Author: Mark of New Jersey

I found Ryan Bonneville’s post this morning on the horrible events at Penn State to be highly appropriate.  Especially this: I don’t know what the solution is. Taking membership in these institutions with a...

At his Forbes digs, Erik mounts what he claims is a defense of cheap wine and dismisses wine snobbery, quoting with approval this passage from Slate’s Brian Palmer: Not long ago, American wine-buying habits...

I am currently surrounded by innumerable and extraordinarily high stacks of case law printouts and briefs, looking forward to a weekend of the same.  But moments ago, my good friend Mr. Jimmy Cliff came...

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reevaluation of my political views; mostly, I’ve been questioning whether political philosophy and theory mean a whole heck of a lot, even when they’re right.  A big...

It’s midsummer and I haven’t written anything sports related in awhile.  With the NFL going through perhaps the most insanely active week in its history, the MLB trade deadline fast approaching, labor talks finally...

In the comments to one of the several posts around here on the appalling terrorist attacks in Norway, a number of people have expressed a difficulty in understanding the logic behind what Breivik sought...

Corey Maye, finally released from prison, enjoying his kids.

Mark Cuban’s lawyer may be my new hero. This summary judgment motion in a presumably complex, though no doubt frivolous, shareholder suit from Ross Perot, Jr. cannot possibly be topped for its combination of...

[Ed. Note – I realize this is beating a dead horse at this point, but in my defense, the below was primarily written prior to the last two or three posts on the Metcalf...

I am trying to gauge whether there would be sufficient interest for an online League game of Diplomacy at playdiplomacy.com.  If at least six people respond to this post and express interest, then I’ll...

In the “What Else Is New” category of blog posts, Freddie takes Conor Friedersdorf to the woodshed for blaming the US Post Office’s problems primarily on high labor costs and suggesting that this proves...

Kevin Drum’s Medicare reform plan strikes me as well worth considering, and most certainly creative.  At first blush, I suspect that its ultimate effect would be essentially the same as most proposals for means-testing...

Jeffrey Goldberg has an excellent and, I hope, important piece today at Bloomberg that explains well the inevitable consequences of Israel failing to return to something approaching its 1967 borders…..and soon.  What makes Goldberg’s...

Ken at Popehat takes advantage of the revelation that the outrageously outrageing story of the mom giving her 8-year old beauty pageant daughter Botox treatments was a complete hoax to put forth a helpful...

“[S]urely the most obvious point to make is that if we cannot keep illegal drugs out of prison at what point do even prohibitionists recognise that the War on Drugs can’t be won?” -Alex Massie

Conor Friedersdorf explains well how the argument that justifying torture under even limited circumstances would morally corrupt and result in justifying torture under almost any conceivable circumstance has been proven correct in the debate...

(NOTE: The odds of a commenter making the point I’m trying to make in this post in a paragraph or less approach 100%). Tom Van Dyke, in comments, points us to this 2009 quote...

League alum Jamelle Bouie notes the not-so-surprising-upon-reflection lack of awareness of who Osama bin Laden was amongst American teenagers and reaches this depressing conclusion:

The killing of Osama bin Laden is a real crossroads about which I am currently neither optimistic nor pessimistic (ie, I think there’s an equal chance of going either direction).  Many, perhaps most, Americans...

Responding to President Obama’s acquisition and release of his “long-form” birth certificate, Andrew Sullivan expresses his disappointment that Obama did not do this sooner, then writes: Here, by the way, courtesy of [Ta-Nahesi Coates], are...