What the Hell…. …is wrong with Texans? A high school band director has apologized for a halftime performance that included Adolf Hitler’s anthem “Deutschland Uber Alles” and a student running across the field with a Nazi flag. In fairness to the majority of Texans, the shool and its band were roundly booed. AB

Best of the Blogs I got a bit behind in my reading, so here are some highlights from my catching-up: Dan Drezner says that academic faculty are liberal and gives a compelling example from the humanities. Nevertheless, this argument is tiresome. While I’m not in a position to say one way or the other with […]

Good News! You may be more likely to be in poverty, but at least you are also much less likely to have health insurance. AB

Impeachable? A lot of discussion is happening today about the Valerie Plame affair, both in media and in the blogosphere. I’ve even started seeing the word “impeachment” come up in a few places, such as on Brad DeLong’s blog. But there are really two separate questions one can ask about this situation regarding impeachment, and […]

The Birth Tax, Revisited A friend posed an interesting question to me last week: exactly how much of the astonishing change in the finances of the US government is due to Bush, and how much is due to forces outside of his control? Put another way, exactly what is the magnitude of the tax increase […]

Hitting the Fan Calpundit and Marshall are all over these, but the administration is getting hit hard on Iraq, pre-war planning, pre-war intelligence, the purported and promoted Saddam/9-11 link, and The Valerie Plame Affair, all while the performance of the economy remains mixed. Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, and the NYT all have very scathing […]

More Poverty I took this graph from the Census Poverty Report and then identified which presidents were in office during which periods. Notice any patterns? AB

Poverty Up, Income Down The Census Bureau released the 2002 Poverty Report yesterday. In a nutshell, says the NYT, The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.7 million last year, and the median household income declined by 1.1 percent, the Census Bureau reported today. The worsening economic conditions fell heaviest on Midwesterners and […]

Has the CIA Finally Had Enough? MSNBC is reporting this interesting story: WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — The CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations that the White House broke federal laws by revealing the identity of one of its undercover employees in retaliation against the woman’s husband, a former ambassador who publicly criticized […]

Protectionism and Congressional Republicans Brad DeLong has a link to this, from Morgan Stanley economist Stephen Roach: Cries of protectionism can be heard loud and clear in the hallowed halls of the US Congress. America’s jobless recovery has finally reached a breaking point. Republicans and Democrats, alike, are up in arms over the steady attrition […]