Ross Douthat had an admirable column earlier this week arguing that, because we don’t really have strong evidence about the effectiveness of abstinence-only versus comprehensive sex-ed, we should just leave the issue to the states. Douthat says, accurately, that this battle is about “community values” more than public policy anyway. And, he concludes, values should … Read more
John Judis of the New Republic thinks that President Obama has trouble with the white working-class because he’s a yuppie at heart. I think that this is definitely one of Obama’s major problems with this demographic, but I’d add that his yuppie-ness combines with a couple of other factors to create the problem. Specifically, I … Read more
An excellent op-ed in the Crimson today by Hemi Gandhi criticizes Harvard and its students for having a somewhat superficial commitment to green energy. The criticisms of Harvard are, on the whole, more compelling. If the Environmental Science and Public Policy is really so narrowly focused, as Gandhi says, then it’s not the students who … Read more
In a recent email to the university, President Faust invited the Harvard Community to participate in the “Harvard Catalyst & InnoCentive Prize for Innovation.” This experiment in crowdsourcing seeks to bring the Harvard community together to propose new questions and suggest new answers related to Type 1 diabetes. As the website states: “This challenge is … Read more
Well, the Senate just spent a year trying and failing to pass a moderate, compromised-to-hell health reform plan. Which, incidentally, if that is comprehensive reform I’m not really sure I’d like to see their “tinkering around the edges”. However, the important thing is that they managed to defuse special interest anger by buying them off … Read more
Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic’s politics editor, just gave us a glimpse of his daily reading regime, and it surprised me. There’s an astonishing reliance on Twitter, something I’ve purposefully not used as just another source of news (I don’t want really important tweets, like what my friends had for lunch, being lost in the news … Read more
The notion that economics can explain everything about everything (re: Freakonomics) is something that I’ve always regarded as silly and kinda gross. The basic economic model — the super-rational individual relentlessly seeking out his own material self-interest — is almost embarrassingly inadequate. If you want to deal with something like the Global Financial Crisis then, … Read more
The White House signals tactical retreat. Bloomberg’s reversal of support was said to have been crucial, but what it comes down to is massive backlash and genuine anxiety about November 2010. Picture black-and-white footage of the 9/11 mastermind being led through the streets of Manhattan on endless replay in GOP attack ads.
Follow us as we watch President Obama’s State of the Union! Summary: Obama’s State of the Union Address was reminiscent of his victory speech on the day he was elected. He appealed to voters on all parts of the political spectrum by focusing on issues that are at the forefront of the minds of … Read more
I spent this past week complaining about government dysfunction — so I’d be remiss not to mention the Citizens United ruling. Of the many bad things that happened last week Citizens United is probably the most significant. The ruling will make our government worse. How much worse? It’s not clear — some argue that risk-averse … Read more