Gotta Love Those Rs on Health Care

July 15, 2017

Gotta Love Those Rs on Health Care

Ted Cruz

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.)

Republicans love them their free markets. In response to any problem, we hear about markets. Free markets require rational, knowledgeable buyers and sellers, acting freely. Advocates tell us free markets will always allow us to achieve optimum outcomes. That’s the mantra!

Rational

Rational? Easy it is to talk about too much spending in the last year of people’s lives, but if it’s your mom or dad, well … that’s different. I’ve been there, at both ends of the spectrum. When you love someone, don’t expect rational judgments.

Knowledgeable

Knowledgeable? Uh, no! We spend a fortune educating and training health care providers, and I say we because, while students pay

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It’s Complicated

March 25, 2016

It’s complicated, this sh*t show we’re calling the 2016 Presidential Election for months! If we were all Jews we’d be calling this a shanda fur die goyim. For non-clickers, the term refers to doing something which, as a Jew, will embarrass all of us in front of non-Jews. It fits for Americans, too, and I wonder whether there’s any shame at all about how poorly we look in a world that looks up to us.

With that thought shared, I need to credit Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) for crystalizing an issue that has been scattered in my mind for a while. (Everybody—he has very few supporters left—calm down; I’m not supporting my senator, it’s time for him to take

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Ideological Purity is an Indulgence – Part 2

March 19, 2016

Warren Burger (Earl Warren). Harry Blackmun (Abe Fortas). Lewis Powell (Hugo Black). William Rehnquist (John Harlan; Warren Burger). John Paul Stevens (William O. Douglas). Sandra Day O’Connor (Potter Stewart). Antonin Scalia (William Rehnquist). Anthony Kennedy (Lewis Powell). David Souter (William Brennan). Clarence Thomas (Thurgood Marshall). John Roberts (William Rehnquist). Samuel Alito (Sandra Day O’Connor). These are the Nixon/Ford, Reagan, and Bushes, père et fils, justices, along with those whom they replaced.

Justice John Paul Stevens got almost everything right during his 30+ years at the Court. Others—Justices Harry Blackmun and Sandra Day O’Connor—are responsible for much that is good. Justice Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts have also had their important and worthy moments. Nonetheless, this group of

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Senator Ted Cruz, Redux

January 22, 2016

On April 24, 2015, I wrote Senator Ted Cruz. I was working a series about Rs running for POTUS. I’m pretty sure what I wrote about “this puerile personification of pestilence”—my words—left me so unclean I walked away from the exercise.

Alas, I’m back with redux, but not ready to leave this miserable momzer alone. Where to start, where to start? Let’s begin with health insurance.

Senator Cruz popped up on Thursday announcing that he is one of those “millions of Americans  who’s lost their healthcare because of ObamaCare.” (Details in Bradford Richardson’s piece for The Hill, Cruz says he lost his health insurance because of ObamaCare.) Well, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo did a little

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Retention Elections at the Supreme Court

September 21, 2015

The United States Supreme Court is comprised of nine justices. Presently, their age span is 82 to 55, with four justices—Ginsburg, Scalia, Kennedy, and Breyer—between 77 and 82. On January 20, 2017, those four justices will be 83, 80, 80, and 78, respectively. They will also have been serving for 23, 30, 28, and 22 years, respectively.

My point? The 2016 election may be about only one thing which really matters: the composition of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Many people holler about the Supreme Court. Some people are genuinely concerned about a group of people who come from remarkably similar professional backgrounds. Read Is the Court We Have the Court We Want?, which I wrote in May 2014, for

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Senator Ted Cruz

April 24, 2015

Senator Marco Rubio, check! Senator Rand Paul, check! So, let’s do Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) today. Why Senator Cruz? Two reasons: First, he rounds out the field of first-term senators; Second, I’ve been in a bit of a funk for a couple of days, and the opportunity to expose this puerile personification of pestilence will surely lift up my spirits.

Senator Cruz has been a United States Senator for 841 days. For eight-plus years he served as the Texas Solicitor General. In earlier years he clerked for a Fourth Circuit judge, and for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, before he worked for a firm known for its advocacy for conservative causes

Cruz fans claim he’s smart. “He went to Princeton and

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