I’m trying to figure out what to make of claims that angry folks showing up at townhall-style events on health care reform are mere “astroturf” activists. If it’s true, it seems like it must be some spectacularly bad astroturfing: My experience is that when seasoned political professionals are really in charge of stage-managing an event, […]

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I’ve seen conservatives circulating this YouTube clip, in which Andrea Mitchell, discussing polling numbers showing low support for Obama’s health care reforms, notes in an aside that opponents “may not know what’s good for them.” This incredibly tone-deaf choice of words, naturally, prompts cries of “elitism” and “arrogance.”  Insofar as “elitism” has recently been used […]

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Via Doug Bandow, Theodore Dalrymple makes an argument against a right to health care—though it applies to positive or welfare rights more generally—that I used to find persuasive, and now find less so: Where does the right to health care come from? Did it exist in, say, 250 B.C., or in A.D. 1750? If it […]

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It’s hard not to be disturbed by a recent poll suggesting that Birther Madness, while still marginal among Americans on the whole, has moved from fringe to mainstream in certain select demographics. More than a quarter of Republicans purport to believe that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and even more proclaim […]

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