Thanks to John Roberts’ comments yesterday I suspect we’re about to go through another round of hand-wringing about how the Supreme Court needs to be more insulated from the political brawls of the day.
Before it begins in earnest, let me make a distinction that will be quickly lost. The courts should be independent and free of political taint, and I’d man the barricades shoulder to shoulder with Roberts to defend that principle. But there’s no good reason to insulate the courts from the rough and tumble of politics and the complex world we live in, protecting them like a fragile flower.
To the extent the Supreme Court has been demystified by modern media and contemporary politics, that’s been a good thing. To the extent that it has lost some its institutional authority, it need not look beyond its own marble walls for the cause.
As part of our 2010 election coverage, we’re about to release a completely updated and redesigned TPMPollTracker, with comprehensive poll data, interactive poll graphs and composite poll averages of every contested (federal and gubernatorial) race and major political question in the country. We plan to release the final version around the end of this month. But we’d like to show it to you now in beta to get your feedback, tell us what features you might like us to add or other ways you think we can improve it.
Join me after the jump to find out more. Read More
The Dems have hit a bit of an ethics and scandal rough patch of late. But let’s be honest. They’ve got quite a ways to go before they get into GOP 2002-08 territory. To put it mildly. Good of them for pointing that out.
How soon they forget.
Or rather, how soon some Republicans think people will forget all of what happened … what, two years ago?
In case you missed it, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt just penned a post at TPMCafe explaining why retooling our carbon-based energy sector for clean growth can spur the kind of investment and job growth that we saw in the telecom industry after the market opening of the early 1990s.
Rush Limbaugh was among the conservatives who jumped on the Eric Massa bandwagon yesterday, devoting a chunk of his show to hailing Massa. But it wasn’t that long ago that Massa was calling Rush a “pompous coward” whose show is “destructive to this country.” Maybe Rush found out about that, because on today’s show, Rush has reportedly flipped and is doing all he can to disavow Massa.
Health Insurance lobby AHIP is launching a million dollar ad campaign to ‘set the record straight’ about recent health insurance rate hikes.
Let me start by backing off a bit from the headline. I know there are a lot of good people in Texas and even a lot of good people with progressive politics down in the Lonestar State. But c’mon, it’s a whole different country.
Anyway, over the last year our Justin Elliott has been reporting on the Texas state school board and its attempts to ban the teaching of evolution and generally rewrite high school curricula into something you might hear on the Hannity show. And not just for Texas schools but across the country — because the size of the statewide Texas market makes its decisions highly influential with national textbook makers.
But last week something funny happened. The top right-wing activist on the board, Don McLeroy, got beat in the GOP primary by another candidate, moderate GOPer Thomas Ratliff, who specifically made McLeroy’s school standards craziness an issue in the election.
Last month, after NY state Senator Hiram Monserrate (D) was convicted for assaulting his girlfriend (allegedly slashing her with a broken bottle), he was expelled from the New York state Senate.
Now he’s running to replace himself on a protecting family values platform, and apparently circulating flyers telling his district’s voters his opponent will “destroy our way of life” by supporting gay rights.
The primary is still a decent way off (August) and Charlie Crist is still not showing any signs of giving up the fight. But at least as of this moment, I’m not sure I can recall a more precipitous collapse for a major political figure (when no apparent scandal or triggering event is involved) than we’ve seen with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. The latest poll out this morning has the upstart challenger, Marco Rubio, beating Crist by an eye-popping 60%-28% margin. And that’s not far our from our current composite TPM Poll Average which stands at 54.9% to 30%. Read More