David Boaz

Over at the Guardian blog I offer some thoughts about presidential “signing statements,” with this challenge to conservative defenders of the administration:
When the Bush administration claims some power and promises to use it wisely, conservatives should ask themselves: would you want Hillary Clinton to have this power

A Washington Post feature says that Connecticut Senate challenger Ned Lamont’s website shows him to be “a fiscal conservative, a social liberal and a foreign-policy moderate.” (The Post also refers to Lamont’s 150-word statements on the issues as “elaborate position papers,” which seems to reflect low expectations for political discourse.) …

Reading major newspapers and listening to NPR this morning, I don’t hear anyone asking what seem to me to be the obvious questions about Castro’s condition: Is Castro alive Is he incapacitated Did he compose or approve the statement read in his name In a secretive dictatorship, you can’t believe …

Peter Beinart writes in the New Republic:
The struggle that initially roiled the Clinton administration–between deficit hawks and deficit spenders–is basically over; today, even the most liberal Democrats are fiscal conservatives.
Stephen Slivinski’s new book does demonstrate that today’s Republicans are bigger spenders than LBJ. But as the National Taxpayers Union notes …

From the Washington Post:
[Kevin] Schieffer is trying to persuade the Federal Railroad Administration to give him a $2.5 billion loan for the project [to build a 1000-mile rail line from Wyoming to Minnesota], among the largest in history.

If it succeeds, it could be a boon to farmers — and Schieffer.

The …

The Sunday New York Times has a great article ââ?¬â? the first of a series on aging ââ?¬â? titled “So Big and Healthy Nowadays That Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You.” Reporter Gina Kolata begins with this 19th-century biography:
Valentin Keller enlisted in an all-German unit of the Union Army in Hamilton, Ohio, in …

The Washington Post reports that Jack B. Johnson, county executive of Prince George’s County in Washington’s Maryland suburbs, is very generous to his friends. Since he took office,
…15 of his friends and political supporters have been awarded 51 county contracts totaling nearly $3.3 million, according to records and interviews.

In several …

Not if enough people read Timothy Sandefur’s new book, Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st-Century America, and join the Castle Coalition.

A headline over a Washington Post editorial reads:
Hands Off Hedge Funds

Sometimes libertarians deserve to win an argument.
Gee, thanks. I’m glad libertarian arguments against over-regulation made sense to the editorial writer in this case. But I’m disappointed in the suggestion that this is a rare occasion.

Indeed, I’ll bet the editorial writer …

From the Washington Post:

Late last month, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce began broadcasting television ads that extolled several Republican lawmakers for supporting the new Medicare prescription drug program. The spots were part of the chamber’s $10 million midterm advertising and voter mobilization budget.

Even if the Medicare expansion were popular — which is not at all clear — the Chamber of Commerce’s ads would just encourage voters to increasingly expect transfers and handouts from Washington. If the Chamber of Commerce praises Republicans for expanding entitlements by a trillion dollars over the next decade, then it’s just contributing to an environment in which spending and deficits and unfunded liabilities continue to soar. Surely the Chamber could find something good the Republicans have done to highlight in its ads.

Couldn’t it?