Ryan Cooper

This is mostly a moot point now that John Roberts kinda-sorta upheld Obamacare, but there was a point lost in the scuffle between Will Wilkinson, Jonathan Chait, and others about whether or not the Supreme Court stole the election for Bush. The discussion focused mostly on the consortium of news organizations which investigated the recount […]

Let me apologize first of all for late start of blogging. But there is a pretty good story behind it. Yesterday, after a day of intense heat that hit 104 F, shattering the DC record for hottest June day by two degrees, and humidity so thick you could have cut it into bricks and dropped […]

The Monthly has a long tradition of being far ahead of the reporting curve, sometimes dramatically so (as when we ran a cover story on the housing bubble in April 2004). Our May/June cover story, on Univision anchor Jorge Ramos and the influence of Latino voters, was therefore somewhat out of character. It was so […]

The big news today is President Obama’s announcement that his administration will stop deporting “Dreamers,” undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children, and will also grant them work permits, subject to some conditions. Ed has a good read into the details of the mainstream politics here. But one thing few people are talking about […]

Matt Yglesias noted earlier that not only did Steve Jobs admit to using LSD, he actually was quite effusive about it even in his interviews with the Pentagon for a security clearance, saying it was “a positive life-changing experience.” This isn’t a novel observation, but regardless of what you think of drugs generally or LSD […]

Darwin, via Kevin Drum isn’t happy with the latest talk around the long-running evolution belief survey, and people wringing their hands over the fact that nearly half of American’s espouse a recent creationism view when it comes to humankind: Come on. This 46% number has barely budged over the past three decades, and I’m willing […]

US Constitution, Article I, Section 9: “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Back in 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which abolished habeas corpus rights for noncitizens, among other things. This part of the […]

Some tidbits from around the web: 1. Very sharp look from Matt Yglesias on the strategy of the coming tax debates. Often the operational tactics are more important than “messaging.” Democrats can be surprisingly thick on this point. 2. What’s it like to get shot in the head? (ht Tyler Cowen) 3. Is regulatory sclerosis […]

One of the more surprising things I’ve noticed recently is impeccably-credentialed elites who basically agree with Chris Hayes’ new book (make sure to catch our review) about the institutional crisis we are facing, and their use of what would normally be called “hysterical” or “unserious” language to describe it. For example, Thomas Mann and Norman […]

Probably the most stress-inducing sentence I’ve ever read comes from the Boston Globe, in an interview with Paul Krugman: BOOKS: What do you read for work? KRUGMAN: I start each morning with The New York Times, The Financial Times, some financial news sites, and a select list of economic blogs. They have really flourished. The […]