Really? (Release 4.0): The President As Outsider
From yesterday’s New York Times “White House Memo“: “We have a culture here where people actively dislike everything about this whole city,” one senior administration official said of Washington, adding, “the only leverage [President Obama] has right now is as an outsider.” Really? If the only leverage the President of the United States has is […]
Douglas Wilder: Disappointed … And Very Disappointing
Some chief executives grow and gain in stature after they leave office, but former Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder is not one of them. Although he has deservedly basked in the glow of being the first black elected governor of a state, he now seems to have forgotten that the deeper significance of his election is that […]
A Veritable “Nightmare On Elm Street”: A City “Diversity Commission” With Enforcement Powers
You remember “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” even though you probably didn’t see the movie. It featured “the horror icon Freddy Krueger, a serial-killer who wields a glove with four blades embedded in the fingers and kills people in their dreams, resulting in their real death in reality.” But that was make believe. If you […]
Newt As Hegelian Instrument
Conrad Black offers an interesting prediction that the effect of Newt, almost the Higher Purpose of Newt, is to block Mitt, opening the way for the late entrance of a non-declared candidate. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, are you listening?
BREAKING NEWS! Jessie Makes Forbes “30 Under 30” List!
I’ve blogged here a few times about daughter Jessie, who graduated from Bryn Mawr at 17, finished her PhD in Applied Physics at Caltech right after her 23rd birthday, and has been a research physicist at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center since March 2010. Well, there she goes again: she’s just been named to Forbes […]
Does Obama Have A Double Standard On Discrimination (In Fact, Does He Have A Standard At All?)
Politico has a long article this morning on “President Obama’s sales pitch to gay voters,” part of which is his claim to “ending sexual-identity discrimination in federal hiring.” Assuming Obama has in fact done this, it would be quite interesting to learn what it is he thinks he’s done. Does he think, for example, that imposing […]
From John Jay To Sandra Day O’Connor: A Steep And Disappointing Decline
John Jay was the first Chief Justice of the United States, but here, thanks to an excellent column by the Boston Globe‘s Jeff Jacoby, I’m referring to his grandson, this John Jay. Jacoby’s column is the first of two on “diversity,” this one urging the Supreme Court to take the opportunity Fisher v. Texas provides […]
Why Not A Marriage Tax?
If President Obama’s recent speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, is any indication (of course, what this president says is frequently incongruent with what he says later or what he does), his re-election campaign will highlight his bold and courageous opposition to … inequality. Or perhaps his fierce anti-inequality stance is simply a pre-election gambit to rally […]
Really? (Release 3.0): Sometimes The Familiar Can Shock
Sometimes we get so used to things that what should be shocking isn’t, because it’s so familiar. That was my reaction this morning when I read what David Axelrod, President Obama’s political hit man, said to a bunch of journalists yesterday (quoted by John Dickerson in his SLATE article pointing out that the president’s re-election strategy […]
Really? (Release 2.0): Accurate But Misleading
Lyle Denniston, the National Constitution Center’s Adviser on Constitutional Literacy, is a highly respected, veteran commentator on the Constitution, but even highly respected veterans can commit sentences, as Denniston did yesterday, that are highly misleading even though accurate. Writing on the National Constitution Center’s CONSTITUTION Daily blog, Denniston wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Citizens […]
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