Author Archive | Jacob Levy

(See my first post on “liberalism’s roots” here. See more from John Holbo; Matt Yglesias and again and again; and some of the original GOldberg posts, here and here, that I neglected to link to in my original post. ) I had the following e-mail exchange with Steven Postrel yesterday. Steven: This is out of […]

A word about the ongoing discussion (begun by Jonah Goldberg) of whether contemporary left-liberals are more ignorant of their movement’s intellectual history than conservatives or libertarians are of those of their movements. One of Goldberg’s correspondents mentions John Rawls. I think Rawls may be significant in quite a different way. It is Rawls who most […]

(First read Stuart’s post immediately below.) This is probably a “of course we thought of that” kind of question, but: Stuart, for those os us who haven’t read either version of the paper– do the authors show that the relationship is inverse even after countercyclical effects are taken into account? That is, in a recession, […]

[Spoilers ahead, for the three people who both care about remaining unspoiled about Angel and haven’t yet seen it.] Jonah Goldberg’s unimpressed but hopeful after seeing last night’s Angel. I watched the series finale last night and struck me as a rushed season finale. Considering the show’s popularity and the WB’s relative lack of same, […]

I thought this was an interesting question, posted by my friend Andrew Norton over on catallaxy, and thought I’d bring it to the attention of the economists hereabouts (Tyler? Alex? Brad?) Perhaps the economists or marketing experts among Catallaxy readers can suggest reasons why both Qantas and VirginBlue have announced $6 fuel surcharges, due to […]

On the basis of my post a while ago musing on the possible unconstitutionality of fast-track trade agreement procedures, I was just solicited to become the token right-leaning “constitutional expert” arguing this in court, on behalf of one of the prominent protectionist interests. As I said at the time, I’d truly hate to see my […]

Some light weekend reading. Kirston Capps on Washington summer interns, via Matt Yglesias. Neither my Hill internship nor my summertime fellowship in DC when all my vollege friends had internships resembled this image in the slightest; but I recognize the truth of it, because all the other interns around me sure seemed to be leading […]

…when the very smart Ramesh Ponnuru and the very clever Jonah Goldberg feel obliged to, somewhat delicately, distance themselves from the very repulsive John “buggery, buggery, buggery” Derbyshire. As Goldberg skirts the edge of pointing out, apparently it’s only consensual buggery that Derbyshire has a problem with.

Michael Green reports that Alan Gewirth, Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, died on Sunday. Last spring the university hosted a conference on the occasion of Alan’s 90th birthday– and I was astonished to learn that this sharp, vigorous, energetic participant in workshops I attended could possibly […]

Some time ago, I blogged about this odd piece in the Chronicle by Alan Wolfe, about the alleged influence of Carl Schmitt on contemporary Republican politics. The letters have arrived. This week’s Chronicle runs excellent responses from Peter Berkowitz and Louis Hunt (the former a colleague of some of my co-bloggers at GMU Law), a […]

That’s my new alliterative motto designed to annoy some of my Republican friends. The day before Abu Ghraib broke, I wrote: And yet, compared with the adamant refusal of Bush and his cabinet officials to take any responsibility at all for anything having to do with 9/11 or the Iraq war, Clinton’s substance-free brand of […]

Andrew Sullivan: The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was wrong. […]

Looks like we got off blogger just in time! (Though Patrick Belton hasn’t noticed yet.) The new blogger interface is pretty annoying, whereas this PowerBlogs thing is lovely. Oxblog and Solum are now the only blogspot blogs I read regularly. “Bloggered” has become a synonym for “FUBAR.” I assume that the blogger relaunch is meant […]

What on earth is this? President Bush on Wednesday chastised his defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, for Mr. Rumsfeld’s handling of a scandal over the American abuse of Iraqis held at a notorious prison in Baghdad, White House officials said. The disclosures by the White House officials, under authorization from Mr. Bush, were an extraordinary […]

I turned 33 yesterday. I’ve been moderately grouchy about it for some time now– grouchy as the birthday approached, grouchy as it actually descended upon me. The first thing to genuinely cheer me up was the realization that, in hobbit years, I have only just now “come of age.” UPDATE: I leave it to the […]