Over at the anti-Trumpy Dispatch, Christian Schneider explains why even anti-Trump conservatives like himself would be cawazzy to wish for Republicans to lose the Senate as well as the presidency in 2020: “Why Are Some Conservatives Rooting for the GOP to Lose the Senate? Yes, many Republican politicians have behaved badly. But a Biden presidency…
Author: Alan Vanneman
When Bari Left the Times
Now that Bari Weiss has left the New York Times (“scorching” resignation letter here), the Times will almost assuredly be both woker and broker—not “broker” in the sense of financially poorer, but intellectually so. The Times is almost guaranteed to be more predictably “correct” in its coverage of the passing scene and—okay, this is going…
Daniel Drezner, you shall not escape my wrath!
Well, you won’t, Dan. Just because I’m painfully slow and stumbling off the mark, and not much better down the stretch, you thought you could slip a few fast ones by me, but nuh-uh. I’m onto your game, and you’ll pay the price. The first of Dan’s “curve balls” (to vary the metaphor) came a…
Hey! Unimportant people believe in free speech too!
Damn straight we do! Well, some of us, anyway, and some of us, like me, are very, very unimportant! I say this, of course, because there has been considerable blowback to the now notorious letter published in Harper’s magazine, signed by a large number of cultural icons and/or irritants, to the irritation of many who…
Does the New York Times Understand How the Right to Free Speech Works?
Well, not to keep you in suspense, but the answer is no. Greg Bensinger, a member of the New York Times editorial board hitherto unknown to me, has blossomed forth with an opinion piece, “Does Zuckerberg Understand How the Right to Free Speech Works?”, which, alas, only demonstrates, all too conclusively,1 that it is Mr….
Gregg Easterbrook, thou shouldst have been alive at this hour! Oh, wait, you are!
Damn straight he is, alive and kicking at the Atlantic, with an excellent article, “Smart Weapons Need to Be Smarter”, which I’ll discuss/amplify in the Afterwords, but for now what I want to talk about is some beautiful demolition work Gregg performed on racist/fascist television back in 2018, describing the unbridled power worship that was…
Clarence Thomas to Brethren: Why Can’t You Guys Listen to “Reason”?
Why indeed? The Supreme Court recently refused the opportunity to consider a raft of lower court decisions regarding both the Second Amendment and the “qualified immunity” extended to public officials—most “controversially” (that is to say, most inappropriately), as applied to the police— protecting them against law suits for their actions—like blowing someone’s head off for…
The United States Supreme Court is dancing, dancing, dancing. The United States Supreme Court is dancing, dancing on Nino Scalia’s grave.
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bostock v. Clayton County can be described as “the war of the textualists” in that both the majority opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch extending federal prohibition of job discrimination to non-hetero folk and the “stinging” (I guess, because I haven’t read them) dissents by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel…
The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party?
We’re in such a mess these days, one can either bemoan that mess, or wonder how we got here. I feel a little helpless to be just bemoaning, and, as the situation changes from day to day, one is compelled to constantly update one’s bemoans, which in retrospect can begin to sound both repetitive and…
Lee Sí, Columbus No
Okay, that takes a little unpacking. What I mean is that I support the “de-Confederation” of American monuments (for the most part) but not the removal of statues of that racist tyrant and sometime jailbird, Christopher Columbus. I’ve already defended the remembrance of Chris, several times, despite the numerous brutalities and casual cruelties he heaped…