Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Watching Conservatives Archive
May 13, 2008
Greenhouse-gas footprints and environmental activism
GHG emissions are costs, not sins. They require appropriate pricing, not moralistic ranting. Why is this hard for libertarians to understand?
April 17, 2008
Concerning Megan McArdle
Blue Blogistan ought to be able to distinguish between enemies like Michelle Malkin and honest interlocutors like Megan McArdle. Let's leave fanaticism to the people who know how to do it right.
March 23, 2008
A conservative embraces Obama
As any actual conservative (as opposed to a right-wing radical) must be tempted to do. What is more conservative than defending the Constitutional order against usurpation?
Just in the holiday spirit ...
... I'm defending Glenn Reynolds. He links to an Easter poem by one blogger on a site that also has a racist rant by a different blogger, and Glenn Greenwald attacks Reynolds for it.
February 20, 2008
Inflation and the Right
Here's some disquieting news: The Consumer Price Index rose 0.4 percent in January, a bigger gain than economists had predicted. Over the last 12 months, the index has surged by 4.3 percent, one of the highest year-over-year rates in decades, the Labor Department said. The rise was led by increases in the costs of food, gasoline, shelter, and transportation. The...
February 14, 2008
The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement
Steve Teles's book is out from Princeton, and Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy gives it a nice write-up.
McCain and the wingnuts: a rebuttal
A reader writes:
The anti-McCain movement is completely rational, if one is a member of the VRWC. There is nothing that the VWRC fears more than a patriotic American acting in their name, even if the patriotic American is almost as crazy as they are. Better four years in the wilderness: four years of fundraising and building mutually-supporting VRWC institutions.
February 08, 2008
Romney "graceful"? WTF?
How can a speech that accuses Democrats of wanting to "surrender to terror" be called "graceful"?
February 04, 2008
Biblical criticism
Do right-wing Catholics and fundamentalists simply have a different Bible than the rest of us?
January 14, 2008
January 06, 2008
Will the neo-cons and money-cons swallow Huckabee?
Bill Kristol and the WSJ editorial board seem willing to try. No doubt, to defend their tax cuts they'd bite the head off a live chicken.
December 16, 2007
Libertarian Derangement Syndrome
The Associated Press had a useful article the other day about California Attorney General Jerry Brown's ongoing climate change lawsuit against automakers. The central idea here is that carbon emissions from automobiles constitute a "public nuisance." Although these suits do pose some interesting legal problems, they do not represent a major doctrinal change--at least for the plaintiffs. The people who...
December 10, 2007
Speaking of Clinton Derangement Syndrome ...
... "Re-Defeat Communism" with a picture of Hillary Clinton? WTF?
December 06, 2007
Two More Filibusters
Senate Republicans have now decided to filibuster two MORE critical bills coming out of the House, as well as Senate committees. One bill would amend the Alternative Minimum Tax to give relief to middle-income taxpayers; the other is the energy bill, which would raise federal fuel efficiency standards for the first time in 30 years and set renewable energy portfolio...
November 13, 2007
Working the refs: Climate Change Edition
Andrew Revkin of the New York Times seems to be a conscientious, intelligent reporter. He has a good blog on environmental issues, and strives to be, well, fair and balanced. Which is the entire problem. Revkin has recently announced that there is a group of "environmental centrists" who have tried to take the climate change debate away from the "yelling...
November 08, 2007
Telecom immunity: just asking
Just a question for all those conservative Republicans who are attempting to give retroactive immunity for FISA violations by telecoms: Why was it that amnesty would mean the end of the Republic when it was impoverished immigrant laborers but it is now perfectly acceptable when it is large telecom corporations? And no: the shoe isn't on the other foot. There...
November 06, 2007
Concerning wingnuts and wing nuts
Before there were wingnuts, there were wing nuts. Very handy devices, if you don't carry pliers around with you all the time.
Also, isn't "Kim du Toit" a little bit TOO obvious as the pseudonym of someone who purports to be a testosterone-poisoned right-wing lunatic?
September 18, 2007
African-Americans and the GOP:
The Delegitimization Strategy
If Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and John McCain can't stand up to Tavis Smiley, than how can they stand up to the terrorists? The "leading" GOP candidates refusal to speak to African-Americans, as it was with Latinos, seems in one sense to really be a grave miscalculation--not for the GOP generally (which it is with Latinos but not...
September 17, 2007
Chemerinsky Reinstated
Apparently, UCI Chancellor Drake has backed off and has reinstated Erwin Chemerinsky's appointment as the Dean of UCI's new law school. Good news for the political independence of universities and for southern California; bad news for us here at UCLA Law School, since we now have a new competitor. Drake can't seem to keep his foot out of his mouth,...
August 30, 2007
Great Timing Department
An Iowa trial court has struck down the state's same-sex marriage ban, saying that the ban violates the state's equal protection clause. Insert Larry Craig joke here. In seriousness, I'm wondering how this will play out politically. What will be the reaction when Republicans start lambasting the decision? In the wake of Craig, Ted Haggard, David Vitter, and Bob Allen...
August 29, 2007
Straight-Talk Express, 2007 Edition
John McCain says that Larry Craig should resign from the Senate because he pled guilty to a misdemeanor. Now, of course, David Vitter is also guilty of a misdemeanor, in this case, soliciting prostitution. But you see, Vitter didn't plead guilty, so that's completely different. The fact that Vitter's crime involved heterosexual sex, and that his state has a Democratic...
August 27, 2007
There's More News Than That
I wholeheartedly agree with Mark's sharp-eyed identification of Senator Craig's potential abuse of power. But I disagree that the rest of the story is basically a yawn. The point isn't that Craig is a hypocrite, although that is true. It is that he is a hypocrite who is using his hypocrisy to oppress a vulnerable segment of the population. Larry...
August 23, 2007
Neocon dreams: Bush as President for Life
No, it wasn't a hoax. One of Frank Gaffney's front groups posted on its website an article by one of its "contributing editors" that called for winning the war in Iraq by killing all the Iraqis and then bringing the army home to establish George W. Bush as President-for-Life with dictatorial powers. Where's the outrage?
August 20, 2007
Gaius Iulius Bush? I doubt it.
There's crazy enough genuine stuff on the Family Security Matters website. But I bet the now-scrubbed piece calling for Bush to conquer Iraq and then use the victorious army to establish a dictatorship in the U.S. was scrubbed because it was bogus in the first place.
August 13, 2007
Winners never quit; quitters never ...
Karl Rove left the White House with his work half-done.
August 12, 2007
Bykofsky: where's the outrage?
A right-wing columnist for a large-circulation newspaper calls for another 9/11. Drudge features him. Fox News gives him air time. Then ... silence.
August 10, 2007
Simple Answers to Simple Questions: National Review on Health Care
With apologies to Atrios. From The Plank: When, I wonder, will [the National Review's] editors shed these dishonest scare tactics and begin to analyze the Democrats' actual proposals while offering serious, substantial alternatives? Never. This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions....
August 09, 2007
Fox News: Hit them again--harder
The Horse' Mouth has a nice clip of Neil Cavuto practically begging Democrats to appear on his show. As Greg Sargent accurately notes, this demonstrates the wisdom of the blogosphere's strategy to aggressively attack the right-wing noise machine, which has now moved mainstream in Democratic circles. But since the only thing that terrorists understand is force, the next step should...
August 07, 2007
Free men, free markets, and toxic toys
Libertarian principles in action! Why no celebration?
July 18, 2007
Terminological inexactitude
David Vitter is not a whoremonger, whatever Wonkette may say. He's a whoremaster.
July 13, 2007
Cured!
Peggy Noonan says that no one now believes that loathing the President is a sign of "Bush Deranagment Syndrome. Now THAT's a relief.
July 12, 2007
Ethnic confusion
The mother of Sen. Vitter's natural child is probably a New Orleans Creole, not a Latina as previously speculated here.
Sen. Vitter and the Eighth Amendment
Some obscenely partisan Democrats have proposed a campaign to send dull steak knives to Wendy Vitter, so she can carry out her "Lorena Bobbitt" threat. Have we learned nothing from Abu Ghraib? Yes, Sen. Vitter has disgraced his office, and yes, he voted with the rest of the Republicans to allow torture, but cutting off his pecker with a dull...
July 10, 2007
Sen. Vitter obeys the mitzvah of Gen. 1:28 ...
Apparently his long-term affair with a prostitute (not the one from the Palfrey Escort Services) was blessed with issue.
July 06, 2007
More on Ted Nugent
Quite a resume: NRA Board Member, WSJ op-ed contributor, racist, draft-dodger, child molester.
Is Bush a conservative?
Properly speaking, he isn't. But neither are most of the other politicians who call themselves "conservative." Let's not help them use him as their scapegoat.
July 03, 2007
The Two Minutes' Hate, rock'n'roll style
The Wall Street Journal gives self-described "rock star" Ted Nugent space in which to vent his various hatreds.
June 29, 2007
Cass Sunstein and Judicial Minimalism: The Blindness of the Brilliant
It's a little silly for me to criticize a scholar far more distinguished than myself (a large set), but Cass Sunstein's attempt to explain the Supreme Court's recent term shows that he may too enamored of a pet legal theory to engage in the best legal analysis. Sunstein has long contrasted "judicial minimalists" with "judicial visionaries." The former engage in...
June 22, 2007
The Solution to the Imperial Vice Presidency
By now it has made the rounds into the blogosphere that Dick Cheney has refused to comply with an executive order mandating disclosure of certain expenditures because, he claims, the Vice President isn't part of the executive branch--or, perhaps more precisely, the Vice Presidency has both executive and legislative functions and thus isn't really "in" either branch exclusively. This absurd...
June 13, 2007
Just wondering
Does Linda Chavez know how to generalize?
When thieves fall out ...
Ann Coulter lands on GWB with both feet. She's mostly lying, of course, but it's still fun to watch, in a sick sort of way.
June 02, 2007
Immigration and the fear-and-greed coalition
It's coming apart. Bush's crack about people who "don't want to do what's right for America" was a bad, bad mistake.
May 15, 2007
The plot unmasked
John Hawkins of Right Wing(nut) News has it figured out; liberals are denouncing the "stab-in-the-back" legend now developing about the War in Iraq because we're all part of a vast conspiracy to stab the country in the back.
May 14, 2007
Godwin's law and the New Right
Investor's Business Daily = Der Sturmer? Who knew?
May 07, 2007
The seven fat years, or the seven lean years?
Mitt Romney tells the Regent University commencement that France has instituted seven-year marriage contracts. The Washington Post reports the comment straight, rather than asking what Romney had been smoking.
May 06, 2007
Just asking
Fred Thompson proposed banning PAC contributions entirely. So why are people who hate John McCain because of McCain-Feingold's "assault on free speech" eager to see Thompson run for President?
May 03, 2007
Enlightened Statesmen
My old friend Harvey Mansfield, who I have known for more than a decade, knows more about the Founders than I could ever hope to. But one phrase is absent from the essay that Mark refers to right below: "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." As Harvey notes, whether an energetic executive is an instrument of, or...
"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear"
Harvey Mansfield, in good Straussian style, unmasks the Bushite project of tyranny under cover of ironic praise.
April 20, 2007
Are Iranians subhuman?
John McCain seems to think so. His party seems to agree with him. Feh.
"Conservative" = "Lying racist"? Who knew?
No, it wasn't some shrill lefty who implied that equation. It was Ross Douthat. If I were a non-lying, non-racist conservative, I'd be annoyed.
April 07, 2007
Josif Vissarionovich Biden?
Limbaugh compares Senate Democrats to Stalin. Cheney approves.
March 30, 2007
Confirming the Munchkins
Below, Mark observes that Senate confirmation is not a check on the processes I describe here, because "Too much of the action is in the non-confirmable munchkins like Monica Goodling." Goodling was not, in fact "non-confirmable." Congress has the power to classify any executive branch position it wishes to as subject to confirmation. The constitution states that, "the Congress may...
March 29, 2007
Kookery, cont'd
There's a tension between competence and ideological loyalty. But without a certain amount of loyalty to hold it together, an administration can't get much done, which is a different form of incompetence.
March 04, 2007
Max Blumenthal is a genius
Who but a genius could make me take Ann Coulter's side in a dispute?
Coulter and Republican hypocrisy
Romney, McCain, and Giuliani denounce Ann Coulter (after pausing, fingers to the wind, for 24 hours). Good.
February 27, 2007
Jane Galt sentences Bill Donohue
"Mr Donohue is a man who has chosen being offended as a profession."
February 26, 2007
The Stupid Party and its on-line encyclopedia
If they're not Stupid on principle, why can't they do better than Conservapedia? Maybe asking wingnuts to collaborate in producing a source of accurate knowledge is like asking liberals to listen to talk radio.
February 21, 2007
Schism on the right?
Bruce Moomaw says it's about time for actual conservatives to separate themselves from the fascists, just as the democratic left had to separate itself from the Stalinists in th