It is fundamentally absurd that Mitch "one-term president" McConnell is casting himself as the champion of bipartisanship in the Senate. After almost four years of nothing but obstructionism, his message can basically be boiled down to the same thing the mafia tells you when they're running a protection racket: "Hey, nice Senate you got there. … Continue reading Gangster politics

Via Wonkette: By 2018, will EVERY Democratic candidate be a relative of someone who made it on his or her own? #DecadentLiberalism http://t.co/2laoazcKLG — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 26, 2014 This is a trenchant comment coming from a man whose hard work and self-sacrifice enabled him to be born the son of the "Godfather of … Continue reading Clever trolling or pathological lack of self-awareness? You decide!

Jim Lobe, the namesake of my sometime internet home, writes that this has been a positive week for news about the Iran negotiations. For one thing, the idea of a deal was endorsed by a key player in the Iran sanctions community: In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Amb. Stuart Eizenstat, who played a … Continue reading Some positive talk on the Iran front

I wish I had something profound or unique to say about gun violence in this country, but even if I did it wouldn't be appropriate to say it today. The horror of yet another school shooting sort of leaves you with nothing to say, although plenty of people aren't letting that stop them. Thoughts and … Continue reading Tragedies

The great unveiling of Rand Paul's "conservative realism" foreign policy last night went about how you'd expect: Paul offered his usual confused mishmash of contradictions and platitudes, carefully designed to maximize his 2016 appeal to Republican primary voters without sacrificing his more non-interventionist cred with the general electorate. I had a few thoughts that I … Continue reading Rand Paul is the most important something who ever somethinged, you can be sure of that

I'm not on the "wanker of the day" committee, but surely the rich person who wrote to Slate's "Dear Prudence" column in dismay at the thought of having to give Halloween candy to poor children is a strong front-runner, no?

Predictions that the United States is on the verge of collapsing like the Roman Empire are pretty old hat, usually among the kind of people who are more worried about the national debt than about whether or not their fellow citizens have enough to eat (though there is a strain of this particular mania on … Continue reading Don’t know much about history

Or, if you prefer, "time for another blogger ethics panel" (apologies to Atrios): In an opinion piece published Tuesday by Politico Magazine, "No, BP Didn't Ruin the Gulf," author Geoff Morrell writes that the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, the worst off-shore oil spill in American history, was much less disastrous environmentally for the Gulf Coast … Continue reading It’s about ethics in business journalism

At Vox today, Dara Lind distills a report from The Urban Institute and Northwestern University on the underground forced labor market here in America, which in several respects sounds an awful lot like the kafalah system in place for migrant workers in the Persian Gulf: Here's how it happens: a person in Mexico or the … Continue reading America’s kafalah system

A Congress that has made doing nothing into an art form is getting very mad that the Obama administration might try an end-run around them if it comes time to start relieving sanctions against Iran: Demanding a bigger role in the Iran nuclear negotiations, key Democrats are beginning to openly criticize the Obama administration for … Continue reading Congress demands that it be given every opportunity to wreck Iran talks