Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The ACLU provided the latest reason for card carrying members (like me) to be grateful they’re around. Thanks for nothing, President Corleone.

I’ve linked to this Paul Krugman piece before (here is his latest version of it), but I think it has lots of ongoing relevance. It feels in many ways like we are living a new Dark Ages, when things that we used to know have been forgotten. Here is the latest dispatch from Dark Ages America.

Maybe would could call it “I lost my head America” too. Link sent to me by Dana Nelson. (Bad for Democracy is worth every penny, by the way.)

So last week I noted the pain ray and full body scanners creeping into wider use, now predator drones. Our freedoms are being encroached on from a number of fronts and it would be a goddamn refreshing change of pace if the teabaggers would devote as much energy to the actual erosion of liberty as they do to whatever ginned up nontroversy their lords instruct them to get exercised about.

bmaz writes a letter.

When Lawrence O’Donnell mentioned the bond market I wanted to throw a brick at the screen.

I really wish I could note the good thing AP did this week but, alas, see the disclaimer. However, Hannah Gurman’s piece on how the Iraq war is nothing close to a success is in the neighborhood. Many of the usual suspects have emerged to claim, um, credit for the result. Rachel Maddow thinks they should get all that and more. If recent history tells us anything, it’s that if those responsible aren’t hung with it like a millstone immediately it won’t be long before popular perception not only forgets but actually blames the wrong people.

From the “you can’t possibly be this stupid, can you?” file. Memo to Charles Schumer: “narrow and focused” = “Take our majority! Please!”

Writing on another subject Jamelle Bouie claimed “for all its electoral success, the conservative movement hasn’t really changed the guiding assumptions of American governance or stopped the expansion of the welfare state.” Let’s review. Right now, the Democrats’ idea of “thinking big” is cutting taxes. Real stimulus isn’t even on the radar. They also are poised to pass new tax cuts for the rich, make the estate tax more plutonomy friendly and have stoked enough paranoia on the right to make a slow decent into kleptocracy look reasonable. I know I’m just a stupid blogger in the middle of nowhere, but when I read stuff like that from actual DC-based media outlets I feel so much more knowledgeable than them.

Speaking of media fail.

The recession has been very good for one industry, I see.

Foreign subcontractors given blank checks by US.

I usually consider dauntless excursions into the untamed darklands of evolutionary psychology to be little more than exercises in self indulgent contrarianism aimed at rationalizing (and normalizing) our most primitive impulses. Having said that, if it drives Megan McArdle bonkers maybe I’ve judged it too hastily. Via.

Adam Serwer answers Reihan Salam:

Except for the fact that Malcolm’s father was murdered by white supremacists who were never brought to justice, his memories of the KKK terrorizing his family, his general experience of white supremacist violence reinforced or tacitly approved of by the state, being assassinated at 39 instead of making $32 million a year fantasizing about it on television, Beck and Malcolm…still have just about nothing in common.

Universities are forever under attack by conservatives as bastions of liberalism teeming with out-of-touch pointy headed intellectuals whose ultimate goal is bringing about Khmer Rouge style collectivism so they can, I don’t know, run a re-education camp or two. Even if you want to go full tin foil hat like that, you have to admit that the goal is very long term and is at least ostensibly about how to bring about the greatest good for the greatest number. Compare that risk to this:

The Olin Foundation did not buy the souls of the economists and lawyers to whom it provided fellowships and endowed chairs. It simply selected true believers for its largess. It knew how desperately eager universities were to raise funds. There are now tens of thousands of law and economics graduates that have taken a class in theoclassical law and economics. They were taught that theoclassical economic assertions (often falsified decades ago) were objective facts devoid of ideological content. They have been taught that economics has proven that regulation is unnecessary, hopeless, and harmful. Some students accept this dogma as revealed truth, but many reject it. (If your goal as a professor is to indoctrinate students you should prepare for a life of disappointment.) Few economics, business school, or law students have been introduced to effective regulation or economic/finance theories that have proven to have predictive strength.