Dick Cheney is breaking the mold on how recently-departed vice presidents act. First, he immediately went into attack mode against President Obama. Now, he’s going after President Bush, too. Bart Gelman for WaPo: Cheney’s disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with [...]

Kevin Drum seconds Alex Massie that a British-style nationalized health system is not a politically feasible option in the United States.  Indeed, even Democrats don’t want that: [W]ith the exception of a few outliers, the liberal community really, truly doesn’t want a fully government owned and operated healthcare system like the NHS.  We want a [...]

Dan Miller laments that “the right has basically abdicated its role in the conversation” on health care reform. Health care has been THE liberal project for literally decades; entire careers (not to mention presidencies) have been built around it.  There’s a vast policy apparatus on the progressive side of the aisle built around health care, [...]

Conor Clarke has devised the following chart of the federal effective tax rate paid by the wealthiest 1% over the last 15 years: While he doesn’t “love the idea,” he think it justifies paying for health care for the poor by taxing the rich.  Kevin Drum agrees, adding, The basic story is simple: As their [...]

Kevin Drum patiently explains to the folks at Townhall and NRO that holding a three day convention in a central location for $1071 a person is far from a boondoogle. That’s unbelievable.  SSA must have some world class penny-pinching accountants and event planners on their staff.  I doubt there’s a corporation in America that would [...]

Surprisingly few bloggers of the bloggers I read are writing about GM’s emergence from bankruptcy in a mere 40 days through a rather unorthodox process.  The background: AP: General Motors completed an unusually quick exit from bankruptcy protection on Friday with ambitions of making money and building cars people are eager to buy. Once the [...]

Kevin Drum argues, correctly I think, that British- and Canadian-style socialized medicine is not on the table in the United States and that we should therefore frame the debate in terms of a French- or Dutch-style mixed system.  He further cites Jonathan Cohn‘s argument that these systems are quite good. But in the course of [...]

Kevin Drum links an LAT piece on the “charm” of Irvine, California, a “little planned community” that both conforms perfectly to Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes” stereotype – with houses made out of ticky tacky that all look the same — and seems to make everyone who lives there feel safe and happy.   And, mostly, it [...]

Citing Chris Hayes‘ Nation essay on Democratic-leaning activist groups working to scuttle key progressive programs, Kevin Drum laments “the biggest threat to the Democratic agenda these days isn’t the Republican Party.  It’s the Democratic Party.” But, of course, the same could be said for the Republican Party.  (Or, for that matter, the Libertarian Party.) We’ve [...]

Whether through some odd alignment of the space-time continuum or something else, Kevin Drum and I have independently written posts making essentially identical arguments several times this week.   The Sotomayor pronunciation bit is but the latest example. What’s up with that?

Kevin Drum notes that he’s already tired of the “kabuki” that has emerged in reaction to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. I both agree that the process is predictable and tedious and that Sotomayor would seem obviously qualified for confirmation.  I would quibble, however, with this: Conservatives, who seem constitutionally unable [...]

In a 6-1 decision, the California Supreme Court “upheld a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage” but it “also decided that the estimated 18,000 gay couples who tied the knot before the law took effect will stay wed,” Lisa Leff reports for AP. The 6-1 decision written by Chief Justice Ron George rejected an argument by [...]

Jon Henke Twitters: “The California referendum proves that what voters want to spend is not well-connected with what voters are willing to pay.” Quite right.  Californian Kevin Drum takes as a given that his state is “broken” but sees no solution in sight.  While he’s in favor of Governor Schwarzenegger’s idea of a constitutional convention [...]

Eugene Volokh takes on a pedantic emailer irritated at his use of “the lion’s share” in the way it has been used for the last several centuries rather than the original coinage by Aesop. Kevin Drum independently draws the same conclusions I do re: the reasonableness of networks’ complaints about Obama’s all-too-frequent prime time press [...]

I had occasion to stumble on a post from the OTB archives, “Democrats Threaten to Filibuster Unnamed Court Nominee,” written on September 25, 2005.  What’s interesting in hindsight is how fundamentally the landscape has changed.  Not only is it Republicans now about to be in a position to try to avert a person they deem [...]

Kevin Drum observes, When the subject has anything to do with sex, the right in America is the party of moral absolutes.  We know what’s right, we know what’s wrong, and even if there’s a price to pay we can’t shirk our responsibility to set a proper example and do the right thing. But when [...]

Kevin Drum notes that, in researching an article for the Summer issue of Mother Jones on marijuana legalization, he discovered that no one really knows rather basic facts, such as how many metric tons of the crop are cultivated each year domestically.  Indeed, “virtually all of the research related to cannabis is, perhaps fittingly, sort [...]

A Gallup poll showing that 48% of Americans believe their federal income tax burden is “about right,” and 46% saying it’s “too high” has naturally generated some conversation. Both Dave Schuler and Kevin Drum, though, looked behind the numbers and realized the 48% figure isn’t so impressive once you factor in the fact that somewhere [...]

Responding to Kevin Drum‘s observation that no-phosphate dishwashing detergent suddenly became possible when regulation demanded it, proving that theretofore “The industry just didn’t feel like doing it,” Megan McArdle retorts, “when I look back at almost every ‘environmentally friendly’ alternative product I’ve seen being widely touted as a cost-free way to lower our footprint, held [...]

There’s a consensus emerging among the bloggers I read that taxing AIG bonuses, in addition to being Constitutionally questionable, is just a really bad idea.   Let’s leave aside the conservative die-hards and libertarian types, who might be expected to think that, and concentrate on those on the leeward side of center. Nate Silver offers some [...]

Robert Farley thinks the United States spends far too much on defense. Absent supplementals, the United States currently runs a defense budget of just over half a trillion dollars, a number which does not include defense-related spending in other departments. By the kindest calculations, this means that the U.S. spends roughly four to six times [...]

The attempt by California to tax sweet malt liquors as spirits in order to extract higher tax revenues under the guise of protecting minors from themselves isn’t working out so well. Substance-abuse foes cheered last year when state officials cracked down on sweet, sometimes fizzy, intoxicating drinks such as Mike’s Hard Lemonade that — save [...]

Kevin Drum confesses, “I like articles that have a clear takeaway which I can excerpt and comment on. If there isn’t one, I sometimes put the piece aside and then never get back to it. Bad blogger.” Au contraire. This quality has made Kevin one of the best bloggers out there for more than six [...]

The quote from Kevin Drum that James quoted in this post caught my attention, and I thought it deserved a bit more attention. As Bill Kristol knows all too well, social spending programs, once they get started, tend to be pretty popular. The odds of deep sixing, for example, national healthcare after it’s up and [...]

Ross Douthat has discovered Barack Obama’s evil genius: What Obama does have, though, is an atmosphere of crisis and a massively-unpopular opposition party, which grants him an unparalleled political opportunity to pass whatever spending the Democratic Party likes, and damn the short-term cost. And what you see in his budgeting proposals, I think, is the [...]

Kevin Drum agrees with Duncan Black that it’s fine for Republicans to oppose Barack Obama and the Democrats. He adds, though, that “The filibuster was never intended to become a routine requirement that all legislation needs 60% of the vote in the Senate to pass. But that’s what it’s become. It’s time for reform.” Steve [...]

Meet the new boss — same as the old boss: In a closely watched case involving rendition and torture, a lawyer for the Obama administration seemed to surprise a panel of federal appeals judges on Monday by pressing ahead with an argument for preserving state secrets originally developed by the Bush administration. In the case, [...]

Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats passed an $819 billion “stimulus” package without a single Republican vote. All but 11 Democrats voted for the plan, and 177 Republicans voted against it. The 244-to-188 vote came a day after Mr. Obama traveled to Capitol Hill to seek Republican backing, if not for the package then on other [...]

As everyone knows by now, Bill Kristol’s last NYT column appeared yesterday. Aside from the italicized footer “This is William Kristol’s last column,” it was unremarkable.  Which, most observers on the Left and Right seem to agree, was something it had in common with most of Kristol’s NYT columns and largely explains why the one [...]

Just when I thought I was beyond tired of the Blair House story, Think Progress passes along allegations from Margaret Carlson that the place was available when the Obamas petitioned to move in a few days earlier, that they were lied to and told it was booked, and that John Howard’s stay there was a [...]

Richard Cohen and Ezra Klein are very disturbed by Attorney General-designate Eric Holder’s role in Bill Clinton’s 11th hour pardoning of Marc Rich.  Kevin Drum finds Holder’s role “disturbing” but not disqualifying and hopes he’s learned his lesson. I’m by no means a Clinton fan but the idea that Holder should be held accountable for [...]

Kevin Drum seconds my concerns about conservative public intellectuals and offers two example where the Right isn’t offering useful policy alternatives. Conservatives on Global Warming Take global warming. Here’s the rough conservative reaction to it starting in the early 90s: It doesn’t exist. It exists but it isn’t manmade. It’s manmade, but it’s too expensive [...]

In Saturday’s post “Talk Radio Killed Conservativism?” I observed parenthetically that “most of the best analytical blogs are on the center-left” and promised to elaborate. It’s something that has struck me for quite some time (see, for example, February’s “Rational Conservative Blogs“) and that was brought to mind again with two links at Matt Yglesias’ [...]

Nate Silver uses a combination of regression analysis and wild ass guesses drawn from limited information on challenged ballots to project that Al Franken will come out ahead by a mere 27 votes.  Kevin Drum, for one, is convinced. While I’m less enthralled by Silver’s savant status than most (many came closer to the results [...]

My Palin Derangement Syndrome post got a number of thoughtful responses, especially for a weekend post. My fellow Jacksonville State alumnus Stacy McCain, a Palin fan, thinks the internal debate on her role in last week’s defeat and her future as a Republican Party standard bearer is one we should have.  He objects strenuously, though, [...]

In my latest for New Atlanticist, “Preconditions, Preparations, and Posturing,” I argue that Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum, and perhaps even Nicholas Burns are misreading the now 16-month-old debate over Barack Obama’s pledge to meet “without precondition, during the first year of [his] administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, [...]

We’ve had John Edwards’ haircuts, John McCain’s shoes, Michelle Obama’s snacks (a story that turned out to be untrue), and now, Sarah Palin’s wardrobe. The Republican National Committee has spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August. [...]

Dan Qualye was, rather unfairly in my view, a national joke.  From very shortly after George H.W. Bush picked a rising star senator from Indiana that few outside his home state had ever heard of to be his vice presidential running mate in 1988, Quayle became the butt of late night comics, “Saturday Night Live,” [...]

Kevin Drum reports that, Bush expansion is over, and Brad DeLong describes it as “the first business cycle during which median household income in America falls from peak to peak.” And indeed it is. The closest we’ve come to such a dismal recovery in the postwar era was the dreaded stagflation-driven economic expansion of Jimmy [...]

Kevin Drum has opened the door at his new digs at Mother Jones, where they’ve cleverly named his blog Kevin Drum. Update your bookmarks, feeds, and whatnot accordingly. He’s been at it six years now, as of Saturday, and I’ve been reading him for all but five months of that tenure. We disagree on much [...]

The musical chairs of the center-left blogosphere continue to move.  Kevin Drum is leaving Washington Monthly to take what I presume is a higher-paying gig at Mother Jones and Steve Benen is shuttering Carpetbagger Report to take over Kevin’s old spot.  Oddly, they’ll also be cross-posting most of  Hilary (Hilzoy) Bok’s content from Obsidian Wings.  [...]

Josh Marshall argues that Georgia’s move to re-establish control over South Ossetia and Russia’s subsequent invasion are the fault of the United States, because “we pumped the Georgians up as our big Iraq allies, got them revved up about coming into NATO, playing all this pipeline politics, all of which led them to have a [...]

A colloquium on the Freakonomics blog asking, “What Is the Future of Suburbia?” generated insights from a wide range of experts, a few of whom have apparently been reading too much science fiction or over-indulging in recreational drugs. James Kunstler, for example, opines that, There are many ways of describing the fiasco of suburbia, but [...]

David Broder gets both candidates to agree that the campaign has gotten more bitter than they’d like and is intigued by John McCain’s suggestion, “I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall meetings.” The early blogospheric response to this has come mostly from [...]

So, the day was Friday.  I’m catching up on my RSS reading and came upon this by Kevin Drum: It’s a pretty good bet that any law named after a child is a lousy one. He’s referencing “Sarah’s Law” here but he’s right: laws passed in the emotional wake of one very specific crime are [...]

Josef Joffe pithily captures a point I’ve made repeatedly: In Berlin, hundreds of thousands will cheer a projection rather than a flesh-and-blood Obama on Thursday. After Inauguration Day, alas, Europe and the world will not face a Dreamworks president, but the leader of a superpower. Whether McCain or Obama, the 44th president will speak more [...]

NYT Katharine Seelye reports on a panel on bloggers and swearing at Netroots Nation (the successor to YearlyKos) and finds that the trend is toward less of it and that most of what remains is coming from Amanda Marcotte. Digby Parton, who writes on Hullabaloo.com, said she initially thought of her blog as an ephemeral [...]

The liberal blogs are in a tizzy about the cover of the July 21 New Yorker, an illustration by Barry Blitt which shows the Obamas in terrorist outfits, doing a fist bump with a big portrait of Osama bin Laden over their mantle with an American flag burning in the fireplace: Given that this is [...]

A while back, I asked for reader suggestions on posts but, alas, have published no posts in response to said suggestions.  Most of the suggestions were for posts and post series requiring research.  Three of my colleagues have volunteered to write something in response to suggested topics and I have underway a post on General [...]

Megan McArdle has generated a surprising amount of discussion with a late-afternoon post arguing that “unless the group is overwhelmingly female, the dynamic of any mixed group always defaults to male, with women fading back into supporting conversational roles.”  Further, she contends, “Men gain status by standing out from the group; women gain status by [...]