The Mandate
Notably absent from Erik’s defense of the Affordable Care Act is a discussion of the bill’s Constitutionality or the wisdom of compelling everyone to purchase private insurance plans. I find this mildly astonishing. Have...
Author: Will
The End of Discretion, continued
Schoolboy expelled for shooting pellets out of a straw. The relevant law is, of course, a federal one:
Insiders/Outsiders
On the subject of my musings on sports and journalism, here’s a telling excerpt about the media’s treatment of football-related concussions from The New Yorker:
“Disunion”
That’s the title of The New York Times’ series on The Civil War, which is highly recommended. Here’s a great entry on Virginia, the (relatively) urbanized and cosmopolitan “North of the South” during the...
Speaking of The Oscars . . .
You can hold the screenwriter of The Fighter responsible for the Air Bud franchise.
The Bush Revival
Inspired by this incredibly silly post, I thought I’d recommend an old but prescient article from Ross Douthat on the all-but-inevitable recovery of Bush’s foreign policy reputation. It is staggering to think that a...
What’s your Sputnik moment?
I think I’m too young to have had a real ‘Sputnik moment’, but this post and the subsequent comments are pretty great. Best response so far: “Drake, the rapper, was a year behind me...
Rules are rules
Well, here’s a horrific story. After defying a school district to send her kids to a better school, a single mother faces jail time for “defrauding” the county (via): ”The state would not move,...
New Media Playground
Even if you’re not a sports fan, GQ’s profile of Deadspin editor-in-chief A.J. Daulerio is worth reading because it’s such a perfect distillation of the clash between old and new media cultures. Deadspin’s raison...
Wire Fraud
The Wire’s David Simon forcefully responds to criticism of his show from Baltimore’s police commissioner. Read the whole thing, and then read his stirring defense of the show from similar criticism in front of...
Explaining that post that didn’t make sense
Writing a post that doesn’t quite compute is one of the perils of blogging, so let me expand upon a point I was trying to make here. I once heard someone (a cursory Google...
Decriminalization in Portugal
Here’s a good article from The Boston Globe on the drug trade and Portugal’s experiment in drug decriminalization. This nugget about Nixon’s drug policy commission is pretty funny:
Tunisia and Iraq
The analytical gymnastics Jennifer Rubin is forced to perform here to defend the invasion of Iraq are pretty impressive. If the Tunisian revolution spurs reform in neighboring countries, her line of reasoning goes, Iraq’s...
Gene Wolfe interviewed
Interesting stuff from the one of the League’s favorite science fiction writers. Of particular note is his pessimistic conservatism (“The government in Home Fires is doing the thing that I expect them to do...
The bureaucratic mindset
Matthew Yglesias has already poked fun at this interview with the new head of DC’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, but the entire exchange really has to be read to be believed. It’s...
Commenter Tribunals
I think the League’s reader community is pretty great, but it’s basically impossible for a bunch of amateur bloggers to mediate comment threads full-time. One possible solution would be to borrow the idea of...
“The Elements of Clunk”
Are readers may enjoy the thoughts, and concepts, explicated within this humorous essay from “The Chronicle of Higher Education.” While your at it, Jason Peters’ Undergraduate Writing Seminar is also very funny.
Football Talk
Does anyone else think that Oregon’s blur offense is uniquely ill-suited to the long break between college football’s regular season and the major bowl games? If their opponents get a month off to condition...
Worth Watching
If you have a spare hour, I’d highly recommend watching this dialog on the Giffords shooting and abortion. I don’t think it will change any minds, but it’s a model of clarity and intelligent...
