Obama Lost Confederacy

Several folks are picking up on this Strange Maps overlay of cotton production in 1860 and the voting patterns in this month's presidential contest between Barack Obama and John McCain: [caption id="attachment_27533" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Overlay of 2008 election and 1860 cotton picking maps."][/caption] While the title "From Pickin’ Cotton to Pickin’ Presidents" is rather amusing, it's precisely wrong.  Indeed, the Strange Maps blogger ...

OTB Radio - Tonight at 7 Eastern

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live tonight from 7-8 Eastern. Dave Schuler and Alex Knapp will be joining me tonight to talk about recent events in the news.  Possible topics include: Should Americans learn other languages? McCain's odd sense of humor Is forced voluntarism slavery or just an oxymoron? Rush Limbaugh's popularity Reforming the War Powers ...

By Any Other Name…

Jonah Goldberg has sparked a minor blogospheric furor for a recent column in which he castigated Barack Obama, John McCain, and others for promoting a compulsory national service program, which he compared to slavery. There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to ...

Jim Webb: Confederate Sympathizer?

Senator Jim Webb, touted by many as a vice presidential candidate who would help shore up Barack Obama with Southerners and those uncomfortable with his lack of national security experience, has an "affinity" for the Confederacy, Politico's David Mark reports breathlessly. He has suggested many times that while the Confederacy is a symbol to many of the racist legacy ...

Prison Rape and the 13th Amendment

Kamal Ghali raises an interesting question in the current issue of the UCLA Law Review. This Article is about the hidden complexity of the textual exception to the Thirteenth Amendment. The amendment mandates that there shall be no slavery “except as a punishment for crime.” At first glance, the exception seems insignificant: The drafters sought to free the slaves, but did ...

Simpsons Quote of the Day

"Slavery it is, sir!" - Apu Nahasapeemapetilon (In honor of Confederate Heritage Month, naturally.)

Quote of the Day

"It seems that April is Confederate Heritage month. Why one would want to celebrate a heritage of violent rebellion against a democratically elected government in order to perpetuate a system of chattel slavery is a bit hard for me to say." -- Matthew Yglesias

Getting it Right on Iraq

Taking a page from Christopher Hitchens' book, Jim Henley admits that he was right on the Iraq War. Predicting ahead of time that a given war is a bad idea isn't particularly hard, frankly. It's a bimodal choice (War/No War) and wars are almost always "bad" in some sense that would be defensible down the road even if ...

Ferraro, Limbaugh, and Racial Politics

Geraldine Ferraro has generated an amazing amount of controversy with her remarks that, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.” And, no, it wasn't for her improper use of the subjunctive but rather because it's "racist." I'd ignored the controversy until now because, well, it's Geraldine Ferraro. (About whom, incidentally, ...

Confederate Flag Flies in South Carolina Primary

The Civil War might have ended 143 years ago but the Confederate battle flag refuses to die as a political issue. The Republican presidential candidates on Thursday moved to appeal to different types of conservative voters before the South Carolina primary, with Mike Huckabee using colorful language to declare the Confederate flag a states’ rights issue and Senator John McCain ...