Category: Uncategorized
-
GAO Report reveals effects of signing statements
The Government Accountability Office has shown that the Executive Branch is ignoring certain provisions of laws passed by Congress. Though it seems strange until you remember that the ‘A’ in GAO was once ‘Accounting,’ the GAO focused only on appropriations acts from the fiscal year 2006… ignoring the much juicier signing statements regarding torture, wiretapping…
-
What if we could replace all carbon fuels?
There is a deeply interesting discussion of energy policy going on at ask.metafilter. It hits on some of the best thinking in environmentalism right now, and takes that long-range speculative view that may not satisfy the average policy wonk but gives me the philosophical shiver that lets me know that some deep thinking is occurring.…
-
Social Capital and Diversity
I’ve written about Robert Putnam before in this space, but I’ve been holding off on commenting on his most recent ‘discovery’ that ethnic diversity leads to significant losses of public trust. Apparently the full Skytte lecture will be published sometime soon in Scandinavian Political Studies. Still no sign of it, though the Financial Times published…
-
Nation of Rebels
I just came across this early Joseph Heath/Andrew Potter article based on their excellent book Nation of Rebels. It’s called The Rebel Sell. They argue that consumerism, more than capitalism, is the reigning political-economy of our times, and that we are being sold our insurrections: Take, for example, Volkswagen and Volvo advertising from the early…
-
Peter Levine
Peter Levine’s blog has been more-than-usually insightful over the last month or so. He has pieces on Charter Schools, agency collaboration with citizens’ groups, The Tempest, Massachusetts v. EPA, and a wonderful declaration of principles almost identical to those I’ve espoused in this blog and my actual scholarship. Despite all the links, I couldn’t help…
-
Stephen Elliot spends a month without internet
A month without internet? He writes like it’s an addiction, and it probably is: constant stimulation, freedom from reflection, instantaneous access to the opinions of others. Why think yourself? Why bother to formulate a position that’s anything other than a reaction to the latest rant? During weeks two and three, I watched the first three…
-
The Tanner Lectures
The Tanner Lectures are available online. Here’s a selection that I found interesting: Ben Barber’s “”Democratic Alternatives to the Mullahs and the Malls” Seyla Benhabib’s “Reclaiming Universalism: Negotiating Republican Self-Determinism and Cosmopolitan Norms” Stephen Breyer’s “Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution” Umberto Eco’s “Interpretation and Overinterpretation: World, History, Texts” Michel Foucault’s “Omnes et Singulatim: Towards…
-
The Problem with Too Much Cleverness
According to Phil Agre’s “How to be a leader in your field,” the first step to disciplinary domination is to “Pick an issue.” This, it turns out, is so very hard that he devotes the majority of his paper to this important decision. One of many issue-spotting techniques is this: (m) Ask yourself, what is…
-
Guantanamo Follies, or Euphemism in America’s Cuban Gulag
Please read these two extracts from Clive Stafford Smith’s forthcoming book Bad Men, recounting his experience as a lawyer for prisoners at the military base in Guantanamo: “No fairytales allowed,” and “Have you received your gift pack?” From the first: One of the escorts told me that, on pain of punishment, soldiers are required to…
-
Incrementalists win?
Incrementalists win. That’s the take-away message from today’s NYTimes article on the aftermath of Gonzales v. Carhart, where the Supreme Court upheld a ban on partial birth abortions: The court did not talk about big concepts and issues like privacy, but about the small, gripping details of how abortion works, said Professor Hendershott, author of…