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The New York Times Book Review | May 17, 2009 Review of A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent Into Depression, by Richard A. Posner “THIS RECESSION,” President Obama said recently, “was not caused by a normal downturn in the business cycle. It was caused by a perfect storm of irresponsibility and poor…
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National Journal | March 14, 2009 Naturally, when a gigantic omnibus appropriations bill came to the Senate floor last week, 98 percent of it got almost no attention. “Member projects — aka earmarks or ‘pork’ — account for less than 2 percent of spending in the $410 billion omnibus bill on the floor of the…
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By David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch From The New York Times | February 22, 2009 IN POLITICS, as in marriage, moments come along when sensitive compromise can avert a major conflict down the road. The two of us believe that the issue of same-sex marriage has reached such a point now. We take very different positions…
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The Advocate | November 16, 2008 Every national campaign has its moments of revelation, straws in the wind of change. For me, one of the most memorable blew past in a snippet of video. It was June. Hillary Clinton was conceding the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama. A few minutes into her speech, as she called…
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National Journal | September 20, 2008 “WORST. President. Ever.” That succinct judgment, received not long ago via e-mail from a political scientist, sums up a good deal of what conventional wisdom has to say about President Bush. In an unscientific online poll of 109 historians conducted in April and published by the History News Network…
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The Atlantic | July-August 2008 Last year, while he was working in Germany as an engineer for General Motors, Andrew Farah got a call from a senior engineer in Detroit asking him to come home. Why? A car. A special car. Farah had heard about it, of course. The Chevrolet Volt was the automotive sensation…
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The Wall Street Journal | June 21, 2008 By order of its state Supreme Court, California began legally marrying same-sex couples this week. The first to be wed in San Francisco were Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, pioneering gay-rights activists who have been a couple for more than 50 years. More ceremonies will follow, at…
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The Atlantic | May 2008 ALERT Washingtonians were treated to an odd juxtaposition not long ago. John McCain was booed at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the big annual gathering of the right-wing tribes, while trying to establish that he was a conservative. On the same day, across town at the American Enterprise Institute—another conservative…
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The Atlantic | January-February 2008 A FEW months ago, in a packed, stuffy room atop a hotel in downtown Washington, a prominent speaker made a startling remark. Even more startling, no one in the audience seemed startled. The audience was a predominantly conservative crowd assembled by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a right-of-center think tank.…
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Newsweek International | December 2007 (year-end special issue) MY grandmother, then a 16-year-old Polish Jew, came to America in 1910 and never looked back. Neither did her son, despite vestigial anti-Semitism early in what became a flourishing legal career. Nor did I, her grandson—not, at least, on account of being Jewish. The experience of anti-Semitism…