Tonight: Graphic novelist Adrian Tomine at Politics & Prose, 7pm. Tomorrow: Brilliant Canadian rapper Cadence Weapon, who is sick enough to flow over bizarro electroclash beats and make it sound perfectly natural, at DC9.

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The FISA battle is giving me some perspective on how the process of beshrillification unfolds: (1) Republicans make a series of dubious or straight-up false claims in support of their position. (2) Because the matter is complex, a relatively small number of people are actually paying close enough attention to know how and why the […]

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The Claremont Institute is apparently posting some “classic” essays from its archives, beginning with Harry Jaffa’s “Macbeth and the Moral Universe.”  As a prelude to his argument about the Scottish Play, Jaffa offers up a modern point of contrast: Macbeth is a moral play par excellence. In this, it stands in stark contrast to two […]

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I’m not normally much of an activist, but if you care at all about the dangers of unchecked executive power to spy on Americans, get on this.

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As I mentioned a little while back, the latest Mike Doughty album, Golden Delicious, is damn good—and especially gratifying if you’re an old Soul Coughing fan who’ll appreciate a few tracks that skirt the borders of that late-lamented band’s aural territory.  Now, being a longstanding Doughty fan, I actually pre-ordered the album as soon as […]

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Over at The Economist.

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Am I the only one who did a double-take at the headline “Obama’s Well-Aged Beef“?

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So, I’ve been saying for a while now that, contrary to the administration’s claims,  there’s just no way on earth that a FISA court judge issued a ruling last spring requiring FISA warrants for all intercepts of foreign-to-foreign communications that happen to pass through U.S. switches.  Even if the FISA court were not incredibly deferential, […]

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Michael Goldfarb is apparently sorely vexed that bloggers and journalists on a conference call with the Pentagon about China’s military buildup would be so impudent as to ask for a response to… what the Chinese say about their military buildup.

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As you may have noticed, I’m changing up the look of the site. Bear with me while I work out the kinks. Huge piles of gratitude to genius Web ninja P.J. Doland, who made the transition to WordPress incredibly painless, and Lara Shipley, who lent her mad photographic skillz.

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