WikiLiterature
Call me a cynic, but I don’t see WikiLeaks changing much — for better or worse — about the way the government both classifies information and conducts diplomacy. But until the noise subsides, it...
Author: Ned Resnikoff
I am a freelance writer, researcher for Media Matters for America, and occasional inactive to Salon. Everything written here is my opinion alone, and not representative of the views of my employer.
Dealing With Political Blind Spots
Ezra Klein had a great rundown yesterday on a psychological phenomenon called motivated skepticism: On the simplest level, American politics presents us with an incentives problem: McConnell — like most minority leaders — is an...
Dealing with the DPRK
Image via Wikipedia Given that I’m very far from an expert on East Asian politcs — and that North Korea is the most opaque nation on the planet — I recognize a certain need...
Trig-onometry
Due respect to Andrew Sullivan, but this is overparsing: The other untruth is that I have “advance[d] conspiracy theories that she is not the biological mother of Trig.” I would ask Labash to explain...
A “Total Miscarriage of Justice”
Image via Wikipedia That’s how incoming House homeland security chair Pete King described the Ghailani trial. Ghailani (pictured) was, of course, found guilty on only one of the 285 charges brought against him, and...
If You Can’t Win the Argument, Pretend it Doesn’t Exist
Spencer Ackerman on the Obama administration’s legal justification for drone strikes: In March, the State Department’s legal adviser gave a speech asserting that the strikes are legal, not demonstratingwhy they are. The closest that Harold Koh...
DADT and Legislating from the White House
Image via Wikipedia Confession: At first I was sort of conflicted about Adam Serwer’s suggestion that the president repeal DADT by executive order. Obviously I recognize that the military’s policy of discriminating against its...
Let’s Get Our Islamic Terminology Straight
Image via Wikipedia Playing off of Mark’s post against the Oklahoma ban on sharia law, it’s important to note that most of the contemporary debate over Sharia law in the United States seems to...
Another Undeclared War
Spencer Ackerman’s latest piece for Wired is pretty chilling. Especially this part: White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan didn’t say it on the Sunday chat shows, but there’s a plan gaining momentum within the...
In Defense of Hypocrisy
Since attention, good and bad, is exactly what Gawker was looking for when they started sniffing around Christine O’Donnell’s dirty laundry, I’m hesitant to reward them with more of it. But I do want...
More On Social Imaginaries
I’m a little embarrassed to say that despite having studied philosophy in college and still being a self-proclaimed philosophy geek, I had never heard of Charles Taylor before yesterday’s Charles Taylor Thursday. But clearly...
The Rational Irrational Voter
Yesterday, guestblogger E.C. Gach asked: So the question I leave to you is, are Americans driven to crappy prime time sitcoms to escape the mess that is our national politics, or is our national...
The Party of Theocracy
As of last week, we all know that Christine O’Donnell doesn’t much care for separation of church and state. As far as surprising campaign knows goes, that’s near the very bottom of the list,...
Swimming in the Shallows
Cover via Amazon I’m a little hesitant to jump into another discussion about Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, since I’m self-conscious about the fact that it’s in my top 3 Books I Somehow End Up...
Reclaiming Freedom From the Right
Since I came out of the gate making such a big deal out of the left’s dearth of articulated first principles, I suppose I should probably suggest one or two. Freedom sounds like a...
Whose Fault is Generation Me?
Hey all, I’m Ned Resnikoff. Along with Barrett Brown, I’m part of the latest batch of dewy-eyed greenhorns to start contributing regularly to this blog. A little bit about me: I’m a recent NYU...
