Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

April 2009

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 30, 2009 25 Comments

News is breaking that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is retiring. There will be a fight over his replacement, for sure. And Arlen Specter switching may have given Republicans a trump card to block an unacceptable replacement.Everyone, including me, has been blogging about how Specter...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 30, 2009 0 Comments

I was critical of Senator Susan Collins of Maine for her support of Obama's stimulus plan. But Collins did not deserve to be charged with contributing to the possible swine flu pandemic, which is a charge leveled against her and spread throughout the internet and...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 29, 2009 8 Comments

UPDATE: Alan Colmes e-mailed me to indicate he meant no offense, and said "C’mon Professor, we’re BOTH blowhards." Well, that may be going a bit too far, but thanks for the note. I take back what all those people said about him.----------------------------------------------------I am...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 29, 2009 25 Comments

It would be very easy to fall into a depression over Arlen Specter switching political parties, giving Democrats a likely filibuster-proof Senate majority. The result will be that Obama will be able to push through much of his agenda without meaningful debate.Not that I will...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 28, 2009 3 Comments

Reports indicate that the deal the United Auto Workers has struck with Chrysler will include majority Union ownership of the company, and a seat on the Board. This is the single best news the American auto industry has heard in decades.I have been a harsh...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 28, 2009 0 Comments

In what should go down in internet history as one of the most embarrassingly misleading posts, John Nichols of The Nation authored an article titled "GOP Know-Nothings Fought Pandemic Preparedness." The joke was on Nichols, because Nichols and the nutroots bloggers who ran with his...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 27, 2009 2 Comments

Former Congressman Tom Tancredo was shouted down and bullied off the stage a couple of weeks ago at the University of North Carolina by protesters opposed to Tancredo's stand on illegal immigration. Tancredo espouses the apparently radical view that we should enforce immigration laws; in...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 27, 2009 3 Comments

The Nation has run a post, "GOP Know-Nothings Fought Pandemic Preparedness," which seeks to blame the opponents of the Stimulus Plan for lack of preparedness for the swine flu outbreak. The post, like most big lies, has a kernel of truth, but twists reality for...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 27, 2009 2 Comments

Republicans are not Obama's worst policy enemies. At least Obama knows that Republicans do not support Obama's agenda. Democrats who are fixated on getting revenge on the Bush administration are Obama's real problem, and are handing Republicans a policy gift by pushing hard for a...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 25, 2009 3 Comments

From The Telegraph via Powerline (emphasis mine):If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 24, 2009 3 Comments

Bill Roggio, who runs a great website, The Long War Journal, has been reporting for months on the steady increase in the power of the Pakistani Taliban, who are approaching the capital of Islamabad. What is most frightening is that the Taliban also are approaching...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 23, 2009 3 Comments

Britain has solved the problem of burning coal without emitting "greenhouse gases." According to The Independent, cutting edge technology called Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) will be fitted on every new coal burning power plant: CCS, which takes power stations' carbon dioxide waste gas, liquefies...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 23, 2009 1 Comment

Ezra Klein got a promotion. He's moving from The American Prospect to The Washington Post. He is receiving Obama-like kudos:This is a great move by the Post, and a risk. Ezra is among the cream of the crop of the new phase of journalism --...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 23, 2009 6 Comments

By trickling out bits and pieces of top secret memoranda regarding interrogation of al-Qaeda terrorists, Barack Obama thought he would have the best of all worlds. Obama believed that exposing the dark side of the war on terror would ingratiate us with the world. At...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 22, 2009 1 Comment

Whether waterboarding should have been used on 9/11 mastermind Kalhid Sheikh Mohammed and two other top al-Qaeda operatives is a legitimate issue. Jay Bybee and others gave legal opinions with which many people disagree, but I have yet to see anyone present a convincing argument...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 21, 2009 3 Comments

I don't think Jay Bybee (or Alberto Gonzales or John Yoo or Stephen Bradbury) are criminals. At worst, they expressed legal opinions on interrogation of terrorism suspects which a court may someday declare to be wrong. Bybee's being wrong, if indeed he was, contributed to...

MORE POSTS
Accessibility by WAH