The Federalist Papers #74 on insurrections, treason, and the pardon power: an argument that such pardons would be invalid as “arising in a case of impeachment” The Insurrectionists from January 6 are already asking Trump for pardons. Probably the only thing that would hold him back from doing so is his innate selfishness: what would […]
Two hundred years ago this February, Charles Wentworth Dilke anonymously published a pamphlet titled The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties, deduced from principles of political economy. Four decades later, Karl Marx would describe the pamphlet in his notes as an “important advance on Ricardo.” In his preface to volume two of Capital, Friedrich […]
Me – Talk: Recent article on Health Affairs I tapped into and decided to present here at AB. The topic? As expressed in the title, return Medicaid to its former self and improved upon by the new Biden Administration. I also have been working on additional posts touching upon the history of the opioid epidemic […]
Poor Jim Jordan, singled up with no Doug Collins, Trey Gowdy, Darrell Issa, Louis Gohmert, Mo Brooks, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, …, along side him, on 12 and 13 Jan, 2021, tried valiantly, well, at least loudly and indignantly, to pull the Republican wagon out of the ditch; the ditch that they all had taken […]
I want to revisit my earlier post on impeachment. I am more inclined to support impeachment today than I was 6 days ago, although it is still far from clear that impeachment makes sense. Trump has done great damage to this country by making clear that congressional Republicans will allow a lawless, authoritarian president who […]
Populism has a nice ring; ‘will of the people’ and all that good stuff. So, why doesn’t it ever work? Not even in backward nations? Populism is disastrous in a nation as complex as the United States in times as complicated as these. There’s a reason that it never turns out well. Populism feeds off […]
Exploiting the Stupids: The Intellectual Foundation of Movement Conservatism From about the age of 8-12, I read a lot of sci-fi. Along the way, I stumbled across Robert Heinlein, in particular his novel The Day After Tomorrow, initially published as The Sixth Column. It was so crudely racist I avoided from then on anything with Heinlein’s name […]
The Weirdest Thing about Claims of Electoral Fraud Imagine that, on the eve of a national election, a candidate is far ahead in all the polls and seems to be cruising to victory. Then the results come in, and the unthinkable has happened: the candidate has lost handily. Your first instinct would be to take […]
Commenter Dale Coberly asked for this particular story to be posted. Renown Covid Restrictions Defier is Really Asking For A Better Government “We got a government that has taken the stimulus money and gave it to special campaign donors and special interests, abandoning me, and putting me in a position where I have to fight […]
An Appointment I Disapprove Of While many of them could be more progressive, given that Biden himself is largely a moderate making moderate nods to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in his appointments, I have largely been not too dissatisfied with appointments made so far by President-Elect Biden. My only surprise is that […]