On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the interesting, vexing, and somewhat hilarious case of Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission. The question before the Court is whether the low-budget hit-piece “Hillary: The Movie” is subject to the financing restrictions of McCain-Feingold, which regulates so-called “electioneering communications.” In other words, is a 90-minute … Read more
In last summer’s issue, I predicted that the seemingly momentous gun-control case of D.C. v. Heller might turn out to be not such a big deal. I was mainly referring to the politics of the decision; it seemed likely to me that Heller would take gun-control off the table, so to speak, and lessen the … Read more
“I’m going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there’s an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened.” -George W. Bush
As a child, I absolutely loved science fiction. Which is why I think it’s so kind of neat that we can now have robots fighting our battles for us; I can absolutely get behind the project of putting fewer Americans in harm’s way. But the use of Predator drones in Afghanistan deeply disturbs me, from … Read more
I loved this post by Ross Douthat, the Atlantic blogger (and future New York Times token conservative columnist!) and wanted to highlight it. In it, he discusses the creeping Europeanization of the United States, and the degree to which it is or is not happening, but moves on to something a little bit more fundamental. … Read more
So it seems matters are coming to a head in Pakistan. Today, anti-government protests in Lahore were confronted by riot police. After violent confrontations, something truly surprising happened: the police broke. They started to defy orders at every level, from the city magistrate on down. The demonstrators are now filling Lahore, and the head of … Read more
The US is hardly the only First World nation which regards the actual text of its Constitution as a bit of an inconvenience. Japan does the same thing (perhaps rather appropriately, since we wrote it for them). Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution prohibits development of an “offensive” military capacity, hence the reason its rather large … Read more
At this point, the only force that continues to pose an effective threat to a progressive agenda is the Democratic Party. Not the party institution as a whole, necessarily; it remains at least nominally devoted to the progressive program. However, its current status as the big-tent party necessarily means that it is composed of a … Read more
As half the world now knows, Bernie Madoff isn’t going to trial. He’s expected to plead guilty on Thursday. From a legal strategy standpoint, the news isn’t very surprising. After all, the case is just about as open and shut as any you can imagine. 1) Investors gave Madoff a lot of money. 2) Madoff … Read more
Free-market economics has an impressive intellectual grounding and makes a lot of sense. It also happens to say that the people who hold all the money and power in our society are the ones who ought to hold the money and power in our society. Both of these statements are hard to argue with. Which … Read more