Uncategorized
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Up is down: No legislating from the bench (unless you’re conservative!)
RNC chairman Ken Mehlman in an email to supporters yesterday invokes Janice Rogers Brown after claiming that Bush’s nominees are being filibustered because they would not legislate from the bench: Democrats are obstructing President Bush’s nominees because they know that these nominees will strictly interpret the law — not legislate from the bench. Democrats have
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Bush vs. logic: Investing personal accounts in Treasury bonds
Finals blog outsourcing — Brad DeLong carries the ball on Bush’s plan to let you invest your personal account in Treasury bonds. From the press conference Thursday: I know some Americans have reservations about investing in the stock market, so I propose that one investment option consist entirely of treasury bonds, which are backed by
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When the Times attacks
Mickey Kaus catches the New York Times in the act. Here’s how a recent story on Education Secretary Margaret Spellings
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Understatement of the decade
Ed Crane of the Cato Institute speaking about Karl Rove: Crane, who has been pushing to privatize Social Security for decades, blamed Rove for focusing on convincing the country that the system was facing a financial crisis rather than advertising the benefits of personal ownership. ”If you focus on the green-eyeshade approach, people’s eyes are
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Review: Don’t see Kung Fu Hustle
A word of warning — don’t believe all the great reviews for Kung Fu Hustle. It isn’t funny and the action scenes are mostly boring CGI stuff. What a disappointment. I’m sending Stephen Chow a bill for $12.
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The Washington Post’s bad poll question on filibusters
I don’t say this often, but James Taranto is right — the much-touted Washington Post poll showing overwhelming opposition to getting rid of the filibuster for judicial nominations is deeply flawed: The Post’s Phony Poll “Filibuster Rule Change Opposed” is the headline of the lead story in today’s Washington Post. The paper reports on a
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Read Jay Hamilton!
Everyone who cares about the media should read Jay Hamilton’s All the News That’s Fit to Sell, which shows that many of the cultural/political explanations of press behavior that we toss around turn out to have deeper economic foundations. (Bonus: He’s a really nice guy.) Here Brad DeLong paraphrases a profound but depressing comment that
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Fun with RSS
I opened my trusty RSS reader just now and found an, uh, interesting ad inserted into Andrew Sullivan’s feed: Somehow, it seems appropriate…
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Another WSJ lesson in how to deceive with statistics
Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial on the tax code, which concludes that “[t]he U.S. tax system is already ‘progressive’ enough,” uses a common trick: talking about the rising tax share paid by upper income Americans without once mentioning the rising pre-tax income share that they receive. Here’s how the Journal frames it: The authors found
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Brownstein falls for centrist third party fantasy
The centrist/Internet third party meme appears to be catching on. Sadly, the latest victim is Ron Brownstein, one of the best political journalists working today. He begins the column by quoting Joe Trippi, the Johnny Appleseed of this stupid idea: MoveOn, and groups like it on the left and right, chisel at the power of