tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32771972011-04-21T13:56:59.813-04:00Rants and raves about art, politics, the cinema, etc.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comBlogger9171100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790729352002-07-17T14:30:00.000-04:002002-07-17T14:30:15.340-04:00

PERMALINKS BROKEN, POSTS GONE MISSING, PUBLISHING UNAVAILABLE, I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore. The new, Moveable Type-powered site is here: www.MatthewYglesias.com please change your links, bookmarks, etc. and if you're a blogger yourself you might want to consider mentioning the switch and helping me out.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790609252002-07-17T08:23:00.000-04:002002-07-17T08:23:38.043-04:00

JONAH GOLDBERG DOES SOME NICE lightly-humorous France bashing but then says that the real trouble is the enemy within — France-loving left-wing American intellectuals:I've grown tired of these French-bashing columns because there's not much left to say about a nation of 200 cheeses and one kind of toilet paper. Besides, the real threat isn't the frogs across the pond. The real threat is their

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790605302002-07-17T08:06:00.000-04:002002-07-17T08:06:48.000-04:00

JASON RYLANDER (PERMALINKS FUBAR) discusses plans to divide the 9th Circuit:The Ninth Circuit, which serves some 54 million people, is immense--almost 60 percent larger than the next biggest circuit. There may be legitimate arguments for dividing the court. But as Murkowski's statement makes clear, this proposal isn't about balancing workloads or improving efficiency. It's about punishing the

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790603432002-07-17T07:56:00.000-04:002002-07-17T08:00:46.000-04:00

THE BUSH PLAN TO DEAL WITH corporate accountability — pretend to favor tough measures and get the House Republican goon squad to water down the bill. This is a common tactic we've seen Bush employ when faced with popular legislation like the Patients' Bill of Rights or McCain-Feingold — work, work, work behind the scenes to get friendly legislators to kill the thing and then sign it if it gets

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790602932002-07-17T07:53:00.000-04:002002-07-17T07:53:30.726-04:00

DEMOSTHENES IS SKEPTICAL of the merits of populism and I tend to agree. There's a difference between finding policies that will really benefit the weak and the underprivileged and finding policies that will appeal to the various resentments out there in the world.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790602372002-07-17T07:51:00.000-04:002002-07-17T07:51:39.050-04:00

JOSH MARSHALL READS NEWSWEEK's interview with Halliburton CEO David Lesar and says Cheney is toast. To think, this was supposed to be the guy who gave the administration gravitas.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790601702002-07-17T07:48:00.000-04:002002-07-17T07:48:32.313-04:00

THE IRA SAYS THEY'RE SORRY for all those dead civilians. It's sort of easy to mock this as too little too late, but it is progress and it shows both that Clinton's peacemaking efforts and Bush's stigmatization of terrorism are paying some dividends. I think it's unfortunate that partisanship has tended to create a dichotomy between the foreign policy orientations of our two most recent presidents

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790600242002-07-17T07:40:00.000-04:002002-07-17T07:40:26.586-04:00

THE RITTENHOUSE REVIEW QUOTES Alan Greenspan at length on the evils of sloppy fiscal policy and points out that times of war, with their attendant increased government expenditures, have traditionally resulted in either tax increases or else the horrors of the 1970s:For decades Republicans have chastised the long-since-buried former President Lyndon B. Johnson for his failure to raise taxes to

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790373202002-07-16T18:24:00.000-04:002002-07-16T18:24:15.743-04:00

I'M ALL WITH OLIVER WILLIS on this issue:The most ridiculous argument from the right in light of these corporate scandals has been that the market is "correcting itself". Here's the deal, slappy: The market is a great and beautiful thing if we play by the damn rules. These people aren't playing by the rules.I would add, though, that the sentiment that the market is great and beatiful if and only

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790370942002-07-16T18:17:00.000-04:002002-07-16T18:17:37.440-04:00

I'M REALLY INTO THE TEXT OF THE open letter of support to the people of Iran. In fact, I'm so into it that I kind of wonder why the same sentiments can't be expressed toward the people of Syria, China, Saudi Arabia, Zaire, Myanmar, and the rest of the dictatorship-plagued world.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790352452002-07-16T17:26:00.000-04:002002-07-16T17:26:06.583-04:00

CHARLES KUFFNER POINTS OUT that a majority of Texans support universal health care and thinks it bodes poorly for the Republicans. Now I agree that health care is a major Republican vulnerability, but I wouldn't get my hopes up yet. I studied public opinion on health care in a class last semester and pretty consistently a majority of people support universal health care in the abstract, but there

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790349592002-07-16T17:17:00.000-04:002002-07-16T17:18:05.000-04:00

WITH SLATE ASKING is pornography good for women's rights? I think I should say that I'm pretty damn sure it doesn't. All the Volokh post that prompted the headline shows (and, to its credit, all that it claims) is that toleration for pornography correlates with women's rights. Typically the relationship between correlation and causation is hard to figure out, but in this case it just seems

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790343952002-07-16T17:02:00.000-04:002002-07-16T17:02:13.383-04:00

WE'VE ALL HEARD ABOUT PRESIDENT BUSH's sky-high approval ratings, but less discussed is his poor showing on the question of would you vote for him? (link via TAPPED) I would suggest that post-9/11, the "approve" question has taken on a new meaning. Whereas previously it was understood that the question was implicitly asking whether you approved of the president's performance relative to the

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790267322002-07-16T13:48:00.000-04:002002-07-16T13:48:36.456-04:00

TED BARLOW extracts an interesting point from Justice Scalia's tirade against democracy — the deep conservative/libertarian divide. I didn't used to think much about libertarians until I started blogging and noticing them all over the place. The reason I didn't notice them, I think, is that ordinary people with more-or-less libertarian views seem to just meld seamlessly into the Republican

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790150422002-07-16T08:15:00.000-04:002002-07-16T08:15:25.360-04:00

PAGING MICKEY CAUSE: Welfare Roles on the Rise Again. I

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790150102002-07-16T08:14:00.000-04:002002-07-16T08:19:55.000-04:00

RICHARD COHEN DISCUSSION OF A POSSIBLE switch to put Colin Powell on the ticket as Vice-President misses the point:As for conservative Republicans who don't like Powell's pro-choice, pro-affirmative action stance, they might, of course, stay home. But they would surely not vote for any Democrat currently being mentioned as a presidential candidate.Not only would conservatives be upset about

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790149022002-07-16T08:09:00.000-04:002002-07-16T08:09:47.526-04:00

I CAN'T BUT HAVE THE FEELING that any piece of legislation that passes the Senate 97-0 must not be posing much of a threat to any of the vested interests in this country and therefore probably doesn't go far enough. It's hard to think of something worth doing that wouldn't be worth someone's while to try and stop.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790147702002-07-16T08:02:00.000-04:002002-07-16T08:02:24.330-04:00

NO LONGER FLUORESCENT The newly redesigned Libertarian Samizdata is looking better than ever and no longer lists me as a "haven of fluorescent idiocy" along with assorted neo-Nazi and hard-line anti-capitalist sites. Of course, that's largely because there no longer is a haven of fluorescent idiocy section on their links list. Oh well.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790145312002-07-16T07:48:00.000-04:002002-07-16T07:48:52.206-04:00

KRUGMAN'S THROWING FIRE yet again. I like Krugman and I'm sure others don't, but it seems to me that one way or another his true calling was writing press releases for the DNC.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-790144912002-07-16T07:47:00.000-04:002002-07-16T07:47:03.140-04:00

THERE'S NOTHING I LIKE LESS than conservative southern democrats, but there's nothing I like more than the prospect of a black democrat as Senator from Texas so, all things considered, I'm psyched:"This is a very surprising race in a very surprising place, the political equivalent for Democrats of found money," wrote Charles E. Cook Jr. in the most recent issue of The Cook Political Report, a

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789986692002-07-15T21:59:00.000-04:002002-07-15T21:59:04.220-04:00

ALEX FRANTZ ISN'T FEELING quite as upset as he used to about Harkengate:A story in the LA Times today gives new information on Bush's sale of Harken stock. The story does seem to clear up some questions that I've been wondering about - one key point is that it seems clear the decision to drop the case was made by lower level investigators and not by Bush appointees.I don't think this matters —

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789907082002-07-15T17:55:00.000-04:002002-07-15T17:55:49.443-04:00

EUROPE ON THE MARCH: This article about the Euro passing the one dollar mark makes the whole question of whether or not the Euro can remain stronger than the dollar over the long-term seem to be just a pointless question of symbolism. In reality, however, the fact that the US dollar is the "safe" currency of choice for foreign governments, drug smugglers, and scared grannies keeping cash under

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789862582002-07-15T15:59:00.000-04:002002-07-15T15:59:06.373-04:00

MARTIN PERETZ IS ON TO THE vast corruption-oil-terrorism nexus surrounding Harken Energy, Robert Johnson, James Baker, the House of Bush, and the House of Saud:Bush's personal attorney at the time, the man who defended him against the SEC, was a man named Robert W. Jordan, formerly a partner at Baker Botts LLP. The Baker referred to therein is none other than James Baker, secretary of state to

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789857022002-07-15T15:44:00.000-04:002002-07-15T15:44:39.920-04:00

DO I SMELL SOME DANGEROUS jingoistic unilateralist nationalism in Brendan O'Neill's intemperate rejoined to critics of his criticism of blogging?

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789855502002-07-15T15:40:00.000-04:002002-07-15T15:40:40.616-04:00

CHARLES DODGSON IS DISTURBED that Antonin Scalia thinks his powers come from God, not the constitution. This strikes me as an odd stance for a "strict constructionist" of the constitution to take, but it certainly would explain the ruling in Bush v. Gore.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789829212002-07-15T14:33:00.000-04:002002-07-15T14:33:54.400-04:00

PRIVATEER RAISES THE QUESTION: are assassins terrorists? A question made newly-relevant, of course, by the attempt on Jacques Chirac's life. It seems to me that this sort of thing has a lot in common with what was known as "terrorism" in the first half of the twentieth century, when it was practiced by, say, the Russian SRs, Michael Collins and the original IRA, or Menachim Begin in the Irgun.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789820452002-07-15T14:11:00.000-04:002002-07-15T14:11:31.170-04:00

HAPPY NEWS: disgusted by the mounting quantity of Blogger/Blogspot service difficulties, I've invested in some server space of my own and acquired MoveableType. I'll start posting at the new address www.MatthewYglesias.com in a few days when DNS Propagation (isn't that a cool term?) should be complete.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789698102002-07-15T08:20:00.000-04:002002-07-15T08:20:04.953-04:00

THE WEEKLY STANDARD nicely skewers the "puzzled" officials investigating the LAX shooting. Note the speed with which French investigators determined that their would-be assassin was motivated by the politics of the far right and compare with the head-scratching of the FBI when faced with an anti-semitic, anti-Israel, anti-American, Arab immigrant who shoots up an Israeli airpline on the 4th of

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789696302002-07-15T08:09:00.000-04:002002-07-15T08:09:37.736-04:00

SEBASTIAN MALLABY'S GOOD COLUMN on why corporate compensation is out of control is virtually identical to this story from The Economist which I guess is okay because they're both just summaries of what's in this paper soon to be published in the Chicago Law Review, though the Post annoyingly had no link.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789694782002-07-15T08:01:00.000-04:002002-07-15T08:01:05.053-04:00

SULLY ON PAT TILLMAN:Better still, he won't even give an interview about his decision. Real men don't gab to the press. They don't spin, they act. In an age when we read of CEO's robbing their own shareholders for obscene pay-offs, when the last president of the United States declared as ethical only what you could get away with, and when large swathes of the intelligentsia can find reasons to

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789693812002-07-15T07:56:00.000-04:002002-07-15T07:56:35.923-04:00

IT LOOKS TO ME LIKE THE DEMOCRATS are finally getting it together on foreign policy and finding criticisms of the administration other than the nebulous charge of "unilateralism." They're going to need to work hard to avoid falling into the trap of parroting the Euroleft/New York Times point of view that the problem here is that we haven't been nice enough to "moderate" Arabs or sufficiently

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789692562002-07-15T07:49:00.000-04:002002-07-15T07:49:54.136-04:00

IN THE WEEKS SINCE BUSH'S BIG SPEECH on the Middle East, Ariel Sharon has done what everyone said couldn't be done — found a military solution to the suicide bombing problem. It seems to have come as such a shock to our friends across the Atlantic that everyone shut up for a while, but never fear the bitching and moaning from close NATO ally, and "moderate" Arab tyrant alike are back in full

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789567062002-07-14T23:09:00.000-04:002002-07-14T23:09:07.800-04:00

INTERESTING TIDBIT IN THIS week's edition of the always delightful punditwatch:Fox’s Tony Snow showed three contrasting clips of network reporting on Klayman. He was always “conservative” when filing suits against Clinton; he was a “watchdog” filing against Cheney.I've noticed this change in labeling too and I've heard other conservatives complain about it. When you think about it, though, the

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789534982002-07-14T21:40:00.000-04:002002-07-14T21:40:44.173-04:00

GOOD NEWS FROM CORPORATE AMERICA: Coca-Cola — America's greatest achievement since the separation of powers — has decided to admit what neither the Republican nor Democratic Parties can: Stock options are an expense.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789486472002-07-14T18:56:00.000-04:002002-07-14T18:56:03.000-04:00

JASON RYLANDER LOOKS AT the latest revelations and sees payback time for the Democrats:Defenders will claim it's old news, but hey, so was Whitewater. That's nothing that $70 million and an independent counsel couldn't fix.The Independent Counsel statute, of course, is no longer on the books and rightly so. I imagine that as more information comes out that some people will be calling to bring it

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789441732002-07-14T16:22:00.000-04:002002-07-14T16:23:15.000-04:00

MATT WELCH RESURFACES ONCE AGAIN with an LA Daily News story slamming the FBI for it's see no terrorism approach to the LAX shooting. The key point, I think, is this:It does not take a particularly agile mind to figure out that there is nothing contradictory about the terms "isolated incident" and "terrorism" -- what was Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City massacre, if not an isolated act of

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789424932002-07-14T15:23:00.000-04:002002-07-14T15:23:01.630-04:00

I AND THE REST OF THE BLOGOSPHERE LEFT have been giving Kaus a hard time since his MWO-as-terrorists post, but today's musings about this Atlanta Journal Constitution story on interracial dating are interesting even if you don't subscribe to the welfare-reform-solved-everything worldview. Nevertheless, I couldn't help wondering while reading the story what kind of people would agree to have their

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789383472002-07-14T12:47:00.000-04:002002-07-14T12:47:09.343-04:00

PASHTUN BIAS WATCH: This Economist article about America losing the peace in Afghanistan refers to the Pashtuns as a "majority ethnic group." Readers of yesterday's post on the subject will recall that only 38% of Afghans are Pashtun — making the people of the Burkha Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, but far from a majority. Reader John also noted in yesterday's comments that the destruction of

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789368532002-07-14T11:43:00.000-04:002002-07-14T11:43:52.913-04:00

ANDREW KOHUT GIVES US THE SKINNY on public opinion and the 2002 Congressional elections.Little wonder that when voters consider the subjects they want their local candidates to debate come the fall, about as many mention the economy as mention terrorism. One in five voters in Pew's latest survey say they want this fall's candidates to talk about terrorism and national security. But economic and

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789367022002-07-14T11:38:00.000-04:002002-07-14T11:38:13.923-04:00

JACQUES CHIRAC WAS THE TARGET of an assassination attempt by a far right-winger. Are we gonna hear now from Kaus about the threat of right-wing political violence and the danger posed by flinging around Coulter/Sullivan/Kaus-style accusations of violent, treasonous fifth-columnists in our minds?

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789366392002-07-14T11:35:00.000-04:002002-07-14T11:35:20.090-04:00

ORDINARY INVESTORS ARE losing hope in the markets, but George W. Bush is still bullish, since when you have insider information companies' real financial situations then you don't really need to be able to trust accountants' reports.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789365582002-07-14T11:31:00.000-04:002002-07-14T11:31:19.400-04:00

ROB HUMENIK (WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM DAVID BRODER) JUMPS on the Howard Dean bandwagon. It appears that the combination of being from a rural state and being pro-gun (or at least not-anti-gun) does cause people to look at you in a different way even if on the big issues of taxes and spending you're more-or-less preaching the party orthodoxy.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789139992002-07-13T17:38:00.000-04:002002-07-13T17:38:44.253-04:00

I'VE ADDED A BUNCH OF NEW LINKS the left-hand side of this site over the past few days. I've been noticing a lot of good new blogs recently, but I may have missed some in the shuffle, so if you feel like your site is worthy of a link from this prestigious outlet please send an e-mail and let me know.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789072052002-07-13T13:23:00.000-04:002002-07-13T13:26:57.000-04:00

PASHTUN BIAS WATCH: The WaPo in a story about the latest complaints from from the Western media's favorite Afghan ethnic group (the folks who brought Afghanistan the Burkha, Golubdin Hekmatyar, and the Taliban), says:Pashtuns account for nearly half the Afghan population and have traditionally ruled the ethnically diverse country, while minority Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and other smaller groups

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789053992002-07-13T12:08:00.000-04:002002-07-13T12:08:46.770-04:00

CONNECT THE DOTS: Bush's lawyer in the dubious Harken Energy trading embroglio was none other than Robert W. Jordon our current ambassador to the Saudi entity. Anyone who looks at our Middle East policy without blinders on can see that the administration is not employing some kind of brilliant rope-a-dope strategy — it's dancing to the tune of the same energy-industry benefactors who pull the

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-789029262002-07-13T10:12:00.000-04:002002-07-13T10:12:36.966-04:00

HALLIBURTON, WHICH DICK CHENEY USED TO RUN (with the help of advice "above and beyond usual accounting" from Arthur Andersen) is now getting some non-fraudulent profits through big time government contracts.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788943072002-07-13T01:34:00.000-04:002002-07-13T10:01:47.000-04:00

FOXES GUARDING THE HENHOUSE WATCH: let's see Ari Fleischer spin this one away — Bush's top corporate watchdog was the chairman of the audit committee of a company fined for fraud.UPDATE: Win Fitzpatrick writes:I'm positive that the WH spin will be: Of course, he knew nothing. The Sgt. Schulz defense. This, of course, raises the question: If the guy was so oblivious that he couldn't ferret out

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788942212002-07-13T01:31:00.000-04:002002-07-13T01:31:47.323-04:00

PEJMANPUNDIT SAYS THE CORPORATE SCANDALS won't make a good issue for the democrats since democrats have been complicit in the abuses. Maybe, but people don't vote for parties, they vote for individual candidates, and so even if one judges that both parties have been equally at fault, the tainting of current officeholders should be good for challengers and bad for incumbents. Since the Republicans

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788939212002-07-13T01:22:00.000-04:002002-07-13T01:22:31.313-04:00

SASHA VOLOKH'S OLD LAW REVIEW ARTICLE on the old saying that it's better to let ten guilty men go free than have on innocent man be punished is really funny. Really. Especially the sacrilicious first part.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788799992002-07-12T17:44:00.000-04:002002-07-13T01:05:01.000-04:00

ARG! ALL THE POSTS I'VE WRITTEN aren't posting. And blogger keeps insisting that I last published at 2:35 PM no matter how many times I try to republish.UPDATE: As you can tell from the fact that you're reading this, the problem seems to be solved.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788764002002-07-12T16:03:00.000-04:002002-07-12T17:33:26.000-04:00

BRENDAN O'NEILL COMPLAINS that many blogs are poorly written. I agree. It's as though any old person can just go set up some website for free and start writing whatever the hell he wants to and consumers need to decide for themselves which sites are worth reading and which should be ignored. The horror. The horror. We need some standards here people!

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788752402002-07-12T15:31:00.000-04:002002-07-12T15:31:04.886-04:00

ROBERT REICH IS WEIGHING IN on the corporate scandals. Only problem — he's running for governor of Massachusetts an office that has just about nothing to do with resolving this situation. This sounding off on issues that need to be resolved at the national or even international level has been a consistent theme of the Reich campaign so far, providing the best evidence out there that the whole

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788748812002-07-12T15:22:00.000-04:002002-07-12T16:06:17.000-04:00

IMPORTANT ETIQUETTE QUESTION: My girlfriend and I broke up about three weeks ago and I've been wondering whether or not I should take her off my AIM Buddy List now. Is that how you get closure? Goddamn information age.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788742592002-07-12T15:07:00.000-04:002002-07-12T15:07:44.030-04:00

COPS IN LA BEAT UP A SUSPECT, get caught on videotape, and then react by arresting and beating the videotaper not the offending officers. Nice work boys.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788741222002-07-12T15:04:00.000-04:002002-07-12T15:05:11.000-04:00

CHARLES DODGSON IS BACK and he's none too happy about Bush's Harken Energy shenanigans or the "liberal" media's coverage of the story.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788670592002-07-12T11:56:00.000-04:002002-07-12T17:35:23.000-04:00

TAPPED SAYS, LET THE GUN NUTS HAVE THEIR WAY and arm pilots, that way when something goes wrong, the GOP and the NRA will have to take the blame. I guess they're joking, but for TAPPED to wish for the deaths of hundreds of people in order to provide an opportunity to score political points is really kind of immoral. I also don't really think this guns on planes idea is that bad, but it's not good

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788665422002-07-12T11:43:00.000-04:002002-07-12T11:43:32.053-04:00

YESTERDAY I RECOMMENDED Win Fitzpatrick's Homeobox but actually just provided a link to myself. Anyways, this link works, click on it and be enlightened.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788661362002-07-12T11:32:00.000-04:002002-07-12T11:37:28.000-04:00

I'M TAKING INTENSIVE SPANISH CLASSES this summer, so I thought I'd give blogging El Pais a try. Other than a non-functioning opinion page (it kept giving me their June 26 op-eds) I also see that former Argentinian junta leader Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri is now in prison for the various crimes of his rule: El ex general Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, presidente de Argentina entre 1981 y 1982,

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788649972002-07-12T11:02:00.000-04:002002-07-12T11:02:45.710-04:00

THE POOR MAN SAYS John Derbyshire is off his ten worst media figures list. The replacement — Bill "no spin" O'Reilly.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788631702002-07-12T10:12:00.000-04:002002-07-12T10:12:50.526-04:00

THE WASHINGTON POST DISCUSSING MY tentative favorite presidential candidate Howard Dean says he's trying to follow in Jimmy Carter's footsteps, but if you look at it, I think you'll see that Jed Bartlett's campaign is the real model here. If I were Dean I'd be working hard for Aaron Sorkin and/or Martin Sheen's endorsement at this point.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788627502002-07-12T10:00:00.000-04:002002-07-12T10:00:04.636-04:00

DEMOSTHENES PROVIDES AN ELOQUENT DEFENSE of the point-of-view that's slowly destroying American liberalism — the adoption of realist (or "neo"-realist) attitudes toward international relations. Me, I'm a liberal, and I think that means I ought to have a liberal attitude toward international relations — bear any burder, shoulder any load, the whole deal. Demosthenes points out — as opponents of

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788624832002-07-12T09:52:00.000-04:002002-07-12T09:52:08.270-04:00

LOOKS CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS ARE starting to break ranks on corporate oversight legislation, and it's about time. Bush really had done a remarkable job of keeping his party pretty solidly behind him pre-September 11, especially considering that he wasn't exactly elected in a landside. After 9/11, of course, he was untouchable to his fellow Republicans, and that's what's so significant about

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788619742002-07-12T09:35:00.000-04:002002-07-12T09:35:23.750-04:00

WILL HUDSON HAS WRITTEN SOME PRETTY INTERESTING "confessions of a conservative" though I think "confessions of an ex-liberal" would express his views better. I don't, needless to say, agree with his conclusion that liberalism is not "rationally defensible" or think that people should become conservatives, but I always think it's interesting to hear from people why they came to hold their

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788525042002-07-12T02:00:00.000-04:002002-07-12T02:00:55.543-04:00

I'VE BEEN GETTING SOME CRITICISM LATELY for my insistence in this blog that libertarians ought to be opposing any form of government funding for public schools and in favor of letting sad orphan children die in the streets. These, I am told, are straw man positions not held by any sensible libertarians who just want freedom and other good stuff. To be clear, let me admit that while I've known a

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788516732002-07-12T01:32:00.000-04:002002-07-12T10:15:29.000-04:00

READING ANDREW SULLIVAN'S post on this Michael Kinsley column I'm once again struck by the sense that Sullivan hasn't really read the articles he's bashing. Kinsley, as I read him, wasn't telling the president to "punt" on Iraq as sullivan would have it, rather he was asking the president to lay his cards on the table. Lots of rightwingers out there now take it as axiomatic that Saddam must be

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788351492002-07-11T17:19:00.000-04:002002-07-11T17:26:22.000-04:00

THE AMERICAN PROSPECT IS DOING an excellent job of leaving the bogus church-state issue aside and trying to raise some of the many legitimate reasons to worry about them. In my own eccentric view it's not really worth worrying so much about school quality. The key thing is not that everyone (or anyone, for that matter) get a good education — the key thing is that everyone get (roughly speaking) a

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788342352002-07-11T16:57:00.000-04:002002-07-11T16:57:12.370-04:00

OF COURSE, WE COULD ALSO LEARN a thing or two from the Saudi's about economic management. After all, things have been approving a lot over the years and Saudi's now constitute over 4% of the Saudi work force. But why do so few Saudis manage to get private sector jobs? Why, discrimination, of course:On the contrary, young Saudis seeking employment argue that the recruitment practices of private

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788340502002-07-11T16:52:00.000-04:002002-07-11T16:52:59.926-04:00

REMEMBER HOW SAUDI ARABIA'S been spending millions of dollars funding schools to spread radical Islamism abroad while many of their own people live in poverty without jobs or real education? Well guess what kids, the good times are coming to America. That's right, our peace loving allies are raising money to build the Dar-us-Salam Center which "will seek to influence the US government’s social,

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788336942002-07-11T16:44:00.000-04:002002-07-11T16:44:41.170-04:00

THE NATION REPORTS, WITH BATED BREATH, that George W. Bush is trying to fill the courts with rightwing judges. Shockingly, these rightwing judges plan to engage in all sorts of bad-judge behavior — undermining abortion rights, undermining civil rights, letting corporation run amok, etc. Somehow I and millions of other Gore voters (and millions of Bush voters, come to think of it) were able to

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788331972002-07-11T16:33:00.000-04:002002-07-11T16:33:04.436-04:00

THE NEW REPUBLIC CALLS BUSH'S BLUFF on corporate reform:The president's calculation seems to be that as long as he has a plan, any plan, the public won't be able to tell the difference between real reform and sham reform. After all, it's worked for him before.The good news is that you can't trick people into thinking the economy's performing well. You've either got a job or you don't. Your 401 (k

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788321642002-07-11T16:06:00.000-04:002002-07-11T16:06:43.516-04:00

MAX SAWICKY JOINS THE CROWD denouncing the bogus concept of corporate responsibility. The idea that what's needed is for important and powerful people and actors to behave "responsibly" is very much in line with the House of Bush's ethic of noblesse oblige but it's not something for sensible people to believe in. A system of laws was created in this country designed to allow people to create

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788310112002-07-11T15:38:00.000-04:002002-07-11T15:38:35.873-04:00

OXBLOG IS BACK and correctly noting that our farm policy has gotten so bad that the Europeans are giving us shit about it and they're totally right.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788279492002-07-11T14:19:00.000-04:002002-07-11T14:19:50.733-04:00

AS WE ALL KNOW, EVERYONE IN WASHINGTON agrees that it's important that the security of our "homeland" not be compromised by petty turf-protecting desires. Of course, the good people on the House Transportation Committee are smart enough to see that their turf is the exception and that the mission of the Coast Guard is so vital to the American transportation system (what would I do if I couldn't

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788269982002-07-11T13:57:00.000-04:002002-07-11T13:57:08.833-04:00

JUST VISITED WIN FITZPATRICK'S SITE for the first time and his webcounter told me I was visitor number 2. He definitely deserves better than that — check it out.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788269182002-07-11T13:55:00.000-04:002002-07-11T13:55:13.270-04:00

ROBERT MUSIL HAS A GOOD FOLLOW-UP to an earlier post of mine on the status of illegitimate governments that does a nice job of balancing the competing concerns raised by the problem. My one quibble would be that Musil seems to focus too much on the consequences of individuals actions and not enough on the potential long-term benefits of establishing a system of rules. There are many cases where

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788262082002-07-11T13:36:00.000-04:002002-07-11T13:36:16.963-04:00

INSTAPUNDIT REACTS WITH PLEASANT SURPRISE that Massachusetts is going squishy on gun control but it's important to keep in mind here that despite my school-year home's reputation for ultraliberalism, is not really very far left on guns due in no small part to the fact that major gun manufacturers like Smith & Wesson are actually based in Massachusetts.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788161582002-07-11T08:30:00.000-04:002002-07-11T13:23:52.000-04:00

DAN SAVAGE, REGULAR AUTHOR OF THE better-than-anything-else "savage love" sex advice column has a new piece out about the left-wing case for war. I'm a bit nostalgic for those good old days of September, October, and November when I got to have that argument constantly, but as Savage reminds us the possibility of war with Iraq will once again raise the question of whether the left will counter

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788004172002-07-10T22:32:00.000-04:002002-07-10T22:32:10.320-04:00

MICHAEL KINSLEY SAYS FROM THE LEFT something I've also been hearing from the more thoughtful sectors of the right, we need a real debate on Iraq. I'm open to the idea of a war if we had a reasonable plan for life after Saddam and some kind of theory as to why an invasion wouldn't just result in a massive chemical weapons attack on Israel. Maybe these problems are solvable. Maybe the kids down in

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-788000942002-07-10T22:23:00.000-04:002002-07-10T22:23:57.000-04:00

THOSE ON THE LEFT WHO THINK of the DLC as nothing but a bunch of sellouts should be glad to see them throwing some punches at the White House for their record of lies, drift, and obstructionism:We can understand why the White House is trying to allay the general impression that the Administration is in a rudderless, reactive, and defensive posture on a wide range of foreign and domestic policy

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787905222002-07-10T16:34:00.000-04:002002-07-10T16:34:47.616-04:00

JULIE HILDERN EXPLAINS THE INS AND OUTS of your precious right to remain silent (well, Bernie Ebbers' right to remain silent, really), reminding me of a discussion I had with a friend a few days ago — why do you have a right to remain silent? Because it's in the constitution, of course, but why is it there? The other rights given to defendants serve either to protect innocent people from being

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787861602002-07-10T14:32:00.000-04:002002-07-10T14:32:54.180-04:00

HEY SALON! GET SOME PERMALINKS for Joe Conason. Also: "daily journal" — give me a break, it's a blog.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787859652002-07-10T14:28:00.000-04:002002-07-10T14:28:24.580-04:00

THE FBI MAY NOT KNOW SHIT about preventing terrorist attacks, but at least you can be sure that when Osama blows up your kids they'll have gone to their grave without ever having been photographed naked. Has anyone considered whether we ought to just abolish the FBI and hand the cash over to localities so they can hire real policemen?

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787854492002-07-10T14:14:00.000-04:002002-07-10T14:14:37.236-04:00

MARK POYSER'S FANTASTIC scandalgram really brings the whole web of wacky corporate behavior together. Take a look and be afraid.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787849182002-07-10T14:00:00.000-04:002002-07-10T14:02:47.000-04:00

TED BARLOW has returned — hurrah!

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787845592002-07-10T13:51:00.000-04:002002-07-10T13:51:01.053-04:00

BURIED WAY DOWN IN THIS ERIC ALTERMAN post is my favorite Bushism yet:The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneurSomehow I don't think Europeans are going to stop looking on Americans as arrogant and ill-informed any time soon. Can you imagine Jacques Chirac explaining that the problem with America is that we don't have a word for le hot-dog? I can't.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787841482002-07-10T13:40:00.000-04:002002-07-10T13:40:44.906-04:00

GO READ BRIAN LINSE on the death of baseball. I've been waiting for this to happen all my life — viva soccer or, as they say, football.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787840342002-07-10T13:37:00.000-04:002002-07-10T13:37:34.576-04:00

PEOPLE TAKING THE DEMOCRATS TO TASK for trying to keep civil service protections (rules that make it hard to fire government employees) are, I think, forgetting the reasons why those protectiosn were put in place. Of course, one of the effects of civil service rules is that it's hard to fire government employees and so government employees (and their unions) like the rules, and because the unions

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787831412002-07-10T13:15:00.000-04:002002-07-10T13:15:42.206-04:00

SULAIMAN ABU GAITH, Osama's al-Qaeda's every-lovable spokesman, is making new threats against the United States. I don't put a lot of stock in these kind of threats and it seems quite unlikely to me that any really serious damage to the US could be done, but I think that our side really needs to respond to these threats with a clear statement that even if incredibly deadly attacks are succesfully

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787729392002-07-10T08:28:00.000-04:002002-07-10T08:28:38.390-04:00

JULIE HILDEN THINKS THAT BY examining judicial rulings since Bush v. Gore, one can see that the decision was motivated by principle and not, as all reasonable people know, determined by the judges' political affiliations. I smell a fallacy here — if the only reason the five conservative judges came to hold these "principles" in the first place was because they provided a rationalization for

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787726982002-07-10T08:17:00.000-04:002002-07-10T08:17:40.676-04:00

LURKING IN THE DARK RECESSES OF THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT are a few hardy souls who think it's worth their time to try and campaign to put Ronal Reagan on the dime. I still cringe every time I hear the airport refered to as "Ronald Reagan National Airport."

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787725082002-07-10T08:08:00.000-04:002002-07-10T08:08:44.570-04:00

JOSH MARSHALL'S GOT A GOOD ONE on why neither party wants to see Louis Freeh hang for all the many, many, many FBI screw-ups leading up to 9/11. The piece is worth reading not just because of the Freeh issue, but because I fear a similar dynamic exists with regard to white collar corporate crime, and it'd be a real shame to see all these scumbags get away scot free. That's why I think in 2004 the

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787719232002-07-10T07:37:00.000-04:002002-07-10T07:59:34.000-04:00

MORE BAD NEWS FOR IRAQ INVASION PLANS: Jordan doesn't want to help. I don't think that regional opposition (especially from monarchs) necessarily means we shouldn't do this thing, but aren't we going to need to find someone who will vocally support us when the time comes?On a related point, Joe Biden isn't my favorite Senator, but he's absolutely right to be scheduling hearings on Iraq policy. I

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787718772002-07-10T07:35:00.000-04:002002-07-10T07:35:11.906-04:00

ROBERT SAMUELSON COMES OUT in favor of gridlock arguing that it's the best way for the country to prevent the irresistable political pressure for a prescription drug benefit for the elderly from causing us to get our priorities all out of whack. I sort of agree with this — certainly giving more money to the old is nowhere near the top of my priority list. Things being what they are, though, I

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787614632002-07-10T00:16:00.000-04:002002-07-10T00:16:55.096-04:00

IN HIS BIG SPEECH Bush said, among other things, that:In the long run, there's no capitalism without conscience. There is no wealth without character.This is absolutely absurd. The whole merit of the capitalist system (and of good social systems in general) is that they work without requiring the population to consist entirely or even largely of good people. If one could count on people to have

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787276332002-07-09T08:13:00.000-04:002002-07-09T08:13:29.200-04:00

SULLY WATCH: Big Andy denounces Nick Kristof's alleged "moral equivalence" in an intemperate diatribe. Kristof wrote a very reasonable column saying that anti-Muslim bias is a bad thing, and that in addition to being bad it's counterproductive because it makes it harder for us to make friends and influence people in the Islamic world. Sullivan responds to this by accusing Kristof of having argued

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787167462002-07-09T00:28:00.000-04:002002-07-09T00:28:36.710-04:00

CHRIS PATTEN WONDERS why America fears the ICC. I suspect the answer has more than a little to do with the fact that people like Chris Patten are the driving force behind it. Personally, I support the ICC, I'm a bit skeptical but I think we ought to give it a chance and pull out later if it turns out to be some kind of disaster. Nevertheless, while Europeans like to attribute their anti-American

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787165202002-07-09T00:22:00.000-04:002002-07-09T00:22:53.143-04:00

KHALIL SHIKAKI LAYS OUT WHAT NEITHER THE BUSH administration nor the Sharon government nor the Arafat entity have so far — an actual plan for Palestinian governance. He says that a parliamentary system would force the various factions to work together in constructive ways and therefore be a force for moderation. I'm not 100% convinced, but the plan he outlines may be the last best hope we have to

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787163212002-07-09T00:17:00.000-04:002002-07-09T00:18:10.000-04:00

JONAH GOLDBERG'S ATTACK ON STANLEY FISH doesn't really have the same attitude as I would to the issue, but does identify the right complaint against postmodernism — not the theory itself, but the many shoddy practitioners of bowlderized variants thereof. As I said, I wouldn't heap quite so much blame on Fish himself, but it is unfortunate that the serious people within the movement (Fish, Rorty,

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787162152002-07-09T00:14:00.000-04:002002-07-09T00:14:55.196-04:00

EL PRESIDENTE BUSH JUST ASSURED THE American people in a press conference that there was no "malfeance" in his Harken Energy trading. Another smirking gopher malapropism or a Clintonesque non-denial? Only time will tell. Incidentally, what sort of drugs are in the West Wing water supply that they let this guy speak off the cuff like that? They'd better bring Karen Hughes back fast.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3277197.post-787013222002-07-08T17:14:00.000-04:002002-07-08T17:14:47.406-04:00

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: Jeff Jarvis joins the herd of bloggers on hiatus.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349105641573316560noreply@blogger.com