Uncategorized
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Up is down alert: Robert Bork edition
Via Brad DeLong, Reason’s Jacob Sullum shares Robert Bork’s horrifying definition of censorship as freedom (reminder: this man was almost a member of the Supreme Court): The December 19 issue of National Review, marking the magazine’s 50th anniversary, includes a feature in which 10 people offer suggestions on “How to Increase Liberty in America,” to
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David Drier and the WSJ push supply side nonsense
Defending tax cuts the House passed yesterday, David Drier spouted the standard falsehood of supply-siders everywhere: “By cutting taxes, you grow the economy, and you generate an enhanced flow of revenues to the Treasury,” said Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Rules Committee. Revenue is not enhanced by tax cuts; it is reduced
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Dick Cheney’s illogic
Dick Cheney can’t resist linking 9/11 and Iraq, no matter how nonsensical the claim: Some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, we simply stirred up a hornet’s nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway. Here’s Holly Martins at
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Up is down alert: Samuel Alito edition
Ah, the twists and turns of the changing party line. Remember, up means up … until it means down. When President Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, he repeatedly described her as a conservative. During his October 8 radio address, for instance, he said, “Harriet Miers will be the type of judge I
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Vicious attacks on Dean’s dissent
In a political sense, Howard Dean chose his words poorly when he said that “The idea that we’re going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong.” But this is a gaffe in the Kinsley sense — when a politician tells the truth. It’s virtually indisputable that “winning” the war
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The Treasury Department’s junk chart
Last week, the Treasury Department released this fine piece of agitprop: Tapped’s Ezra Klein wonders what was going on in the missing period that the graph omits, and points out that it implies Bush’s 2003 tax cut turned the economy around in a matter of months: Maybe others can decode this bit of Treasury Department
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The 18 provinces line
In his excellent Atlantic Monthly article on building an Iraqi army, James Fallows busts some administration spin about the extent of the violence there: The first major attack on Iraq’s own policemen occurred in October of 2003, when a car bomb killed ten people at a Baghdad police station. This summer an average of ten
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DFA’s purple prose
In an email attacking Dick Cheney’s fundraising on behalf of Tom DeLay (PDF), Tom Hughes of Democracy for America takes peas in a pod metaphors to a whole new level: Is this a momentary lapse in Cheney’s judgment? Not a chance. Right now, his ex-chief of staff faces spending the rest of his life in
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The National Center on Public Policy Research is classy
Here’s a press release that makes me cringe — talk about a lowbrow publicity stunt: The National Center for Public Policy Research is handing out “emissions credits” printed on toilet paper at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal today, to symbolize the failure of the Kyoto Protocol and the futility of emissions trading
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The end of Bill Richardson’s presidential hopes?
The news that New Mexico governor Bill Richardson hadn’t been selected in the baseball draft as he had claimed will probably spell doom for his presidential hopes. It fits too perfectly with the lying politician stereotype, although his share price hasn’t completely bottomed out on the Tradesports futures market: It will soon, though. Tom Ruprecht