Author: Andrew Sullivan

Would The Supreme Court Strike Down DOMA?

by Patrick Appel

Andy Koppelman is hopeful:

On the current Supreme Court, this case would probably depend on the swing vote of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. (If he is still there when it is heard — appeals take years, and he turns 74 later this month.) In a 1996 decision striking down a Colorado law that repealed all antidiscrimination protection for gay people, he noted that it "has the peculiar property of imposing a broad and undifferentiated disability on a single named group." This kind of imposition "is unprecedented in our jurisprudence," and he declared that it "is not within our constitutional tradition to enact laws of this sort." Similarly, in a 2003 decision invalidating a law banning homosexual sex, he observed that such gay-specific laws were very recent, originating in the 1970s. That same logic might well condemn DOMA, but it would be unlikely to invalidate the marriage laws of individual states.

Reflections on the Jim Bunning presidency

by Dave Weigel

Brian Beutler reports and ruminates on the failure of Democrats (at this point I could use a shortcut key to type those three words) to do what seemed like it would be easy — shame the GOP into going along with unemployment insurance extensions or "jobs bills."

Democrats would have to take significant legislative steps right now to lower unemployment (let alone to keep it from growing). But there's no easy way for them to do that, so instead, with a double-dip recession threatening, they're taking an incremental route.

"President Obama will continue to press Congress to extend unemployment benefits and pass commonsense measures to strengthen our economic recovery – like extending unemployment insurance and COBRA, supporting our clean energy economy, providing aid to state and local governments, and saving the jobs of thousands of teachers," reads a statement from Obama's top economic adviser Larry Summer's today.

Contrast that with the assessment of Obama's chief political adviser, David Axelrod, who this weekend shrugged off the idea that we'll be seeing much, if any, job-growth legislation this year.

"Well, I think it's true that there's not a great — there's not a great desire [on Capitol Hill], even though there's some argument for additional spending, in the short-run, to continue to generate economic activity," Axelrod sighed. "There's not a great appetite for it."

I think this all comes back to Democrats surrendering on the economic argument since, really, day one of the Obama presidency.

Now, some of this happened out of necessity — until Al Franken and Arlen Specter joined the Democratic conference, literally everything they wanted to do was subject to filibusters. But from the outset, Democrats confronted a Republican Party that argued for tax cuts and pure, Schumpeter-style creative destruction of failing industries with… well, with what? The stimulus was a mish-mash of spending plans that sounded good and tax cuts that Republicans asked for them didn't vote for. The jobs bills were shrunk to get Republican votes, then they didn't. Democrats believed that deficit spending was the way to dig out of the recession but they apologized for it, and tried to cover it up. You had the president talking to Christina Romer about spending multipliers, then heading on to TV to say the government needed to tighten belts just like American families did.

Was it ever possible for Democrats to win this argument? No, their policies weren't going to work the way they promised, they knew it, and they picked the easy road of bashing Republicans over the hard road of trying to explain why short-term deficit spending and tax hikes down the road worked where tax cuts didn't.

Would Hayek Vote For Obamacare? Ctd

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

As an American living in Singapore for over 20 years, I'd like to comment on Will Wilkinson's statement that the reason behind its health care efficiency and ability to successfully deliver quality health care to all at a reasonable cost is entirely due to competitive markets at play.  Perhaps he should investigate how heavily involved the Singapore government is in the local health care sector – from owning hospital groups that compete with the private sector, directing retail prices for doctors, ensuring low cost drugs are available, mandating individual health accounts and restricting how they can be used, etc.  While there are veneers of private sector activity and free markets at play, the Singapore government is well in control of everything that happens in this area.  I for one would welcome this level of involvement by the US Government in the American health sector but suspect the Tea Partiers and their ilk would go completely insane at the thought.

Last Words

by Patrick Appel

Charles Simic reviews Robert Elder's Last Words Of The Executed:

“Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something,” Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa worried in his dying moments. It is universally believed that if you care to be remembered by posterity, you better have something memorable to say in your last moments on earth. “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” Nathan Hale, an American spy convicted of espionage by the British in 1776 famously said. History books of every country are full of such heroic examples; most of them, including this one by Hale, of doubtful veracity. What makes this book different is that people we encounter in its pages are almost exclusively unknown and forgotten. Their final thoughts can be touching, angry, funny, and, at times, unforgettable and original.