Zarathustra, Do you think cultural diatribes are worse than cultures that oppress, rape, beat, mutilate women? Cultures don't oppress, rape, beat, and mutilate women. Avatar has already scratched the surface of the complex cultural issue at stake here. There are opposing views and voices within the ...

Zarathustra, I'm not sure I know enough about Republican judicial philosophy to agree or disagree... Now you sound like you're the one being nominated to SCOTUS. :P Imagine the nation's preeminent law school hosting a program on "white supremacist law and finance." First of all, if this is...

Farsailer, Think about it, the big problem is debt and we're "solving" it by adding more debt. The big problem when the economic crisis hit was not debt. Debt is a long-term problem. Unemployment and GDP shrinkage were far more immediate, macroeconomically and for average Americans, and th...

The three things that he did right that matter the most are Episodes IV, V and VI.

Who performs it the most now? Which culture practices it the most? There's nothing wrong with stating the facts: Islam is a worldwide force of female oppression. Aaand, this is where you lost me on agreeing with you in condemning an undoubtedly vile and unacceptable practice when you turned it into...

Scot, There are lots of dangers in spending a lot. But there were and continue to be bigger dangers in not spending enough. The economy since the stimulus has seen three successive quarters of economic growth; before fears about the Greek crisis hit Wall Street the Dow Jones hit 11,000 for the first...

Scot / Farsailer / HLT, You don't have to be a fiscal conservative to be right-wing which, and we could talk about this if you'd like, Bush absolutely, conclusively was. I understand and sympathize that he wasn't a fiscal conservative and that he therefore didn't reflect your views, but I think that...

Scot,

That's certainly a refreshing admission.

These are not the tax cuts the Tea Party is looking for. They don't want a recession, they want growth. As soon as the economy starts growing again, this dip in tax revenues will disappear. The biggest policy they protest, aside from health reform, is the stimulus legislation. So they're protesting...

Remember when I said Tea Partiers' rage was misdirected ? Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found. Some conservative political movements such ...

Scot, Ha! Excellent. But seriously, a Times article from this morning makes a good point: conservatism on SCOTUS has become the norm since Warren/Burger, always under the guise of "judicial restraint," originalism, and other such (in my opinion) utterly nebulous doctrines. In fact, there's...

Bah. No need to worry about the Senate. This plan will die in the international system.

Here's an interesting analysis of the voting records of SCOTUS judges from the FDR administration to 2006. Of the ten "most conservative" Justices, four of the top five are currently on the Court (including #1: Justice Thomas) and Justice Kennedy is number 10. So that's five of the curren...

Ha! Obama really is your standard for behavior now, isn't he? I realize it's meant derogatorily now, but surely there's some confusion here. After all, the movement began by appropriating the tea bag as its symbol: On January 19, 2009, Graham Makohoniuk, a part-time trader and a member of Ticker For...

Just remember "racially resentful" doesn't mean "racist."

I agree it's a reasonable assumption. Personally though it does not sound quite felicitous to my ear, since "Democratic" is the adjective form -- Democrat ic Party, Democrat ic leaders, Democrat ic Convention and so on, while "Democrat" is a noun. The people I'm talking about kno...

sind, Well for one thing, it's not the name of the party . So it's factually wrong to call it that. Second, for a long time in American political history Republicans have called it the "Democrat Party" to make it clear, as that article I posted says, that the party is "less than democ...

I, for one, said the tea party attracts racists, as it is the biggest and loudest Obama-haters club around. And that the tea party was responsible for accepting them into their ranks. Nothing about racists are representative of the tea party, yada yada. Agreed. In fact, I think I've been pretty cle...

Zarathustra, Some Tea Partiers do have substantive policy prescriptions which are the basis of their criticism. But some do not, and many of those who do not express their outrage in the form of racial hatred. Talking about trading Obama back to Kenya is not "about his policies." No birthe...

Zarathustra, you can protest a tangential example all you'd like. (Although, again, when a pissed-off white guy is quoting the Brady Brunch to critique Obamacare, we can talk about the racial neutrality of sitcom characters.) The central point, which you've all but conceded it seems to me, is that t...