It’s scandal day in the world of politics. First, Sue Lowden, the front-runner in the Nevada Republican primary, looking to replace Harry Reid, seems to have broken campaign finance laws by accepting a luxury campaign bus from a donor. This could be good news for Reid because Lowden has been performing better in polling match-ups against Reid than have either ... Read More
I don’t pay enough attention to politics in my home state of New Jersey. I think I fear it would sap all of my youthful idealism. I certainly did not celebrate Chris Christie’s victory last fall. And his governance so far has been exactly what I feared. He’s actually trying to do what he campaigned on: make huge cuts to ... Read More
Until now I’ve resisted commenting on the controversy that was created last week when Harvard 3L Stephanie Grace’s private email saying she “does not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent” came to light. But now I see that Andrew Sullivan is having a related conversation about race and intelligence, and ... Read More
HPR staff writer Eli Martin has a piece in today’s Crimson criticizing European “Islamophobia.” I don’t want to baldly disagree with Eli that “outright discrimination toward Muslims in Europe is becoming a reality.” But I do want to complicate things a bit. Eli implies that burqa bans and the like could only be products of Geert Wilders-esque prejudice, neglecting a ... Read More
In response to the South Park / Muhammad controversy, several bloggers with a libertarian bent have been pushing the idea of a “Draw Muhammad!” contest to retaliate against the New York-based Islamic extremist group Revolution Muslim. The idea originated with noted sex columnist Dan Savage, who has advertised it as a way to retaliate against Revolution Muslim’s “veiled threats” and “water down ... Read More
In a bold step intended to reduce poverty, the European Union will soon be providing some of the Continent’s poorest citizens with subsidized plane tickets and hotel rooms. The Toronto-based National Post reported on Monday that the European Union has declared traveling for tourism a human right, and is launching a scheme to subsidize vacations with taxpayer money for those ... Read More
In his April 11 post, “Weighing In: The Great Tax Debate,” Max Novendstern rebuts my most recent argument that it is inappropriate for 73 percent of federal income taxes to be paid by 10 percent of the American population. Since our disagreement is to at least some extent based on our differing conceptions of fairness, I will offer only a ... Read More
My Harvard Independent column for this week addresses the retirement of John Paul Stevens and the issue of picking his successor. Read the original here. If they made posters of Supreme Court Justices, I’d put John Paul Stevens on my bedroom wall. The man is a progressive hero — first and foremost, for his longevity. In 2006, the liberal radio ... Read More
In today’s Harvard Crimson, Daniel Herz-Roiphe has written an unusually articulate, well-argued entry in the perennial “Why Final Clubs Are Still Really Bad” essay contest. I’m glad he focused on gender discrimination and inequality, rather than also trying to tackle racial, hetero-normative, and class-based elitism. Those other forms of discrimination are equally important, but I think they’re pretty low-hanging fruit. ... Read More
For nearly half of American households this year, April 15 will be no different from any other day. AP’s Stephen Ohlemacher reported on Thursday that, according to the Tax Policy Center in Washington, about 47 percent of Americans will pay no federal income taxes for FY2009, either because their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions, ... Read More
In dueling editorials, two sets of Crimson editors opined today on the federal crack-down on unpaid internships. I’m with the pro-payment crowd, but I think that both the sides made the same conceptual error by assuming that this is a straightforward case of equality versus opportunity. The majority view was that, even though stricter regulation “might result in fewer internship ... Read More
No — that would be a tasteless joke. But they do perform a lot of work for free! As The New York Times explains in a piece that should have been, in retrospect, pretty obvious: Growth of Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal, Officials Say “If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going ... Read More
In the new Harvard Salient, Patrick T. Brennan has achieved the Platonic ideal of a Salient article: equal measures of pure arrogance, submerged racism, and exclusive affection for all things ancient. The only way to appreciate this article is to quote some of the choicest sections. For example: Americans of color have undoubtedly done some things of note, but their ... Read More
The article I wrote with Peter recently went up, and I had a few thoughts that I wanted to add. I’m from Massachusetts — Plymouth to be exact — so this election was pretty much the only big news for the greater part of our J-term. This was bound to be one of the big new stories, simply due to ... Read More
Last summer I worked for five weeks as a member of an Appalachian Trail crew, living in tents in Northern Maine while performing maintenance on the trail. Apparently I gave them my mailing address, because yesterday I received “The MAINEtainer,” an eight-page newspaper from the Maine Appalachian Trail Club (MATC). One headline stood out: “MATC opposes Highland Plantation wind energy ... Read More
