of Bruce Bartlett’s...
Rep. Shadegg knows what he’s talking about
Does anyone else find this deeply and bitterly hilarious:
Deep Inside of a Parallel Universe
Reihan doesn’t think that we should dismiss Republican intransigence as irrational or nihilistic (via Andrew Sullivan): Among Democrats and liberals, there is a belief that Republican opposition to the various Democratic proposals represents a...
A quick post on Obama and gay rights
At the risk of ruffling the feathers of a few of my blogging comrades, I think that Kevin Drum is basically correct when he asks LGBT activists to chill out a little: Still, even...
