Washington Post: Watch Obama defend a Trump supporter’s rights at a Clinton rally
“Hold up, hold up, hold up,”
Jeffrey Goldberg: The Obama Doctrine – The Atlantic
If you are a supporter of the president, his strategy makes eminent sense: Double down in those parts of the world where success is plausible, and limit America’s exposure to the rest. His critics believe, however, that problems like those presented by the Middle East don’t solve themselves—that, without American intervention, they metastasize.
Predicting Judicial Greatness in A Theoretical Justice Barack Obama
Were a hypothetical President Hillary Clinton to nominate him to the Supreme Court, would Barack Obama’s service as President be reason to foresee that he’d become one of the great Justices on the Supreme Court? What about his lack of prior judicial experience or his lack of scholarly publications?
The State of the Union
A consideration of the President’s final State of the Union.
Charlie Savage on Obama’s evolving thinking on terrorism
A must-read interview with author and NYT reporter Charlie Savage on President Obama and terrorism, by OT alum Elias Isquith.
Mount Rushmore – Mount Rushmore Edition
No, we’re not getting meta. Worse. We’re talking Presidents…
Democrats need to get out of the Republicans’ way
It might not look like it, but Democrats are losing the government shutdown debate. The closer Congress gets to a deal, the less space there’ll be to negotiate when the next budget crisis comes knocking.
The President Goes Prime Time on Syria: Initial Reactions
An open thread on the President’s remarks on Syria and where the crisis currently stands.
A President Adrift, a Politics Without Focus
David Atkins confronts the aimlessness of Obama’s presidency and finds no one to blame but the President himself
The President Head Fakes on Lethal Drone Strikes and the War on Terror
Nothing in the President’s speech hasn’t been said before, and with much more force and a greater sense of commitment. His sprawling meditation on the threat of terrorism was less a grand vision for where terrorism fits into the rest of the President’s responsibilities and the nation’s challenges, and more a doubling-down on the global…
The Obama Doctrine Reborn
No Driving Blind today. Instead, everyone should take some time to read and consider the President’s speech on foreign policy from earlier. Full remarks below,
Everything Amitai Etzioni Gets Wrong about Liberals, Libertarians, and Drones
There I was, enjoying some left-over pasta and a diet Canadian Dry on my lunch break. “Time to read something,” I thought. So I browsed my favorites tab in search of something meaty to sink my teeth into–maybe a rant from Glenn Greenwald or a cool-headed rebuke from Conor Friedersdorf. That’s when my eyes were greeted by…
America’s Back, Baby!
In the context of my other post on Sullivan I wanted to highlight something else he penned recently:
Fun Constitutional Facts: Gun Rights Edition
The words “regulate” and “regulated” appear three times in the Constitution’s current text. Here they are: Article I, Section 8: “The Congress shall have Power…To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes…[and] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights…
Obama’s Rhetoric Continues to Lose Altitude
Doug Henwood summarizes an important decline in the reading level of State of the Union addresses,
The Second Inaugural: A Big Speech
[A little late to post this, I know, but I just realized I had not shared it with the League when I first wrote it. — EI] I don’t know what I expected to hear during the president’s second inaugural address, but the most unapologetic, direct, and fearless speech in defense of liberalism by an…
Professors Propose New Propaganda Strategy to Complement Obama’s War of Drones
At the Atlantic, an article by three professors was published which sought to examine the claim that “Pakistanis all hate the drone war.” For someone like me this is a useless bit of analysis. Indeed, part of me would go so far as to say it’s actually quite insidious. By exploring a claim that is actually…
How ACORN Stole the 2012 Election
NYRB‘s Mark Danner has a nice retrospective on the election (remember that?) that takes a view of the country both high and low. There’s a hefty dose of the What It All Means pontifications any election wrap-up inspires, if not needs; and there’s some good stuff from Danner’s experiences milling about the partisan crowds in…
Dick Morris goes after Chris Christie with egg on his face
Here’s conservative commentator Dick Morris saying something ridiculous: I’ve got egg on my face. I predicted a Romney landslide and, instead, we ended up with an Obama squeaker. The key reason for my bum prediction is that I mistakenly believed that the 2008 surge in black, Latino, and young voter turnout would recede in 2012…
Vote Your Conscience
I will do my best to be brief. I am voting today. But I am not voting for President Obama. I urge everyone else not to vote for him as well. I will do my best to explain why.
An Emerging Staten Island Narrative
Staten Island is getting upset. Staten Island is a borough that has an uneasy relationship with the rest of New York City’s boroughs under the best of circumstances. It has felt treated like a literal and figurative dumping ground for the other boroughs’ garbage (at one point, 650 tons of garbage per day were dumped…
Presidential Debates Should be Deemed Cruel and Unusual
In the comments here James Hanley called the debates “pure political theater.” To the degree that last night’s romp was light on substance and heavy on posturing it certainly was politically theatrical. And yet to call it pure political theater would seem a disservice to those who actually do political theater—including satire, parody, and experimental…
Nassau County is Not an Obama Love-fest
I have heard it suggested, in our own backyard and countless times on Twitter, that Obama had a homefield advantage because the debate was in New York. Thus, he got softball questions. Please set conspiracy theories to rest. The debate was not just in New York. It was in Nassau County, New York. The accent so many…
The Real Generation War
…Is the one proposed by Ryan and Romney. Not, as David Brooks’ pop psychology analysis would have us believe, one between folksy emotionalism and new wave wonks. I would normally try not to waste time pointing out how silly a David Brooks column is. His bizarre brand of conservative romanticism goes one farther than even…
Paul Ryan Was Right (I’m Serious)
As much as I’d love to revel in Ryan’s tax-evasion during last night’s Vice Presidential Debate, I have to—oh it hurts!—agree with him. I’ve written in the past about why exactly I loathe Paul Ryan. And whether you think my reasons are fair, or my analysis accurate, there’s certainly no question about whether or not…
Was Jim Lehrer a Replacement Moderator?
As televised Presidential debates go, it’s pretty clear that Romney trounced Obama. If you disagree, listen to Chris Mathews and the rest of the liberal MSNBC fan club. He and the rest of the Obama groupies were fuming after the debate. Choking back tears of frustration, Mathews demolished the President’s performance with a ferocity beyond…
My Advice for Both Candidates in Tonight’s Debate
In a way, Romney and Obama both need to do the same thing tonight. And no, I’m not talking just about winning. Both Romney and Obama need to make the case for why their preferred policy agenda will actually “empower” Americans. It sounds cliché, and it is; it sounds simple, but it’s not.
Sit Down and Shut Up! (Because we are many and you are not)
This piece by Rebecca Solnit serves as the best example, but there are countless others as well. In short, many self-proclaimed liberals can’t stand that (1) their guy might be just as morally dubious as the other, or that (2) their deepest partisan urges might conflict with their penchant for moralistic hand-wringing. Liberal pundits and…
The Depressing Reality That is Pakistan.
News connected to Pakistan is a bit like reading a George RR Martin novel. It’s grim. It’s depressing. There’s too many characters that come in and out of nowhere and the narrative never seems to arrive at a sensible conclusion. The myriad of interests that intersect and the constant natural and man-made calamities that assault…
A Heretic’s Pilgrimage: My Journey to the 2012 Values Voter Summit
“Who would you rather kiss, Paul Ryan or Justin Bieber?” I turn to see a group of very young women standing directly behind me, each giddy with excitement. It is 6:30 on a Friday morning in Washington, DC, and we are standing in line inside the Omni Shoreham Hotel, waiting to be admitted to the…
Michael Lewis’ Article on the President Demonstrates by Example the Shallowness of Political Journalism
Recalling the inspiration for his profile on President Obama which appeared this week in the pages of Vanity Fair, superstar writer Michael Lewis said, “On a whim, last November, I thought what would be a fun magazine piece to do? Boy, it would be fun to go hang out with the president. So I got…
In Which I Dissect One Harvard Professor’s Tabloid Cover Story (…At Length)
I won’t waste time giving you the context. Niall Ferguson wrote the cover story for Newsweek’s August 19th issue. It is an affront to sound reasoning, intellectual curiosity, and charitable discourse. Here’s why.
Somebody else made that happen—and he’s here to collect
The President has been insisting for some time now that those who earn more than $250,000 a year are not paying their “fair share.” One must assume that the President is aware that these “wealthy” Americans are in fact paying more than their fair share, under any obvious definition of the word. So what exactly…
How Many Drone Deaths are we Cool With?
Taking a cue from Ryan, I’ll post my rant here so as not to disturbm the rest of the symposium. As per usual, nothing gets my heart rate up like a sloppy discussion of the “War on Terror” and how we are to carry it out.
Romney the prankster, Obama the politician
You knew it would get ugly, and now it has. Romney’s character is being called into question as his past as a youthful prankster and loud-mouthed homophobe is coming to light. Recalling an incident at prep school, Romney’s old friend Matthew Friedemann describes Romney’s distaste for another student, John Lauber, who was presumed to be gay:…
Very Well, Say ‘Shibboleth’
~by M.A. Fresh off of reading Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent op-ed concerning the ever-shrinking GOP tent, I had the occasion to sit around for a while listening to one of the local highly-rated talk radio hosts for my area. After about 5 minutes, I decided to grab a notepad, write down the key words and phrases, and start…
