There Is Finally a Confirmed Secretary of Defense. What About All the Other Pentagon Vacancies?
Sha Hanting/China News Service/VCG/Getty It only took 204 days, but the Department of Defense finally has a Senate-confirmed leader again. Ninety lawmakers voted Tuesday afternoon to elevate Mark Esper permanently to the position of Secretary of Defense and put an end, at least for now, to the bizarre game of musical chairs Pentagon officials have been forced…
Today in News You Can’t Use
Kevin Drum Today, LA Times columnist David Lazarus answers a question I’ve been curious about for some time: where do the generic names for drugs come from? For example, the two chemo drugs I take are Pomalyst™ and Darzalex™, aka pomalidomide and daratumumab. But where do those generic names come from? The answer, it turns…
Regulated Capitalism Is the Answer to Global Warming
Mark Avery/Orange County Register/ZUMA Over at National Review, Wesley Smith articulates one of the core beliefs of many conservatives: Environmentalism is growing increasingly anti-capitalist and anti-human….Writing in the New Statesman, British journalist Paul Mason argues that to stop global warming, we have to put the government in complete, iron-fisted control of, well everything….“Few people are…
The Trump Administration Just Proposed Kicking 3.1 Million People Off Food Stamps
A protester urges lawmakers to reject food stamp cuts in the 2018 farm bill.Sarah Silbiger/Getty On Tuesday, the Trump administration floated a plan that could strip food stamps from more than 3 million people. The proposed rule change, announced by the Department of Agriculture, would limit the use of “broad based categorial eligibility”—a system, adopted…
The Budget Deficit Is All About Taxes, Not Spending
Yesterday I put up a chart showing the level of discretionary federal spending over the past 40 years. I did this because the news hook for it was the budget deal that Congress and President Trump agreed to, which was solely about discretionary spending levels for the next two years. But naturally a lot of…
Here’s the Bullshit That Republicans Are About to Throw at Mueller
Robert MuellerCarolyn Kaster/AP When special counsel Robert Mueller appears before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees on Wednesday, he will, no doubt, be asked about the damning conclusions of his report: Russia engaged in a “sweeping and systematic” attack on the 2016 election; Donald Trump and his aides publicly denied the Russian intervention was occurring…