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, […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

In the middle of a group discussion of health care reform last week, an acquaintance expressed puzzlement that the current debate isn’t more heavily focused on international comparisons. Modulo all the important differences—cultural, institutional, demographic, and so on—between the United States and other developed countries, shouldn’t we be spending most of our time weighing the […]

[Read more →]

They’re a sufficiently soft target that sometimes piling on seems unsporting, but Alex Massie Knapp’s circuitous philosophical “defense” of the Birthers reminds me that it’s not so much what they don’t know that marks them as loons—it’s what they know that ain’t so. Sure, it’s sort of cranky—skepticism beyond the bounds of the reasonable—to keep […]

[Read more →]

Queer blogger Ariel at Feministe has an interesting post about spending several weeks at clown school. This bit in particular struck me as suggesting an illuminating exercise: Here’s the thing about clowning: it is all about staying open to the moment and thinking on your feet. We are playing improv games and working in slapstick […]

[Read more →]

Ezra notes the forthcoming release of Mark Kleiman’s intriguing book When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment.  It cuts against our retributionist instincts, but holds out the promise of achieving crime reduction while also having less recourse to prison. Having heard Kleiman talk about his thesis—and the empirical work behind […]

[Read more →]

Disturbing as I find it to defend Pat Buchanan in any dispute about race, one aspect of the argument Rachel Maddow makes in this much-blogged-about exchange seems rather odd to me.  She challenges Buchanan to explain why 108 of 110 Supreme Court justices have been white, arguing that this suggests minority candidates have been unfairly […]

[Read more →]

Conor Friedersdorf finds serial plagiarist Ben Domenech stroking his chin over the pernicious collapse of values that’s causing moderns to delay marriage and reproduction. But sometimes, two charts are worth a thousand words of wankery. 8 Health > Total fertility rate 1 1 Education > Average years of schooling of adults 12 26 People > […]

[Read more →]

I think it’s probably a mistake to extrapolate too much from one kid’s anecdotes about his circle of friends, but researcher danah boyd has also basically found that average teens aren’t leading early adoption of Twitter in the same way that they did with social networking sites. And it strikes me that Twitter is subject […]

[Read more →]

Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and James Wolcott are all fretting over how we’ll broadcast the wonderful stuff we’re reading and listening to in the age of the Kindle. By my lights, it’s gotten a lot easier to do this where it matters. Sure, the random folks you’re sharing a subway car with won’t see you’re […]

[Read more →]