You’d think, maybe, the best way to respond to Terrorism is to not run around with a damp spot in the crotch of your Dockers all the damn time. The goal of “terrorists,” you see, is to inflict “terror” — stop me if I’m going too fast here  — and so maybe, just maybe, it [...]

There is great concern that the Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives and even possibly the Senate in the 2010 elections. While most prognosticators are predicting huge wins for the Republican Party, their current seat deficit is so great that if they do win back the majority in the House, it will likely be by less than a dozen seats. If Democrats do manage to hold on to the House, it will likely also be with a very narrow majority. While I’ve been told with much hand waving to be very scared about the prospect of Speaker John Boehner, what no one in the Democratic party has legitimately explained to me–or the rest of America–is why we should care. . . be it Republicans or Democrats with narrow control of the House.

On a series of conference calls with reporters and bloggers, Jason Furman, Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, defended the series of tax breaks and infrastructure investments that make up the White House’s new jobs package as both a short-term way to boost the economy and draw contrast with a Republican platform stuck in the past, and a long-term way to create better modes for business investment in the future. But he still left nagging questions about the relative benefits of a policy which even some Democrats are way of, and which economists have found dubious in recent days.

A couple days ago I was on the phone with my friend and occasional Afghanistan sparring partner, Michael Cohen, and the subject of corruption came up. Michael pointed me to a really pungent quote I had missed, from an anonymous Obama official in a Times story: “Fighting corruption is the very definition of mission creep.” It’s easy to see why: what in the world does Afghan government corruption have to do with disrupting, dismantling and defeating al-Qaeda? Indeed, Anthony Cordesman has a really thought-provoking CSIS paper pointing out that one of the most structurally corrupting influences in Afghanistan is the presence of massive amounts of foreign (read: U.S.) cash that vastly exceed the country’s absorbtive capacity.

Orszag wants all the Bush tax cuts to expire. Obama doesn’t; he wants to keep them all but the ones on the top 2%. That’s a $3 trillion dollar difference over the next ten years.

Eric Sterling is a member of the Just Say Now advisory board, and President of The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. He released this statement in response to comments made by LA County Sheriff Lee Baca to the effect that the proliferation of marijuana dispensaries has resulted in more crime in Los Angeles:

Author Anthony DiMaggio describes the decline of electoral participation among the young and minorities and the implications for the midterms

ACLU’s Ben Wizner: “This is a sad day not only for the torture victims whose attempt to seek justice has been extinguished, but for all Americans who care about the rule of law and our nation’s reputation in the world.”

Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper and current LA Police Chief Charles Beck take issue with Baca’s assertions.

When faced with the choice between Republican and Republican-lite, voters usually take the real thing. It’s the same with big business; they’ll go with the traditional party of big business, where they get to write the legislation completely, over the party that gives them a peek at the legislation and solicits their input and tailors it to their whims.