[T]he myth of the welfare state fostering a lazy citizenry just doesn’t hold water. A group of small nations (combined population: about 25 million) that came up with Linux, Skype, Ikea, H&M, and Lego — to say nothing of well-written television shows and mystery novels, innovative designers and brilliant architects from Alvar Aalto to Bjarke […]
When Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested Friday night, the celebration was instantly overtaken by an ideologically charged debate. Liberals argued that the government must respect Tsarnaev’s constitutional rights, by which they meant that he should be treated the same as any ordinary criminal suspect—informed of his Miranda rights, supplied with a lawyer, presented to court as […]
Final update: #scotus 80% likely to strike down #doma. J Kennedy suggests it violates states’ rights; 4 other Justices see as gay rights. –Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog, on Twitter And: “The question is whether or not the federal government under a federalism system has the authority to regulate marriage,” Justice Kennedy said during oral arguments. […]
Okay, by now y’all know that I’m not an economist. Nor a statistician. Nor a mathematician. Nor even someone who can easily understand simple line graphs. (Bar graphs work for me, though, I’ve discovered!) But I do know a tad about 20th century American history. So when I read Paul Krugman’s latest blog post, titled […]
In his NYT column today, David Brooks employs his standard column-writing formula of plucking two or more unrelated facts from their context and specifics, putting them into a sequence, and–voila!–suggesting a causal relationship, or at least a relationship of some sort, and therefore some conclusory fact. This time around, he does it in the […]
But several right-leaning fiscal experts described a balanced budget as a tool to force a fractious Congress to tackle the nation’s long-term budget problems. “It is important to reduce the debt, and balancing gets you there faster,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a prominent Republican economist. “That’s paramount.” […]
In this post last weekend, I lamented that Roberts hadn’t asked Nate Silver to weigh in on the voting statistics Roberts employed at the argument last week in the Voting Rights Act case. I also said Roberts & Friends were unlikely to ask him to weigh in on it. Which I’m sure is accurate. But […]
Leaving race aside for the moment (did someone mention that the Voting Rights Act has something to do with empowering black voters – who just might, for some strange reason, prefer Democrats?), what the court’s conservatives seem to see in Section 5 is a threat to state sovereignty — the “sovereign dignity” of the states, […]
Today, in the New York Times: With the Dow Jones industrial average flirting with a record high, the split between American workers and the companies that employ them is widening and could worsen in the next few months as federal budget cuts take hold. … “So far in this recovery, corporations have captured an unusually […]
Both Romneys said he would be more effective at navigating the current political moment. “I’ll look at what’s happening right now, I wish I were there,” Mitt Romney said. “It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done. The president is the leader of […]