Jesse Singal

I feel gross even linking to the Brion McClanahan article The Daily Caller posted yesterday. It’s just conservative shock-porn. Among other brilliant, empirically supported ideas for tweaking the food-stamp system, McLanahan dreamily fantasizes about a world where “anyone who accepts government aid would have to submit to a monthly tobacco and drug test.” He continues: […]

This finding shouldn’t be surprising, but it hits upon some pretty common misconceptions: Contrary to the common perception among physicians that poor people sue doctors more frequently, Ramon L. Jimenez from the Monterey Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Institute and his team demonstrate that socioeconomically disadvantaged patients, in fact, tend to sue physicians less often. Their […]

I’m out, folks. It’s been a blast. Thanks for being a very intelligent, engaged group of readers — awesome community you got here. And thanks to Ed Kilgore for letting me wander into his living room with mud-caked sneakers, so to speak, and to Paul Glastris for giving me the opportunity to do so.

“GOP GOES ALL IN” is the headline on TPM, and that really is the only way to describe the party’s latest maneuver on contraception: Not satisfied with President Obama’s new religious accommodation, Republicans will move forward with legislation by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that permits any employer to deny birth control coverage in their health […]

Great little nugget from The Boston Globe Ideas section’s weekly roundup of interesting research findings (and if you don’t read Ideas, you really should, as it has consistently fascinating stuff): All the conspiracies are true! Is Osama bin Laden still alive? Or was he already dead before the US raid that supposedly killed him? These […]

Karen Tumulty has a good, comprehensive rundown of the GOP’s primary tumult (too easy) in the Washington Post. This part’s particularly interesting: Republicans celebrated two years ago when the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed groups, corporations, unions and individuals to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns, as long as those efforts were not coordinated […]

From The Hill: Rick Santorum suggested on Sunday that Mitt Romney’s campaign may have rigged a straw poll of conservative activists by paying the entrance fee for supporters. Romney beat Santorum by 7 points Saturday in a straw poll of almost 3,500 attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Santorum pointed out that Ron […]

There were some very solid entries in the contest I posted earlier. Tough call, but I’m going with MattF’s entry: If Rick Perry had been smarter and better prepared, he would have been a more successful candidate for the Republican nomination. Simple. Straightforward. True. Pointless. Congratulations, MattF — you will be receiving your imaginary gift […]

Political scientists — not to mention politicians — have for decades been preoccupied with the question of how citizens come to believe what they do, why they are so easily led astray by false stories, and what can be done to correct this when it occurs. An interesting new study out of Duke points out […]

There’s a very interesting article in today’s New York Times: There is little poverty here in Chisago County, northeast of Minneapolis, where cheap housing for commuters is gradually replacing farmland. But Mr. Gulbranson and many other residents who describe themselves as self-sufficient members of the American middle class and as opponents of government largess are […]