Tim Pawlenty’s Restrained 2012 Plunge
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on August 7th, 2010 4:32 am by HL
Tim Pawlenty’s Restrained 2012 Plunge
Scott Conroy, RealClearPolitics
As he explores a potential presidential run, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has been branded with the “too conventional” label so many times that it's already become a cliché. But Pawlenty insists he's not as boring as many pundits have made him out to be.”I think if people get to know me better, it's just not true,” the second-term Republican said in a phone interview with RealClearPolitics between meetings in St. Paul. “But the other response I have is: compared to who? There may be some more people who are dramatically more entertaining, but…
Grateful to Truman for Dropping the Big One
Paul Kengor, Pittsburgh PG
This week marks 65 years since the United States dropped the atomic bomb. On Aug. 6, 1945, President Harry Truman delivered a “rain of ruin” upon Hiroshima, Japan, with Nagasaki hit three days later, killing 100,000 to 200,000 people.Truman's objective was to compel surrender from an intransigent enemy that refused to halt its naked aggression. The barbarous mentality of 1940s Japan was beyond belief. An entire nation had lost its mind, consumed by a ferocious militarism and hellbent on suicide. Facing such fanaticism, Truman felt no alternative but to use the bomb. As…
Conservative Fantasy & the Missouri Vote
Jonathan Chait, New Republic
On Tuesday, Missouri held a referendum on the individual mandate, and it went down with a resounding 70% of the vote. Conservatives have responded with a bout of crowing (see, for instance, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, among many others.) Now, it's certainly true, and has always been true, that the individual mandate, once a bipartisan notion and still defended by poor Mitt Romney, is the least popular aspect of the Affordable Care Act and provokes bipartisan opposition. (Many other aspects are quite popular.)But let me raise a few points that have not come up in…
Justice Adrift Under Obama
Mark Greenbaum, Philadelphia Inquirer
When Barack Obama was elected, there were many questions about how he would govern and which reforms he would pursue. Yet there was little doubt that the former law professor would bring immediate and dramatic change to the White House's approach to legal affairs and the Justice Department.A year and a half later, this assumption appears to have been wrong. The president remains puzzlingly aloof, uninterested, and indecisive on legal issues, and the Justice Department has been one of the administration's most unproductive and arguably dysfunctional agencies.
