Kevin Drum linked to a most fascinating piece yesterday (admittedly, the cover story in the magazine that pays him to blog) on conservatives and governance. I've read it twice now and find the article to be very well written and much in tune with evidence beyond the three issues he cites-Iraq, FEMA and Medicare. Why just today Drum writes in response to Justice Scalia's majority opinion in Hudson v. Michigan:

This is, of course, why I decline to take originalism seriously. Even its proponents pretty obviously understand that it's ridiculous to pretend that nothing has changed in the past 200 years, and they mostly use originalism as little more than intellectual cover for making the conservative rulings they want to make anyway. But when conservative rulings require that originalism be tossed overboard, they do so without apology. Some doctrine, eh?

All of which reminds me of a conversation that Lee had last summer with a colleague of ours in which he said that capitalism and conservatism, when both are true to form, cannot be reconciled as they are mutually exclusive. Which reminds me of Marx talking about capitalists were indeed the most revolutionary party, but we can save that for another time.  Posted by Outlaw Genius  at