-
Alito's 'Not True' Was Out of Line; Court Deserves Obama Smack
Tweet Share on Facebook January 28, 2010 Comment (92)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In June, 1891 Supreme Court Justice David Brewer was called to New Haven to address the graduates of Yale University. Brewer knew the key to success at such occasions, and told the sons of the Gilded Age just what they wanted to hear. "From the time in earliest records when Eve took loving possession of even the forbidden apple, the idea of property and sacredness of the right of its possession has never departed from the race," Brewer said.
"Human experience," he said, "declares that the love of acquirement, mingled with the joy of possession, is the real stimulus to human activity."
Given the recent Supreme Court decision on corporate campaign spending, with its twisted view of corporations as the building blocks of liberty, Brewer might feel right at home on the current court.
So, kudos to Barack Obama, that former constitutional law professor, for saying it right to the justices' faces last night.
-
Apple Tablet Lives Up to the Hype, at Least From Afar
Tweet Share on Facebook January 27, 2010 Comment (3)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I just finished watching, via the live blog at Gizmodo, the preview of Apple's new tablet: the iPad.
I will leave the detailed dissection to Walt Mossberg and his colleagues, who can do some hands-on baking and shaking for us. But from what I saw, the new iPad lives up to its advance billing, which is saying a lot when you consider all the breathless hype it has gotten (mine included).
The iPad is indeed a tablet--a cross between an iTouch (which is an iPhone without the phone) and a notebook computer.
Imagine that you could rip the screen off your current laptop, and carry it around by itself, and do almost everything you do on a computer with it, using touchscreen controls.
-
Defending the Obama Spending Freeze from the Left and the Right
Tweet Share on Facebook January 27, 2010 Comment (5)By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Since I suggested a couple of weeks back that Team Audacity get back in the game with a program of tax cuts and an across-the-board cut in spending, I am somewhat surprised not to be sitting in the first lady's box for the State of the Union speech. No doubt the invitation got lost in the bureaucracy.
Nevertheless, having made this suggestion, I feel compelled to defend it. It is under attack from Left and Right.
First the Right: My good friend Peter here at Thomas Jefferson St. assaults the White House call for a freeze on discretionary spending as not credible. He has a point, in that the overall record of congressional restraint--in Republican and Democratic administrations--is not good. Thus was it ever, as the late Pat Moynihan would say. But that doesn't mean that it won't happen. I am sure the same could have been said of Bill Clinton before (having been confronted with the massive deficits of the Bush-Reagan years) he raised taxes and (in the forced company of Newt Gingrich) cut spending in the Nineties. Voila! A balanced budget.
-
Populists Were Not Always a Fringe Group
Tweet Share on Facebook January 26, 2010 Comment (2)By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The op-ed pages are replete with talk about Populism these days, both pro (E.J. Dionne in Monday's Washington Post) and con (David Brooks in today's New York Times.)
As I happen to have spent a considerable amount of time studying the Populist revolt of the 1890s, in the course of digging up details about Clarence Darrow's little-known role as a Populist firebrand, I thought I might offer a taste of the flavor of the era, and side with E. J. in defending the movement.
The Populists were angry folks, and though some pushed for an alliance of black and white farmers in the South, others were racist and anti-Semitic. In the years after World War II, such mass movements were viewed by influential American historians--most notably Columbia University's Richard Hofstadter--as uncomfortably akin to the rise of fascism. Subsequent generations of college students, schooled on Hofstadter's The Age of Reform, came away quite leery of the Populists. It is only in recent years that historians like Charles Postel and Michael Kazin have helped repair the Populists' reputation.
-
Apple Tablet Will be a Game-Changer
Tweet Share on Facebook January 22, 2010 Comment (9)By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Now that I'm an older dog, I am finding that it's indeed more difficult to learn new tricks. But I can't wait for next week, and for Apple to turn my world upside down.
In fact, I would rank my feeling of anticipation as I await Apple's rumored announcement of a new tablet computer (apparently scheduled for January 27) right up there with the thrill of scoring Springsteen tickets in a college gym in the '70s, or buying Sgt. Pepper in the '60s.
-
Supreme Court Ruling Is an Invitation to Scandal
Tweet Share on Facebook January 22, 2010 Comment (21)By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The justices on the Supreme Court have declared that Congress cannot ban corporations from spending whatever they want to buy elected officials.
The libertarian and First Amendment purist in me applauds the decision. The political reporter in me, who watched my country's capital become a sleazy and corrupt bazaar even with campaign spending laws, is feeling pretty nauseous.
Republican Party leaders and their allies at the Chamber of Commerce cheered the decision, which overturned years of precedent, and was delivered by Republican judges a year after the Democrats captured Washington and set out to pass new regulations on Wall St., corporate polluters, big oil, and the health insurance industry. Conveniently, the GOP will have corporate allies with cash galore to spend in the fall elections.
Tell me it's possible to be too cynical about this Supreme Court decision. Explain why this is not Bush v. Gore redux.
-
Independents Who Powered Scott Brown May Quickly Turn on Him
Tweet Share on Facebook January 20, 2010 Comment (24)By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Everyone needs a tribe. My tribe, for many years, was based in Massachusetts. And so, remembering how Eddie King trounced Gov. Michael Dukakis in the awful economic times of 1978, and Dukakis came back to beat Governor King in The Rematch of 1982 and rode the Massachusetts Miracle to the 1988 presidential nomination, I am less inclined than some to see the End of Liberalism in Scott Brown's victory.
In fact, I feel for Brown. The moment he puts his hand on the Bible and becomes a U.S. senator, he also becomes an incumbent--an incumbent in a minority party dominated by a hostile region, with no ideas about how to fix the things that ail America, other than to give big tax breaks to the same wealthy SOBs on Wall Street who got us into this fix and continue to reward themselves with obscene pay.
-
Why Obama’s Health Reform Is a Good Idea
Tweet Share on Facebook January 19, 2010 Comment (28)By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I am tired of hearing critics talk of how the Democratic healthcare plan is a massive socialistic plot to introduce government control of one sixth of the economy.
Horsefeathers.
In the Sunday Business section of the Washington Post, Ezra Klein wrote a nifty column that puts the GOP Apocalypse Now scenarios in their Chicken Little place.
First off, Klein deconstructs the cost. The $900 billion price tag is for 10 years. That is $90 billion a year--a pittance in the U.S. economy--all of which will be covered by some sort of tax hikes on the wealthy, cuts in Medicare, or fees on those who refuse to get health insurance. No matter what you have heard, it won't add a dime to the deficit and, for most Americans, won't cost a cent.
For that $90 billion, middle-class taxpayers will get a safety net like the one that we already provide for the poor (Medicaid) and the elderly (Medicare). If we get downsized, or are self-employed, or the company goes belly up and we have to move to another firm and lose our insurance, there will be a federally-subsidized private insurance plan to fall back on.
-
If Brown Beats Coakley, No Whining About Glass Ceilings
Tweet Share on Facebook January 15, 2010 Comment (28)By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
When reviewing Anne Kornblut's book about the glass ceiling for women in U.S. politics last week, I put my own two cents in.
Part of the fault for the lack of female presidential timber in this country, I argued, lies with women themselves. If women candidates don't run for president, they won't get elected.
I generally skipped the question of female voters, especially many younger ones, who don't see things through the same feminist prism as previous generations. But now we have a Massachusetts Senate race where the women's vote could determine not just the outcome of the contest, but the partisan makeup of the U.S. Senate and the fate of the Democratic healthcare reform plan. Let's visit the issue.
Much has been written and shouted and said about the healthcare bill. Put it all aside. This much is bankably true: It will benefit no one as much as it helps moms and kids. Especially single moms, working to raise a family in tough economic times, who may live the hardest lives in our society.
-
Rush Limbaugh: No More Aid for Haiti
Tweet Share on Facebook January 14, 2010 Comment (263)By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Did he really say that? I guess so. I checked his web site. He's not even ashamed he said it.
For Rush Limbaugh, the deaths of thousands of Haitians in a natural disaster is just fodder for another hateful rant against American government and President Obama.
Said Rush:
This will play right into Obama's hands. He's humanitarian, compassionate. They'll use this to burnish their, shall we say, "credibility" with the black community--in the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It's made-to-order for them. That's why he couldn't wait to get out there, could not wait to get out there.
What kind of world does this nincompoop live in, that this nonsensical musing pops out of his mouth? What makes him see things through such an ugly prism, at a time when the bodies are still being dug from the wreckage?
And then this oaf went on to discourage Americans from making contributions to the Red Cross because, via foreign aid, "we've already donated to Haiti--it's called the U.S. income tax."
What a Christian.
