I’ll confess, while not particularly invested in the outcome of the presidential race, I shared the amusement of my Democratic friends watching staunch conservative pundits doing their best impression of the former Iraqi information minister in the weeks before the election. We saw a string of prominent conservatives confidently projecting landslide victories for Mitt Romney, […]

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Yglesias takes aim at a familiar genre of argument for voting for a third party: I’ve noticed that various anti-Obama pro-third-party arguments on the Internet proceed with an annoying two step. Usually the headline and the lede of the piece will be very focused on Obama, the evils of Obama, and the braindeadness of the […]

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American politics sometimes seems like a contest to see which group of partisans can take greater umbrage at the most recent outrageous remark from a member of the opposing tribe.  As a mild countermeasure, I offer a modest proposal for American universities. All freshmen should be required to take a course called “Offense 101,” where […]

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Browsing a conservative news site the other day, I was struck by the sheer oddness of that familiar genre of political commentary that treats  liberals and conservatives, not just as groups of people with systematic disagreements on policy questions, but as something like distinct subspecies of humanity. The piece that triggered this was something along […]

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Scene: Friday evening, 9 p.m., a group of friends are gathered around a living room table for poker night. Harry: OK, folks, snack time. I’m thinking we should order a couple pies from that new gourmet pizza place. Darrell: What, Mama Solyndra’s? That place is so overpriced! Let’s just go with some chips and salsa […]

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Gallup reports a record high number of respondents telling pollsters they “approve” of marriages between blacks and whites. In one sense, this is obviously great news, but something about the question itself bothered me. In part, it was that the framing still embeds the assumption that “marriages between blacks and whites,” a term that encompasses […]

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Is it ever an advantage to be crazy? Or at least, to be perceived as crazy? Richard Nixon thought so: During the cold war, he notoriously developed his “madman theory,” a stratagem of having senior aides circulate their “concerns” that Nixon had gone unhinged, and might just hit that big red button if provoked, even […]

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In the Harry Potter books, the titular boy wizard is the subject of a mystical prophecy, destined to come into mortal conflict with the evil Lord Voldemort—and perhaps even capable of vanquishing him. But there’s a wrinkle: One of Harry’s classmates, Neville Longbottom, also fits most of the prophecy’s description: born at the end of […]

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Dan Davies at Crooked Timber points out an inconsistency in a common argument for voting for a major party: The key point I want to make here is that when major party activists put the guilt-trip on supporters significantly to their left, they engage in what looks like very fallacious reasoning. The point is that […]

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James Joyner captures my thoughts on the recent silliness pretty well. Basically, nobody comes out of this looking good. First, CBS.  Frankly, the journalist in me finds it sort of offensive that they were willing to publish serial plagiarist Ben Domenech on any topic—some things really ought to earn you a lifetime ban from respectable […]

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