Controlling the Rules in Guantanamo Today’s Guardian is running an interesting (and apparently exclusive) story about the legal defense of the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay: US Fires Guantanamo Defence Team A team of military lawyers recruited to defend alleged terrorists held by the US at Guantanamo Bay was dismissed by the Pentagon after some […]
Productivity and Capacity Puzzles The BLS released its revised productivity numbers for the June – September quarter (Q3), which show that productivity leapt by 9.4% over that three month period. The strongest gains in productivity were in the durable goods manufacturing sector – i.e. producers of cars, washing machines, furniture, and capital equipment. That remarkable […]
Looks Like Nader Might Run Via Talking Points Memo, I see that there is a Nader 2004 Presidential Exploratory Committee website now. Not wanting to criticize Nader without cause, I first thought that this might be a site made by someone urging Nader to run, similar to the various Draft Clark sites. So I did […]
Tim Russert is Bob Somerby’s Bi**h There’s not really any other way to read this installment of the Daily Howler. AB
Bush to Repeal Steel Tariffs The Washington Post is reporting that Bush has decided to repeal the steel tariffs. Given the growing crowd of countries that had recently announced that they would retaliate by putting tariffs on US products (as noted by AB in this post), I’m not surprised. As I argued in another earlier […]
More Medicare Part of the reason I made this graph of the just-passed Medicare Prescription drug benefit was to facilitate some clear thinking on the subject by commenters and other bloggers. In this post, Ruy Texiera points out that [Seniors] will be hyper-aware of how much they will and will not be helped by the […]
Era of Big Government, Cont’d. John McCain sums it up nicely: “Congress is now spending money like a drunken sailor,” said McCain, a former Navy officer, “and I’ve never known a sailor, drunk or sober, with the imagination that this Congress has.” [snip] “The administration originally supported an energy bill that would cost about $8 […]
Free Trade and Retaliation Up to now, most of my arguments — and Kash’s — in favor of free trade have been premised on the idea that access to inexpensive imports is good for U.S. consumers and also good for the countries selling the goods. A second line of argument is that when the imports […]
Are Faculty in the Humanities Liberal? Yes, almost surely so. But Stanley Fish, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has what I think is the right response: David Brooks is only the most recent sage to point out that, especially in the humanities and social […]
Even the Pro-Free Trade Paul Krugman Via Matt Yglesias, Paul Krugman offers some thoughts that I think a fair number of Angry Bear readers will agree with: First and foremost, the promise of export-led growth has failed in too many places. In particular, Latin America has signally failed to replicate Asia’s success: Latin nations have […]