Month: July 2009

Least Surprising News of the Day

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by publius I'm not sure Max Baucus and staff read Jonathan Cohn, but they should.  This comes from his latest report on where things stand on Capitol Hill: Baucus, as you may know, has been trying to hammer out a deal with a bipartisan group of six members. But on Thursday the most conservative member … Read more

Why Kidney Selling Bothers Me

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by publius I missed the latest round of the “should we sell our kidneys” debate.  To recap, various libertarian conservatives say yes, arguing that the donors’ health risks are small and that people really need kidneys.  The real challenge then, as John Schwenkler notes, is to justify the ban on kidney selling. So I’ll try.  … Read more

Shameful

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by publius Like Steve Benen, I was shocked to learn that Karl Rove played a greater role than previously known in the U.S. Attorney firings.  Of all the various DOJ disgraces of the Bush years, this one is actually the most inexcusable. Don't get me wrong — the legal approval of torture and wiretapping was … Read more

Fighting For The Public Option

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by publius Scott Lemieux and Ezra Klein recently had a back and forth on whether a health coverage reform bill without a public option was worth supporting.  I agree with Klein on the merits, but it's a trickier question politically when you start viewing it through a game theory lens. On the policy merits alone, … Read more

A Good Offense Is The Best Defense

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by publius Under the "breakthrough" in the House, there will be no vote on health care before the August recess.  Politico adds: Republicans, meanwhile, are ready to use the August recess to rip the bill apart and attack Democrats in their home districts. Democrats need to explain the bill.  No argument there.  But they shouldn't … Read more

I’d Rather be Famous than Righteous or Holy

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by Eric Martin Ben Smith is impressed with the Obama administration's relatively low-key approach to counterterrorism: One of the most striking differences between the Obama and Bush administration is the handling of domestic terror arrests. The Bush White House trumpeted every arrest and disrupted plot — in some cases, ones that were nowhere close to … Read more

Health Care: The Wyden-Bennett Plan

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by von Among the articles of faith circulating in the liberal blogosphere is that killing the House Democrats' health care package (HR 3200) amounts to killing health care reform.*  The argument goes that HR 3200 is the only way to get traction in the debate and must be supported, warts and all, because there's nothing else out there.  Pass HR 3200, … Read more

But Now I Don’t Know Why I Feel So Tongue-Tied

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by Eric Martin A little over a month ago, Andrew Sullivan had a fascinating piece on the evolution of the New York Times' willingness, or lack thereof, to use the term "torture" to describe, well, torture (for definite lack of a better word).  As Sullivan demonstrates, prior to the Bush administration, the Times repeatedly and reflexively referred to interrogation … Read more