Disaster Strikes

The retirement of Justice Kennedy is an unmitigated disaster.  We are now already virtually guaranteed a very right-wing court for a generation.  Roe v. Wade is toast, in spirit if not in letter.  If Trump or Pence gets to appoint a Ginsburg vacancy…. The Supreme Court is too powerful.  And its great power is combined […]

New French Book on Growing Inequality

It sounds like Thomas Piketty, who is French, has written an important book about the trends of distribution of wealth and income in 20th-21st century economies, primarily in developed economies.  The general story is that the “natural” rate of accumulation of capital is on the order of five-six percent per annum, while the natural rate […]

Race far from dead as major issue, the South far from new

Recent Supreme Court décisions occasioned the following excellent contributing editorials from liberals in today’s “New York Times.” Thomas Edsall on the marginalization of blacks in the South via gerrymandering and “bleaching.” http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/the-decline-of-black-power-in-the-south/ Linda Greenhouse on Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s dissent in Fisher vs. University of Texas: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/the-cost-of-compromise/?hp All of this gives the lie, in my opinion, […]

Who is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a pre-primer

I caught a bit of a television program devoted to the Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) affair this morning, and I have done a bit of research on the Internet. First, this affair is huge in France, newspaper sales have skyrocketed, the news weeklies are devoting 13-20 pages to it this week.  DSK was, prior to this affair, thought […]

As Mideast peace talks recommence…

Here is something I wrote for the bloggingheadstv fora about ten weeks ago, just after the flotilla incident.  The post attracted a certain amount of praise, so I am putting it here also, as I probably should have done at the outset. The blockade is not just collective punishment. It is collective punishment that may […]

California’s same-sex marriage decision

I have now read Judge Walker’s decision in California (documents.nytimes.com/us-district-court-decision-perry-v-schwarzenegger?ref=us), and I think I conceded far too much in a recent online colloquy with someone in the blogginheadstv fora who was opposing same-sex marriage, primarily on the grounds that heterosexual marriage has been the preferred means for achieving the state’s interest in perpetuating or increasing […]

Is there a risk of a real US-Israel rift?

This op-ed in today’s NYT by a Princeton academic draws an analogy between US-Israel relations today and France-Israel relations 1967. http://www.nytimes.com//2010/04/01/opinion/01bass.html Generally speaking, people seem to take the rift between Obama and Netanyahu (or between the US and Israel, if one wants to depersonalize things) more seriously than I would have expected them to do. […]

Health-care reform passage, preliminary reaction

How do I feel about health-care reform?  Better than if it had not passed, but not very enthusiastic, in the end.  I found this interview by Doug Henwood (March 25, 2010) of a single-payer advocate, Steffie Woolhandler, rather convincing on the question of cost-containment, and for months I had been hearing Robert Scheer say that […]

Doug Henwood, often indispensable

Everyone should listen to this edition of Doug Henwood’s “Behind the News” (March 13, 2010). http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#100313 First, you will hear one of the best interviews I have heard about the financial crisis.  The first interviewee is a woman who has written a new book about the financial crisis, and who blogs at Naked Capitalism, under […]

America’s relations with Israel

My friend Chris asked via email whether I think that Hillary Clinton’s recent 43-minute phone call to Netanyahu, in which the latter was apparently rebuked for the embarrassing authorization of over 600 new housing units for Israelis in East Jerusalem, represents an important turn in US-Israel relations.  My answer is that I doubt it.  My […]