Katrina vanden Heuvel: "The problem isn’t the leaks, it’s the policy."

"It’s the assertion of a presidential prerogative that the administration can target for death people it decides are terrorists — even American citizens — anywhere in the world, at any time, on secret evidence with no review."

It's good to see some criticism from the left of a policy that, had George Bush followed it, the left would have screamed about endlessly.

"On social issues, Romney embraces all of the right’s litmus tests."

Writes Katrina vanden Heuvel in The Nation:

He pledges to repeal President Obama’s health-care reform, even though it was modeled on the plan Romney signed as Massachusetts governor.

Obamacare is a "social issue"? Am I a right-winger if I think it's an economic issue?

He favors repealing Roe v. Wade, outlawing women’s right to choose.

You don't "repeal" a Supreme Court case. You get it overturned. And a "right" can't be "outlawed." The Court would need to decide that the right doesn't exist as a matter of constitutional law, and then there would need to be a statute "outlawing," not the right, but the procedure. There's something highly spurious about the way vanden Heuvel writes about these things.

... Advised on legal matters by the reactionary crank Robert Bork, he repeatedly calls for more judges in the activist right-wing tradition of the gang of four—Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito.

Bork is advising Romney? Okay, I learned something here. I had not noticed that before. Whatever Bork is doing, Romney must at least intend to send the message that he's planning to appoint Scalia/Thomas/Roberts/Alito-type judges. I have no idea whether that means he will, but I certainly understand why he wants to send that message.

Does Katrina vanden Heuvel have a Joe Biden sock-puppet?

Memeorandum — a fabulously useful starting point for blog-reading — automatically aggregates items based on a secret algorithm.


At the top, right now, is this:



Look closer:



I clicked, because I wanted to see what Joe Biden had to say under the snazzy headline "Obama: On the way to a failed presidency?" The link goes to a Washington Post column with that headline — but it's by Katrina vanden Heuvel ("editor and publisher of the Nation" who "writes a weekly online column for The Post").

Can anyone explain why the automatic aggregator Memeorandum would have picked up that column and attached Biden's name to it? I'm guessing the answer is pretty boring: "Joe Biden" appears in a line above the column, near the top of the page, that begins "Hot Topics." That does give rise to a new puzzle: What's hot about Biden? Clicking on his name, I see that he "heads to the Hill to talk taxes" today.  Sizzling!