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President Bush’s nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court has politicians and pundits questioning her qualifications for the job. But in the hyper-partisan world of Supreme Court nominations, do qualifications really matter? The answer—which may surprise those who claim the appointment process is a “mess,” “badly broken,” and “unpredictable”—is absolutely.
David S. Reynolds, author of Walt Whitman in the Lives and Legacies series, responded to J.M. Coetzee in the “Letters” section of the New York Review of Books this week: J.M. Coetzee concludes his review of my new book Walt Whitman [NYR, September 22] with what is evidently meant as a criticism. He writes, “Reynolds’s […]
Philip Pullman took a breather from the ‘Narnia-gate’ media frenzy yesterday to respond to the other big literature-goes-to-Hollywood story of last week: Paradise Lost will be coming to a theatre near you in 2007! “There have been rumours about a film of Paradise Lost for a long time,” Pullman says. “There was even talk of […]
In Friday’s ‘Dear Economist’ column for the Financial Times, Tim Harford bravely answered this puzzler from one of his loyal readers: Is the value of a British person’s life greater than the value of an Iraqi person’s life? And, speaking of bravery, check out Harford’s reaction to this terrible situation – from the ‘what would […]
– by Jill Quadagno Hank at Insureblog has written a thought-provoking review of my book, One Nation, Uninsured. I appreciate his willingness to take on this task and welcome the opportunity to engage in a debate about how we finance health care in this country. First, let’s consider Hank’s claim that I consider our current […]
Fred Kaplan over at Slate.com gave Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling quite a dust-up earlier this week, criticizing Schelling for the “crucial role he played in formulating the strategies of “controlled escalation” and “punitive bombing” that plunged our country into the war in Vietnam.” Tim Harford, who sang Schelling’s praises earlier this week, has responded today […]
I wonder what Milton would say to the news today that Paradise Lost is going to Hollywood. For those of you who want to experience the original before the movie comes out, Philip Pullman wrote the introduction to our most recent edition. We posted a short excerpt from Pullman’s introduction HERE. LINK to article (via […]
The left must fight imperialism in the name of patriotism. Barring a revolutionary and highly unlikely transformation of American mass culture, any political party that wishes to win majority support will have to demonstrate its commitment to the defence of the country. The Bush administration has used the accusation of weakness in security policy to undermine its opponents, and then used this advantage to pursue reckless strategies that have themselves drastically weakened the US. The left needs to heed Bacevich and draw up a tough, realistic and convincing alternative. It will also have to demonstrate its identification with the respectable aspects of military culture. The Bush administration and the US establishment in general may have grossly mismanaged the threats facing us, but the threats are real, and some at least may well need at some stage to be addressed by military force. And any effective military force also requires the backing of a distinctive military ethic embracing loyalty, discipline and a capacity for both sacrifice and ruthlessness.
Tim Harford, author of the forthcoming book Undercover Economist, wrote a glowing appreciation of Thomas Schelling today. Schelling is, of course, the 2005 Nobel laureate in Economics (shared with Robert Aumann) awarded for his work to enhance “our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.” Harford writes: No one person can claim credit, but […]
The good people over at InsureBlog.com have finished their review of One Nation, Uninsured by Jill Quadagno. It is, on the whole, a reasonable treatment of Prof. Quadagno’s work from the opposite side of the debate. A debate that, in the end, boils down to one fundamental question, which InsureBlog formulates this way: Where is […]
David M. Kennedy was quoted extensively in a Salon.com article on the casualties and related military costs of the Iraq War. This follows on Kennedy’s Op-Ed in the NYTimes on July 26 where he said that a return to “a universal duty to service — perhaps in the form of a lottery, or of compulsory […]
In this first installment of the OUPblog bookclub, Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Segal answer questions on the Miers nomination and the future of the Judiciary branch under Bush’s picks. Enjoy! 1) Much was made during the Roberts confirmation hearings over his ideological beliefs and their possible effects on American law. But, what effect might Roberts […]
The question, “Where should my story begin?’ is, as every storyteller knows, both immensely important and immensely difficult to answer. ‘Once upon a time’, as the fairy-tale formula has it; but once upon a time there was – what? The opening governs the way you tell everything that follows, not only in terms of the […]
A Q & A with Kerry Emanuel, author of Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes. 1.) Q: Is global warming causing more hurricanes? A: No. The global, annual frequency of tropical cyclones (the generic, meteorological term for the storm that is called a tropical storm or hurricane in the Atlantic region) is about […]
Jack M. Balkin, of Balkinization blog fame, gave a lengthy review of Advice and Consent by Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Segal today, tying it all to the upcoming struggle to confirm Harriet Miers. From the Balkinization post: Hence the Bush Administration has two basic strategies to secure her nomination. The first is to counteract the […]
If [Ty] Cobb’s base-running was often, as one observer described it, “daring to the point of dementia,” it was also successful more times than not. He left everybody stunned at Hilltop Park in New York when he crossed up Highlander first-baseman Hal Chase, who, though only in his third big-league season, was already widely regarded […]