5 years ago
February 2020
“By accident as much as design, our system makes it painfully difficult to remove a president. And the political culture makes it harder still, by erecting barriers nowhere to be found in the Constitution. We’ve come to view the process as a source of constitutional crisis itself, rather than as a potential solution to one. Yet if history is any guide, we have little to fear from what’s shaping up to be our fourth serious effort at presidential impeachment. Whether it succeeds or not, the attempted firing of Donald Trump will cause the republic little harm and may even do it some good.”
Gene Healy
“Don’t Freak Out About Impeachment”
20 years ago
February 2005
“The [George W.] Bush administration has spent no political capital in the fight against big government in the first term. Instead, it has opted to focus on spin (talking about how Washington has ratcheted down spending growth to 1 percent—true only if you exclude 82 percent of the budget). Bush may have no greater desire to use political capital on this important fight in a second term. But continuing to turn a blind eye to congressional spending will jeopardize the president’s tax agenda. Given that taxes were one area of substantial domestic policy differentiation between Republicans and Democrats in 2004, if that distinction evaporates much of the Republican voting base may find better things to do when the next election rolls around.”
John Berthoud
“Four More Years!?!?!”
“In a landmark 1969 decision in Tinker v. Des Moines, the Supreme Court put to rest the notion that ‘either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,’ ruling that only demonstrable disruption of a public school’s educational mission can be restricted. Many administrators seem all too ready to presume that anything that provokes disagreement is ipso facto ‘disruptive.’ But if not speech that provokes disagreement, what was the First Amendment meant to protect?”
Julian Sanchez
“Civics Lessons”
35 years ago
February 1990
“The federal government began its new war on pornography without any real discussion about the need for such an effort. Indeed, the Meese Commission may have destroyed any chances for serious public debate on the effects of porn. Given the availability of the stuff, we should be concerned about the effects, good or bad, of sexual images, especially on young persons. But erotica is not a subject that should be deliberated solely by ambitious federal prosecutors and antiporn zealots.”
Philip Nobile
“Untruth and Consequences”
40 years ago
February 1985
“Medicare is a system that takes billions of dollars from the working population and hands it over to people who, by and large, are not working. It gives billions of dollars in medical benefits to people who did not earn them. It takes taxes from the working poor to pay the medical bills of people who are generally better off. It distributes costs and benefits in a highly arbitrary way. It is costly and is going to get more costly. The time has come for as much reform as is politically possible.”
John C. Goodman
“Is There Life After Medicare?”
45 years ago
February 1980
“Monopoly might explain why a particular price is relatively high at any moment in time. But monopoly cannot explain why that price, much less the average of all prices, is rising continually, year after year. Nor can monopoly explain why inflation is higher or lower at various times and places, unless the degree of monopoly is subject to huge and sudden gyrations. The structure of US industry and labor markets was surely not much different in 1974 than in 1964, but the inflation rate was 10 times higher.”
Alan Reynolds
“Does Monopoly Cause Inflation?”
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