"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
by publius Like many others, I was horrified to read about the murder of Dr. Tiller in Kansas today. It was of course more than murder — it was an act of political terrorism. It simply cannot be dismissed as random violence.[*] Anyway, this violent act also bears quite directly on the whole "empathy" debate. … Read more
by publius In today’s Outlook, Alec MacGillis argues that national health care reform would be a significant redistribution of resources from “blue” states to “red” ones. The reason why is that health coverage numbers are far grimmer in Republican states, particularly in the South – shocking, I know. While I tend to agree with MacGillis’s … Read more
by hilzoy Matt Yglesias: "As anyone who knows me can attest, I don't have what you'd call a strong "Hispanic" identity. (…) But for all that, I have to say that I am really truly deeply and personally pissed off my the tenor of a lot of the commentary on Sonia Sotomayor. The idea that any … Read more
by hilzoy From the Washington Post: "The Obama administration, picking up the argument of its predecessor, is opposing the release of Chinese Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay into the United States. In papers filed with the Supreme Court late Friday, the administration says a group of Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurz) are being lawfully held at the … Read more
by hilzoy A couple of weeks ago, Rod Dreher wrote an article about what he calls our "astonishing, and astonishingly rapid, cultural collapse" in the face of "a barbaric mainstream culture that has grown hostile to our fundamental values": "Conservatives have worked so hard over the past few decades to fight for civilized standards against … Read more
by hilzoy As more or less everyone has already noted, a lot of people have been claiming that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist, would decide cases based on racial solidarity rather than on the law, and so forth. One natural way to check this would be to examine her actual record. She has, after all, … Read more
by hilzoy Even by Republican standards, the Sotomayor meltdown is pretty impressive. Tom Tancredo calls La Raza, which is a pretty ordinary advocacy group, "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses." Newt Gingrich writes that we cannot accept Sotomayor's rather anodyne remarks about experience being helpful in judging "if Civil War, suffrage, and … Read more
by publius I'll be honest — I'm a bit frightened of David Petraeus's political and media savvy. This guy is good. I just watched him on Fox News and was very impressed with his answers on everything from Gitmo to torture to the ability of our legal system to try detainees. The video is here, … Read more
by publius I must say that I've been encouraged by the Obama administration's public stance on Israeli settlements. Obama has made it a point to emphasize that settlement growth must stop. And Clinton used even stronger language: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “He wants to see a stop to settlements — not some … Read more
by hilzoy This is one of those dull bills that really matters: "The nation's complex food supply chain would become more transparent, inspections of food facilities would become more frequent and manufacturers would be required to take steps aimed at preventing food-borne illnesses under legislation proposed yesterday by key House leaders who have pledged to … Read more