“Back in 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland was actively trying to get Facebook lawyer Susan Davies installed as the head of his department’s Antitrust Division. Google counsel Karen Dunn, whose wedding Garland officiated and who prepped Garland for confirmation hearings, was also up for that job. Neither of them got it, regardless of the interests of the head of the department. Instead it went to Jonathan Kanter, a leading Big Tech adversary and anti-monopolist. In other words, in the Biden administration, the attorney general himself was not seen as someone with the kind of power to dictate personnel decisions for his own agency. That’s why I don’t have too much to say about Trump attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz, who apparently escaped the House right before a damaging Ethics Committee report was about to drop detailing sex with underage girls and illegal drug use.” (11/15/24)
“Arab and Muslim American voters did not remove Democrats from office, nor did they cost Kamala Harris the Oval Office. They merely sent a strong message that Palestine matters, not only to Arabs and Muslims but to many Americans as well. The ones who cost the Democrats the elections are the Democrats themselves. Their humiliating defeat on November 5 was due largely to their undeniable role in the Israeli war and genocide in Gaza. Peter Beinart put it best in his November 7 op-ed in the New York Times, entitled ‘Democrats Ignored Gaza and Brought Down Their Party.'” (11/15/24)
“You’ve probably moved across state lines at some point in your life. Maybe it was to attend college or take a higher-paying job. Maybe you wanted to live closer to friends and family after having kids or to join a new religious or political community. It could even be as simple as deciding to move from Dallas to Philadelphia because you prefer attending the home games of a successful football team. No right-minded person would have the government interfere with any of this. … If government-drawn lines within your country don’t possess some sort of moral magic that voids your rights, why would government-drawn lines between countries?” (for publication 12/24)
“Confession: I’ve just never been much of an Alex Jones fan. I never saw the value, or even very much of the fun, some of my libertarian friends found in his crazed, bombastic commentary. Nonetheless, I’m a free speech fundamentalist who’s appalled that the court system allowed bad actors to enrich themselves at his expense by standing atop the corpses of dead children to complain about Jones doing … well, pretty much the same thing. … It’s depressing to learn that Jones’s former property will be used to promote exactly the same kind of harm done to the Sandy Hook victims and their families, in the name of ‘justice’ for the latter and at the expense of someone who didn’t do that harm.” (11/14/24)
“US equities are being driven by purely domestic investment flows — rejoicing over Trump’s MAGA policies is understandable. But it ignores an enormous, dangerous elephant in the room: debt!” (11/14/24)
“Yes, Donald Trump took all seven battleground states and the electoral votes to go with them. This time he also won the popular vote, unlike in 2016. But let’s put all that in perspective. Trump took Wisconsin by less than one point. He won Michigan by only a point and a half. He did slightly better in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia with 2- or 3-point wins. You can call this a sweep, but not a landslide or even close to one. Trump’s 3-million vote edge this year was matched by Hillary Clinton in 2016, when she lost in an Electoral College fluke. … One hopes to be wrong, but bets are on that Trumpian chaos will once again unsettle Americans’ tranquility. That happened nationally only two years into his first term, after which Democrats rode high.” (11/14/24)
“President-elect Donald Trump has wasted no time announcing his picks for who will lead his administration. Many of his appointments to the MAGA Cabinet have shocked Congress and the nation alike — most notably his controversial choice of Matt Gaetz, who resigned from Congress on Wednesday, for attorney general. Could things get any weirder? I’m joined by my colleagues James Hohmann and Theodore R. Johnson to discuss Trump’s out-of-the-ordinary nominations.” (11/14/24)
“When young people in America are disgruntled with their economic prospects, they can vote against the ruling party. In the Nov. 5 election, for example, men under 30 years old opted against incumbent Democrats. Yet in China, where elections are nil, what do unhappy youth do? They ride bikes at night. En masse. On Nov. 8, more than 100,000 university students – many with grim hopes of finding a job – pedaled more than 30 miles from Zhengzhou in central China to the historic city of Kaifeng. The nocturnal spin, mostly on rental bikes, was for the joy it. At first, the Chinese Communist Party praised the spontaneous swarm of bright-eyed bicyclists. Kaifeng is known for its soup dumplings, its ancient temples, and a theme park. Tourists are welcomed. Yet many of the riders were also glad to be part of a mass movement that expressed their values.” (11/13/24)
“Policies that have bipartisan support in Congress, and never appear as matters for political debate, involve things that are structurally central to the functioning of the American model of capitalism. They are things that both wings of the capitalist class, represented by the two parties, agree on. Both major parties overwhelmingly agree on fundamental things like the nature of capitalist land ownership and credit, copyright maximalism, the idea that the state should massively subsidize the major input costs of corporate capitalism, and the role of the United States as global enforcer of a neoliberal economic order. On the other hand, large popular majorities are in favor of things like single-payer health insurance, that are non-starters in Congress. In any case where the majority consensus of the general public contradicts the consensus of American capital, the latter prevails.” (11/14/24)
“I thought I was done with free speech. For nearly two decades, I reported on it for the international magazine Index on Censorship. I wrote a book, Outspoken: Free Speech Stories, about controversies over it. I even sang ‘I Like to Be in America’ at the top of my lungs at an around-the-clock banned-book event organized by the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression after the musical ‘West Side Story’ was canceled at a local high school because of its demeaning stereotypes of Puerto Ricans. I was ready to move on. I was done. As it happened, though, free speech — or, more accurately, attacks on it — wasn’t done with me, or with most Americans, as a matter of fact.” [editor’s note: The irony here is that it is the “progressive” forces that are the real enemies of free speech, and you can do little to “cancel” that truth – SAT] [additional editor’s note: “Conservatives” and “progressives” have proven themselves equally enthusiastic enemies of free speech masquerading as friends of same – TLK] (11/14/24)
