Eric Posner’s Spot-On Summation of Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court Tenure: Scalia was the consummate hypocrite.
Scalia tried to transform the art of hypocrisy into a science. He failed.
Unemployment “Truthers”
Via Mark Thoma’s Economists View comes Bruce Bartlett’s post at The Big Picture by Bruce Bartlett: Unemployment ”Truthers’‘ Donald Trump and Other Republicans Are Unemployment “Truthers”, The Big Picture: Among Donald Trump’s stump sound bites is that the national unemployment rate is far, far higher than the official rate of 4.9 percent. He is not alone […]
Open thread Feb. 16, 2016
A Question For Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee Members to Ask Sri Srinivasan If Obama Nominates Him to Fill Scalia’s Seat
In private practice, prior to his appointment to the appeals court, Srinivasan successfully represented former Enron Corp CEO Jeff Skilling in a Supreme Court case. The Supreme Court narrowed the reach of the so-called honest services fraud law, invalidating one theory used by prosecutors for Skilling’s conspiracy conviction and ordering further appeals court review. Despite […]
A Slippery Slope Indeed
Mark Jamison has been a guest columnist of the Smoky Mountain News on several occasions now arguing against the addition of the Koch sponsored Center for Free Enterprise. This is another well written expose of why this addition should not be allowed at Western Carolina University. I would point out the flip-flopping going on as […]
What exactly is Clinton proposing that would end racism, sexism, and discrimination against the L.G.B.T. community? Seriously. What proposals of hers is she claiming would DO THAT?
“If we broke up the big banks tomorrow,” Mrs. Clinton asked the audience of black, white and Hispanic union members, “would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the L.G.B.T. community?,” she said, using an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. “Would that make people feel more welcoming to […]
Okay, let’s have a show of hands here: How many of you progressives want Obama to nominate a moderate to take Scalia’s seat? Because the Supreme Court should always be comprised only of arch-conservatives and a few moderates. How many want a former prosecutor, on the theory that the federal bench does not already have enough former prosecutors, and because the Supreme Court is just toooo pro-non-white-collar criminal defendant and tooo favorable to civil rights plaintiffs involved in the criminal-justice system?
Or how about another former Washington corporate mega-law-firm partner? Like John Roberts?! Only moderate. I mean, but what if he or she is an Asian? And would be the first Asian on the Court?! Or a woman? Or, and a woman? Or what if she’s a woman whose husband is a military reservist?! Or is a black former prosecutor, no gender preferred? Or has political experience?! […]
Welfare Reform Killed People
A 20th anniversary reminder that an authentic randomized control trial proved beyond all conventional statistical significance levels and all reasonable doubt that welfare reform killed people. I will just note a very crude calculation. The experimental point estimate is that Florida’s welfare reform caused death rates to increase by 16%. This is a huge gigantic […]
The immediate impact of the death of Justice Scalia [correction appended]
Dan Crawford emailed me shortly after the news broke about Justice Scalia’s death, asking whether I have any random thoughts about it. Here’s what I wrote back: I posted a comment to Bill’s post on the announcement, saying that I think everyone should take a deep breath before saying much of anything. It’s absolutely huge, […]
Reported Today, Associate Justice Scalia Passed Away . . .
The significance and impact on the nation and SCOTUS of his passing goes without saying. If President Obama can appoint a more liberal Justice on the Court, the balance could shift and perhaps some of the nonsense of the court’s previous rulings could be overturned. Thinking of United Citizen, etc. Of course this happening with […]