My move to new digs last week prevented me from providing commentary on last week's Republican primaries. After the ouster of Eric Cantor, I imagine that many Tea Party types were confident that they would rack up more victories against Republicans they perceived as unfaithful to The Cause. So much for that notion. The Tea …
This Is What Integrity Looks Like
Wouldn't it have been nice if someone like Johnnie Walters were in charge of the Internal Revenue Service these past several years? Johnnie M. Walters, a commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service under President Richard M. Nixon who left office after refusing to prosecute people on Nixon’s notorious “enemies list,” died on Tuesday at his home in Greenville, S.C. He …
What We Learn from Today’s Supreme Court Rulings
The Supreme Court handed down two important decisions today. Both were rightly decided, in my view. The first was Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. Eugene Volokh has a very good rundown of the case here. Note the following from his post: . . . The owners of Hobby Lobby sincerely believe that it’s wrong for them …
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When Will Hillary Clinton Recover Her Political Footing?
Around the 12th of Never. Maybe. If she's lucky: Hillary Clinton is facing a backlash over her paid speeches, with students at the University of Nevada Las Vegas calling on her to reject the $225,000 that the school is paying her family charity, and Republicans saying her lucrative engagements demonstrate that she is removed from everyday …
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Attention: The Scott Walker Non-Scandal Is Even Less of a Non-Scandal
Scott Walker's political foes rejoiced recently in reports that the Wisconsin governor (and possible Republican presidential candidate) might be the target of a criminal investigation. Eric Lach faithfully recites the claim, and there are others, of course who repeated the story that Walker was/is in some kind of political trouble. Oops! Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) …
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Attention: The IRS Scandal Is Still a Scandal
I continue to be trapped in The Hellish Process That Is Moving, so blogging has been lighter than I have wanted it to be. I am hopelessly behind in some of the stories that I have wanted to write about, which is why I haven't written recently about how the IRS scandal has gone from …
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Charter Schools Work
Behold some very useful evidence: Two of the nation’s leading economists and education scholars—Harvard University’s Richard Murnane and University of California-Irvine’s Greg Duncan—showcase the UChicago Charter School North Kenwood/Oakland Campus in their most recent book, Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Education, in which they highlight the nation’s most promising educational solutions. Duncan and …
Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Gene Nichol
I was of the understanding that being paid a boatload of money while doing very little work is wrong. That it contributes to income inequality. That it's cronyism run amok. That we are all supposed to be concerned and upset when lavish sums of money are given to the undeserving. Apparently, I was wrong: A …
Quote of the Day
Environmental Protection Agency workers have done some odd things recently. Contractors built secret man caves in an EPA warehouse, an employee pretended to work for the CIA to get unlimited vacations and one worker even spent most of his time on the clock looking at pornography. It appears, however, that a regional office has reached a new low: Management for …
Some Sanity in New York
The nanny-state suffers a blow: The Bloomberg big-soda ban is officially dead. The state’s highest court on Thursday refused to reinstate New York City’s controversial limits on sales of jumbo sugary drinks, exhausting the city’s final appeal and dashing the hopes of health advocates who have urged state and local governments to curb the consumption …
Pejman Yousefzadeh 