Lapham's Quarterly: “I admit that I treed a rheumatic grandfather of mine in the winter of...

laphamsquarterly:

“I admit that I treed a rheumatic grandfather of mine in the winter of 1850. He was old and inexpert in climbing trees, but with the heartless brutality that is characteristic of me, I ran him out of the front door in his nightshirt at the point of a shotgun and caused him to bowl up a maple…

As he defends the federal gay marriage ban, Solicitor General Paul Clement wants you to forget everything he said last week about the federal health care law.

wilwheaton:

Congress has no constitutional authority to punish people who don’t want to have health insurance, Paul Clement argued last week before the United States Supreme Court. This week? The heralded attorney is arguing, to another panel of federal judges, that Congress has plenty of constitutional authority to punish people who don’t want to marry someone of the opposite sex. Last week, Clement defended states’ rights and labeled as “unprecedented” the federal health care policy. This week, he says that Congress can dictate terms of a federal marriage policy over the objections of states which have legalized same-sex marriage.

Ah ah ah! No take-backsies!

newyorker: Comment: Un-American Activities But political journalism—unlike war reporting—long ago stopped being about what is true or important. Sometime in the nineteen-eighties, reporters began covering politics like sports and entertainment. How many times and ways can you say that the Republican Party has descended into unreality and extremism before you lose your viewers and readers? On the other hand, there’s an endless appetite for stories about Santorum’s effort to reach out beyond his evangelical base, or Gingrich playing the expectations game in Iowa. This stuff is political candy. In today’s Daily Comment, George Packer writes about Republican politics, Iowa, and political journalism: http://nyr.kr/rX6XjU Read this: it’s a good example of how political journalism has—along with most other forms of journalism—gone (for the most part) down the shitter.  EDIT: Case in Point
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newyorker:

Comment: Un-American Activities

But political journalism—unlike war reporting—long ago stopped being about what is true or important. Sometime in the nineteen-eighties, reporters began covering politics like sports and entertainment. How many times and ways can you say that the Republican Party has descended into unreality and extremism before you lose your viewers and readers? On the other hand, there’s an endless appetite for stories about Santorum’s effort to reach out beyond his evangelical base, or Gingrich playing the expectations game in Iowa. This stuff is political candy.

In today’s Daily Comment, George Packer writes about Republican politics, Iowa, and political journalism: http://nyr.kr/rX6XjU

Read this: it’s a good example of how political journalism has—along with most other forms of journalism—gone (for the most part) down the shitter. 

EDIT: Case in Point

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