New At The Guardian

My take on John McCain's energy policy. One thing I didn't mention is McCain's support for building new nuclear reactors, which would be a good thing.

Also, there's someone called "Barak Koffler." My son is a time-traveller?

New At The Guardian

Forgot to mention this. Last week I had a new piece at CIF on the state of the FISA debate. This thing changes almost daily, but my basic contention, which I think stands no matter what happens from here on out, is that Harry Reid and the Senate Dems missed a huge opportunity to gain the upper hand, and risked losing everything needlessly. Money quote:

After six years of the administration using terrorism as a bludgeon against domestic opposition to its national security and foreign policies, the returns on that particular rhetorical trope have terminally diminished. The American people oppose warrantless wiretapping by a 3-to-1 margin, including a majority of Republicans. By a similar 3-to-1 margin, they want Congress, and not the president, "to take the lead role in setting policy for the country".

The Democrats should have been able to parley that massive structural advantage into an easy victory on Fisa by throttling retroactive immunity for telecoms and toothless oversight provisions in their legislative cradles, putting forward a bill to modernise Fisa that includes robust safeguards for civil liberties, and daring the White House and congressional Republicans to take a stand on whether national security or extra-constitutional claims of executive power are their top priority.

The events of the past week leave no doubt that Harry Reid has a surfeit of confidence in his dexterity as a parliamentarian. If only he had the backbone to match.

Also, I'm now blogging with Michael Weiss at Snarksmith.

New At PJM

I have a piece up called "Hillary Clinton's Democracy Problem," about the New York senator's attempt to prevent Obama-supporting casino and hotel workers from voting in the Nevada caucuses. I wrote the piece just before the ruling came down throwing out the pro-Clinton lawsuit, so there are a couple of seams in the tenses, but basically it all stands.

One argument against the Nevada teachers union suit I didn't mention, and should have, is that the Democratic Party of Nevada is a private organization, the caucuses are its meetings, and it has a right to organize them any way it wants to. If the Nevada Dems wanted to awarded 99% of the delegates to the winner of the World Series of Poker, and the remaining 1% to winner of the statewide vote, that would be their right.

New At The Guardian

At the Democratic debate in Las Vegas the other night, all three candidates pledged to support the odious Solomon Amendment. No one seemed to notice, including Tim Russert, who asked the question. I did notice, though.

I'm An International Punk

So, some news: I've got a piece at the Guardian's Comment is Free about the substance behind Barack Obama's "change and hope" theme --- and why it's congenial to libertarianism.

Also, Jamie Kirchick wrote a fairly devastating expose of Ron Paul's twenty year history of trading in racism, anti-Semitism, anti-gay bigotry, and conspiracy theories. I've got a companion piece at Pajamas Media, basically just cataloging some of the especially flagrant remarks in the Ron Paul Political Report.

Well, Matt Drudge linked to my PJM piece, and within about 15 minutes, it got more traffic than everything else I've ever written combined, or very nearly. True fact: Drudge rules the world.

Going in, I was fully aware of the buckets and buckets of bile the Paulites were going to hurl at me, but I thought that by being a libertarian, and explicitly stating that I was writing the piece as a libertarian, I'd be somewhat insulated. On the other hand, this was inevitable:

Daniel Koffler was James Kirchik's classmate at Yale.

This is the same story told by the original author's friend, yet passed off as another source in perfect disinformation style.

How do these things get so orchestrated and precisely timed?

That's right, the whole thing was a Skull & Bones/Illuminati/Bohemian Grove conspiracy to bring down Ron Paul.

My favorite response of all was the one I found at this anti-Semitic conspiracy nut web forum, under the heading "Other jews [sic] pick up TNR attack on Ron Paul." The thread begins begins:

Hi Alex,

Another hit piece, this time by Daniel Koffler (a Jew).

Then the webmaster quotes my bio and reacts to it:

Daniel Koffler graduated from Yale in 2006 with a BA in philosophy. He has written for Reason, Dissent, Jewcy, and the Guardian’s “Comment is Free,” among other outlets.

For people who think we overestimate the jewish [sic] network - this punk is one year out of school and he's writing for international publications. That does not happen without incredible connections. Jews are virtually the only people apart from sons of presidents who have those connections.

So true!

I'll be on the radio in Houston and Dallas tomorrow at 11:20 talking about the Ron Paul revelations. You can listen here.