My pal Elise Hendrick posted this excellent comment on the “robed ghouls act in character” post to Facebook: I’d say that part of the obsession, outside of élite circles, is due to a combination of : a) An educational system that hammers into people’s heads the notion that The Constitution and the Supreme Court are the representatives and defenders, respectively, of all that is good and right in society; b) A general lack of understanding of the history of the Warren (and early Burger) courts. People look at the decisions of the day… Read More

Reading The Nation’s new list of protest songs, I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong with the whole genre: it assumes you’ll never be able to change anything. It’s like naming your magazine Dissent. You’ll always be on the sidelines, complaining. An outlier on this second Nation list is “The Internationale,” which is about transformation, not whining. But they pick the Billy Bragg version, which drains the song of a lot of its militance in that folky way.

Remember that warning on U.S. Treasury debt from S&P early in the week? The markets don’t. From the Financial Times’ PM Markets summary: Apple gives fresh boost to stock rally Global stock markets are approaching the Easter holiday in fine fettle, with the wobble seen at the start of the week following S&P’s warning on US debt already a distant memory

I asked here (An apology) why the evil financiers are almost always Jews. This prompted an email from someone saying that it sounded like anti-Semitism. It was most certainly not. It was an ironic (and apparently not successfully so) question about how conspiracy types so often flirt (or worse) with anti-Semitism. Also, a lot of populist critiques of finance traffic in covert or overt anti-Semitism. I should resurrect an old polemic on that topic and post it here soon. Sorry if there was any misunderstanding.