Month: July 2006
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Rep. Gingrey’s marriage diplomacy
Phil Gingrey, a House Republican from Georgia, has figured out the best US diplomatic approach to the crisis in the Middle East: Another Georgia Republican, Representative Phil Gingrey, said support for traditional marriage “is perhaps the best message we can give to the Middle East and all the trouble they’re having over there right now.”
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Death penalty deterrence: No good evidence
Did you know that many scholars still believe the death penalty deters crime? I didn’t. Among others, Richard Posner, an influential appeals court judge and legal scholar, and Nobel laureate Gary Becker have both recently endorsed scholarship suggesting that the death penalty deters homicide. But a very useful article by John Donohue and Justin Wolfers
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“This American Life”: D.I.Y.
If you missed the episode of “This American Life” that ran last weekend (a rerun from February 2005), do not miss it. It’s the story of the exoneration of a man named Collin Warner for a murder he did not commit after more than twenty years in prison. The person who made it happen is
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Iraq’s cost: Off by a factor of 10
As Paul Krugman points out today, the administration forecast a war cost of $50-60 billion in 2002. Now military commanders are saying we won’t be able to leave until 2016. As Krugman notes, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts a vastly higher cost if US forces stay in Iraq that long (PDF). CBO estimates we have
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Bush to Putin: “Just wait” on Iraq democracy
Yesterday, President Bush held a joint conference with Vladimir Putin in which he made a widely mocked statement touting Iraqi democracy. But a revealing line was missing from early accounts. Here is the correct transcript of the exchange: PRESIDENT BUSH: It’s not the first time that Vladimir and I discussed our governing philosophies. I have
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Tax and revenue: Who’s reality-based?
The Washington Times touts the phony claims of the supply-siders about the latest budget figures: This week’s lower deficit figure has been a shot in the arm for tax cutters in Congress and has reignited the debate over supply-side economics and whether President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts helped or hurt the federal budget.
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A reply to Jay Rosen
Jay Rosen, a well-known professor of journalism at NYU and blogger, comments on my post about the contradiction between President Bush’s statements and the conclusions of his economists: Brendan: I certainly agree that to “make a claim about a new report that your experts contradict in the report is chutzpah indeed,” but I think you
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Andrew Sullivan’s change of heart
In the post-9/11 period and during the war in Iraq, Andrew Sullivan viciously attacked dissenters. But as my former Spinsanity co-editor Ben Fritz points out, Sullivan has reversed his position and has now
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The idiotic Hotsoup.com
How to make a political scientist cringe: A bipartisan group of prominent political strategists on Tuesday announced an Internet information venture designed to interact with America’s opinion leaders and serve as an antidote to the right-left clash that typifies political discourse on the Web. The site, called Hotsoup.com, will debut in October and will be
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The latest treason-mongering
Via Josh Marshall, Rep. Pete Hoekstra suggested that leaks of classified anti-terrorist programs are the work of al Qaeda or countries that are sympathetic to its cause: “More frequently than what we would like, we find out that the intelligence community has been penetrated, not necessarily by al Qaeda, but by other nations or organizations.