Author Archive | David Bernstein

9% of the voters in the Pennsylvania primary were African Americans who said race was not a factor in their vote. Of those 9%, 91% voted for Barack Obama, exactly the same as the overall African American percentage for Obama, including the 4+% who said race was a factor in their vote (the poll doesn’t […]

Andrew Sullivan links to this appalling speech by leading Clinton supporter and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, from 1997 when he was mayor of Philadelphia. Rendell is, to say the least, fulsome in his praise of the racist and anti-Semitic cult and its leaders. And he sure seems oblivious to the irony of a white, Jewish […]

After some hesitation, we banked our daughter’s cord blood at her birth 2.5 years ago. We are now expected daughter number two, and are wondering whether we should bank her cord blood as well. It’s pretty hard to get objective information about this, and thoughts from others who have contemplated the same decision are welcome. […]

“The crossing is used for agricultural produce and to send humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.” There have been several attacks recently by “militants” on the crossing used to send fuel and food into Gaza. They are playing a “heads we win, tails you lose game.” Keep the crossings open, and we’ll kill Israelis. Close […]

The controversy over John Yoo’s appointment at tenure involves, on one side, individuals who claim that his role in the “torture memos” shows him to be so incompetent, unethical, and/or immoral, that he should not be permitted to retain his position at Berkeley. On the other side, everyone from Brian Leiter to co-conspirator Jonathan Adler […]

… “on a regular basis”. Boy, that wasn’t a good answer. It didn’t help that Obama followed up by analogizing Bill Ayers, the domestic terrorist in question, to a fellow Senator who vociferously opposes abortion, with whom Obama is also friendly. One man advocates legislation to criminalize abortion, the other is an unrepentant ex-terrorist from […]

I’m a big fan of The Innocence Project, which assists individuals unjustly convicted of crimes. But I did a massive double-take when I saw that Janet Reno is on its board of directors. Janet Reno! She bears as much responsibilty as anyone for the child abuse witch hunt trials of the late 80s that claimed […]

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that George Mason had so far hired eight new tenured or tenure track faculty members this hiring season. The hiring season has now ended, and the tally is up to nine, with the addition of tax scholar Rachelle Holmes. Our new additions increase our faculty by 30%, and […]

I argued “no” last Fall. Peter Berkowitz chimes in, noting that many prominent neocons are not Jewish, and, more important, “neoconservatism does not rest on Jewish premises. Nor does it seek to advance specifically Jewish goals.”

Boston Globe: Owning a home in Boston is about 70 percent more expensive than renting an essentially identical home. Therefore the government should stop trying to keep owners in homes and instead let more people return to renting. Those families could spend the extra money on other needs…says a new study from the National Low […]

Jake Tapper: In Levittown, Penn., today, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, was asked about his church’s magazine giving an award to Rev. Louis Farrakhan. “This was done by a magazine that was connected to the church,” Obama explained. “I would have never done it. It was primary focused on the rehabilitation work that they do for […]

Radley Balko interviews Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, who is dramatically moving his office away from a traditional “convict at all costs” mentality, to a philosophy that the prosecutors’ role is to pursue justice, not rack up convictions. Balko suggests he’s America’s best prosecutor. I don’t know about that, and the interview doesn’t actual […]

One of Noam Chomsky’s favorite debating points regarding Israel is to allege that Israel has had a longstanding policy of intentionally destroying Palestinian society rather than attempting to make peace. He backs this up with a quote attributed to Moshe Dayan. Here, for example, is Chomsky in a 2005 debate with Alan Dershowitz: One choice […]

Mazin Qumsiyeh has posted a rather nonresponsive response to my extensive documentation of his record of adopting and promoting anti-Semitic ideas. No explanation, for example, of why his website hosts an anti-Semitic article on “Jewish Power” written by a Holocaust denier. He calls my claim of anti-Semitism “defamatory” but fails to point out anything I […]

This story has received a lot of play, but isn’t this comparing apples to oranges? There are still more Christians than there are Muslims, and Muslims, like Christians, are not just one group. Most obviously, there are Sunni Muslims and there are Shiite Muslims, and if I understand things correctly, there are some divisions within […]