In Reauthorizing the Dragnet, FISC Makes a Mockery of the Amicus Provision
Between a ruling by Dennis Saylor issued on June 17, while I was away, and a ruling by Michael Mosman issued and released today, the FISA Court has done the predictable: ruled both that the lapse of the PATRIOT Act on June 1 did not mean the…
In Course Pitch, Scooter and Wolfie Admit Iraq War Failures, But Make No Mention of Iraqi Casualties
While I was gone, the NeoCon Hertog Foundation announced an "advanced institute" featuring Scooter Libby and Paul Wolfowitz describing the "unexpected events, rivalries, counter-moves, mistakes, and imperfect understandings" behind the Iraq…
Floating Security
Greetings! I'm back, just in time to refill the liquor cabinet. Thanks to Rayne, Jim, bmaz, and Ed for their fascinating posts while I was gone (and if you haven't read it, I especially recommend Ed's series on paradigms in economics).
As…
Amid Even More Training Failures, US Frames Syrian Effort as Just Starting. Again.
Alert readers here who have kept their scorecards up to date know that the "secret" US effort to train rebels in Syria actually began as early as November of 2012, more than two and a half years ago, even though Obama did his best to obscure…
Kuhn and Economics: A Summary
In a series of posts which you can find here, I have been trying to formulate an answer to the question why has neoliberal economics not been tossed out in the wake of its total failure as demonstrated by the Great Crash. I’ve used as a lens…
Criminal Sexual Assault: No Means NO Burden Shifting
Late last night here, early this morning where many of you are, I saw an article pop up on the New York Times website by Judith Shulevitz on "Regulating Sex". The title seemed benign enough, but thanks to my friend Scott Greenfield, and his…
Sony Pictures Postmortem Reveals Death by Stupid
We already knew Sony Pictures Entertainment's (SPE) hack was bad. We knew that the parent, Sony Group, had been exposed to cyber attacks of all kinds for years across its subsidiaries, and slow to effect real changes to prevent future attacks.
And…
Beautiful Equality Comes To Marriages In America
Love will find a way, and it finally has. There are many, many friends I am thinking of right now, and they all know exactly who they are. Congratulations, and it was far too long coming. Here is the opinion.
EQUALITY
There is so much…
I Am Ted Williams' Head
Okay, long story short, a couple of months ago my wife set me up with her dermatologist for a head to toe skin exam to insure against skin melanoma. A perfectly reasonable thing, though, to be honest, would not have otherwise been on my pretty…
Paradigm Change Through Authority and Arguments about Truth
So far in this series, we have encountered a number of answers to my central questions: why hasn’t neoliberal economic theory been thrown out as a result of its horrifying failure? Why hasn’t the paradigm change theory of Thomas Kuhn’s…
The Coming Trump Legacy On Immigration
Here is a bloody secret about blogging: The best ideas you express often come from others, even if you value add on to them. Welp, there will be no value adding on here, this post is 100% the work of our longtime friend at both Emptywheel and…
A Big Day at SCOTUS on Obamacare and Fair Housing
A little more than two hours ago, a fairly monumental day at the Supreme Court got underway. Two big boxes of opinion were brought out signaling at least two, and perhaps as many as four, new decisions were going to be announced. It was only…
Angry White Male Terror in US More Deadly Than Jihad Since 9/11
Remember back in 2009 when the Department of Homeland Security warned (pdf) against the growth of homegrown terror arising from right-wing extremism? Remember how the howls of protest from the same right-wing politicians who dog-whistle the…
Keynes on Paradigm Change
John Maynard Keynes wrote about paradigm change long before Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In a 1926 essay, The End of Laissez-Faire Keynes discusses the lingering doctrines of Laissez-Faire economics well into the…
Info Security Firms and Their Antivirus Software Monitored (Hacked?) by NSA, GCHQ
Let's call this post a work in progress. I'm still reading through a pile of reporting from different outlets to see if it's all the same information but rebranded, or if there's a particular insight one outlet picked up, missed by the rest.…
Illiberal Hollywood: It's 1984 — Or Is It 1964? Can't Tell from EEOC's Inaction
If you haven't watched this Bloomberg-produced video yet, you should. The women directors interviewed are highly skilled and have been fighting Hollywood's not-at-all-liberal misogyny for decades.
And yes, decades — nothing substantive…
Pragmatic Aspects of Paradigm Change According to Kuhn
You’d think that in the sciences, paradigm change would be quick and painless. But Thomas Kuhn shows that it isn’t so in The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions. Most significant changes in physics, chemistry and astronomy, the examples…
Summer Sports: What's Good This Weekend?
I admit it freely — I'm the least sportif member of the Emptywheel team. As years have gone by, sports have lost their shine for me. The full-body contact of politics has been far more interesting.
But I need to get that shine back. My…
A Possible Paradigm of Neoliberal Economics
In this post I ask what the paradigm of economics might be, and if there is one. I did not address the question of the exact nature of the paradigm as discussed by Kuhn, leaving it at the broadest possible level: the theories, instruments,…
Illiberal Hollywood: What's the Point of a Union if It Doesn't Represent Members?
This year continues to be a big one for women in film. Films featuring women as leads and/or directed by women made beaucoup at the box office. Mad Max: Fury Road, Pitch Perfect 2, Insurgent, and Fifty Shades of Grey are among the top ten films…