John Sexton

I saw Argo when it came out, one of four Best Picture nominated films I’ve seen so far. I thought it was excellent in part because it was tense and realistic but not deadly serious in the way most Oscar

In response to Ace: Back in 2007 a scientific journal published a paper suggesting that Lake Cheko may have been the impact site for whatever exploded over Tunguska in 1908. As the abstract explains “Its funnel-like bottom morphology and the

Wednesday I published a letter written by American tire CEO Maurice “The Grizz” Taylor to a French government official. Taylor’s letter, which was leaked to a newspaper, was a blunt assessment of the French work ethic. Among other things, he

Moody’s has decided to downgrade the UK bond rating from Aaa to Aa1. Moody’s justification for the downgrade includes three factors, the first of which is “sluggish” growth: 1. The continuing weakness in the UK’s medium-term growth outlook, with a

In response to Spending cuts first: I have the same concern, i.e. that the cuts that have been put in place will become the new “doc fix” if Democrats retake the House. They would leave it on the books to

In response to Obama Says 75% of the American People Agree With Him : John H. nailed this earlier but we might as well grab the Pew chart which is the key to parsing the President’s statement. (h/t Jim Geraghty)

Several outlets are noting Obama’s comments on Al Sharpton’s radio show, but the Free Beacon was kind enough to put it on You Tube: Is the President losing his short term memory? He talks as if we haven’t already had

Remember when the President couldn’t seem to go a single speech without mentioning tax breaks on private jets as a symbol of all that was wrong with out budgeting priorities. I hadn’t noticed that the White House had returned to

I’m not a lawyer and I try not to play one on the internet, but Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is definitely taking Citizens United hysteria too far: He’s comparing Citizens United,  a case involving money donated to political campaigns (by

Yesterday Ace posted a bit of this Red Altert Politics post at his site. The gist of it is that Obama only seems to have one playbook. He claims the current crisis was “manufactured” by Republicans and then blames them

Jesse Jackson Jr. entered a guilty plea in federal court Wednesday. He is now facing 4-5 years in prison for siphoning $750,000 from his campaign to purchase personal items including a significant amount of entertainment memorabilia. Jackson purchased the memorabilia

Last month Goodyear announced it would close a manufacturing plant in Amiens, France after five years spent haggling with a “communist-backed” union. French Minister of Industrial Renewal Arnaud Montebourg then sent a letter to Titan industries encouraging the company to consider

If you haven’t been keeping up with the spat between the NY Times and Elon Musk of Tesla Motors, my initial post is here and a follow up is here. On Monday Margaret Sullivan, the Times’ public editor, weighed in

A story that appeared in Tuesday’s Telegraph suggests electricity prices in Britain are on the verge of skyrocketing over the next five years. The problem is that the government was in a rush to shut down “the dirtiest coal-fired stations”

So Ezra Klein has a new piece outlining Bowles-Simpson 2.0 which is a plan to replace the $1.2T sequester with $2.4 T in cuts and tax reform. One of Ezra’s big takeaways is “Simpson and Bowles have revised the tax

In 2010 a Swedish tabloid did an undercover expose on illegal guns circulating in the city of Malmö (Sweden’s 3rd largest city). The journalists involved decided to find out how easy it was to buy a gun illegally on the

In response to The media doth protest too much: That Politico story on White House media manipulation is incredibly galling. There is nothing in it which bloggers (myself included) were not saying almost 4 years ago. Here’s one of Politico’s

In response to Dresden Bombing: I went to the Dresden room once about 12 years ago. As I remember it, the food was great. Marty and Elayne, who were playing that night, were already a well-worn act but surprisingly feisty

President Obama has been giving the sequester plenty of negative attention recently. Two weeks ago he made a statement about the sequester in which he called it a “self-inflicted wound” to the economy. Ten days ago he focused on it

In response to Reviewing the Comments to CNN’s Article on the Poop Cruise: If you draw a Venn diagram showing a circle titled strained critiques of capitalist excess and another circle titled class snobbery toward bargain travelers, there is in

If there’s anything that may help mitigate some of the anger the right currently has toward Gov. Christie, it’s the anger the left has toward him. Last Week Gov. Christie made a campaign swing through Califiornia. It concluded Wednesday night

Federal law specifies that government employees be granted so-called “official time” to work on union duties. The Office of Personnel Management defines official time as “time spent by Federal employees performing representational work for a bargaining unit in lieu of

In response to Deb: I think Rosie Gray was fairly clear that the mainstreaming of Dorner support was on the left. However, she and others have fuzzed up the lines just enough that, if it’s not corrected, it will come

Last week Rosie Gray wrote a post at Buzzfeed titled “The Christopher Dorner Fan Club Is More Mainstream Than You’d Think.” Mainstream, yes. Bipartisan, not so much. The article attempts to make the case that the #teamDorner phenomenon is spread across