‘Prayers for the Stolen’ indicts a system

The casualness with which the inhabitants of a Mexican village accept violence is the most chilling conclusion to draw from Prayers for the Stolen. If it’s not a local cartel (often unseen, a shrewd decision) extorting them into picking poppies for heroin, it’d federales burning their livelihood — or are they? They could be in

As if the last 40 years of politics had never happened

The long-promised ICE raids are set to begin this weekend, but the Democrats have chosen this moment to continue an intramural spat between the Speaker and four of her most junior members, all of whom are women and women of color.

About that wall deal…

“Yes, by making a ridiculous demand to honor a dishonest and frivolous campaign promise Trump set himself up to be humiliated,” a Talking Points Memo reader fumed this morning about the purported deal reached about border wall funding between congressional Democrats and Republicans. “Fine. But it’s hard for me to see how this deal is

On Democratic timidity

Without suggesting that the Democrats run Alexandra Ocasio-Cortezes in every district, Eric Loomis has theories about why party satraps are panicking: They are scared of the grassroots taking over. They are scared of a left version of the Tea Party. They are scared of their now nearly two generations of received wisdom in the aftermath

Acts of gratuitous cruelty

A possibly unconstitutional executive order that helps millions of people, even when these people aren’t citizens, isn’t the sort of conundrum citizens waste time puzzling over outside constitutional law classrooms — unless you oppose the law. Donald J. Trump has hinted or grunted or whatever he dose to express a thought that Deferred Action for

Muslim Ban II: The Smell of Fear

The Muslim ban? It got cleaned up. According to the fact sheet, the Department of Homeland Security will conduct a country-by-country review of the information the six targeted nations provide to the U.S. for visa and immigration decisions. Those countries will then have 50 days to comply with U.S. government requests to update or improve

‘It’s working out very nicely’

Cabinet officials without governmental experience? What could possibly go wrong? It wasn’t until Friday — the day Trump signed the order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days and suspending all refugee admission for 120 days — that career homeland security staff were allowed to see the final details of the order, a

Redistricting? What redistricting?

Even John Roberts must have soul, or at least must occasionally hint that he’s got one. The plaintiffs’ claims in Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission proved too much for the Supreme Court, which unanimously ruled that Arizona’s redistricting commission can draw its districts to reflect voting patterns. Guess what they’ll reflect? Guess whom the

‘A Good Journalist must pretend they have no opinions…’

This morning’s Washington Post: In thirteen words, we see a classic example of false equivalence, abetted by reporters conscripted by phony both-sides-do-it twaddle. Helen Thomas got the same treatment during the Bush administration. Because her questions didn’t defer to the authority of a Cabinet secretary or vice president, she got ridiculed by her sometime colleagues.

Majority of GOP voters support sending illegal immigrants back to Mexico

I’m shocked, I tell you: By 56-42, Americans support developing a plan to legalize undocumented immigrants over stopping their flow and deporting those already here. Independents agree by 58-39, and moderates by 59-40. But Republicans favor stopping the flow of undocumenteds and deporting those already here by 63-34. So do conservatives, by 55-43. “Those already

The virtues of doggedness

One of my favorite media appearances by Christopher Hitchens in the five years before his death was on the Hugh Hewitt show, to which I won’t link in accordance with the rule that one doesn’t invite vampires into one’s home. He made a passing reference to Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the “Mormon mediocrity.”

The politics of ‘making your own laws’

Charles Pierce on John Boehner’s least visible body part, which the Speaker of the House thinks he’s got because he’s farted about suing the president over making Mexican American lives moderately tolerable: I have lived through the administration of 12 presidents now. If what this president did Thursday night is “making his own laws,” then