Hello BlueSky! Here is something new many of you will hate. I’m doing a new podcast with Josh Barro and Megan McCardle about how centrism is good. www.centralairpodcast.com/p/welcome-to...

It is an almost absurdly simple observation, but a great many pathologies in military policy come from the tendency to reason from values which were in the past or are merely thought to be now, connected to victory, rather than reasoning *from victory* itself as a goal.

All legal nonsense aside about the supposed state of armed conflict between the U.S. and Venezuelan gangs, what "I wish to emphasize is that there is a word for killings outside of armed conflict for which there is no domestic legal authority. That word is murder." [@benjaminwittes.lawfaremedia.org]

Breaking News: President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military should use U.S. cities as “training grounds” at an unusual meeting focused on culture wars. It was unclear why they needed to gather senior military leaders from overseas to tell them this face to face.

The good news is that it seems like they’re overpaying

"You need broad and impartial principles that equally apply to everyone, and are equally enforced by everyone, even against their own," @mcmegan.bsky.social writes. https://wapo.st/4nG1ca6

Just throwing this out there for anyone who was confused. I can't prove that ABC yanked Kimmel off the air because of government pressure. But that doesn't matter, because what I do know is that pressure was applied, outrageously, abusively, and unconstitutionally. x.com/asymmetricin...

Today's decision being heavily criticized by Past Brendan Carr

This, from 2021, by @kathapollitt.bsky.social, strikes me as deeply on point. www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-...

I think people would be extremely happy to accept the plain meaning of his words if they’d be clearly right-wing, but since they’re somewhat left-coded, those same people have retreated to arguing that on the internet everyone is a trickster elf who speaks in riddles all the time

If you are a Free Speech Warrior angrily demanding the firing of anyone who criticizes both Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the views he expressed, you embody the very “cancel culture” that you pretended to decry—but which you always planned to employ against your own enemies.

Starting a podcast aimed at tiny dogs called “Your Ancestors Were Wolves.”

A survey of NFL players citing mental and physical decline raises the ethical dilemma of being a fan, @mcmegan.bsky.social writes. https://wapo.st/4pgvTV1

An entire government department has been derailed from its extremely valuable work and is now dedicated to validating the risible delusions of a single crackpot.

I wrote about losing your parents, and what we can do for them when there's nothing left to be done. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

"Those who believe in the value of neutral institutions must do everything they can now to protect the rule of law — and I’m afraid that doesn’t mean condemning just Trump." The latest from @mcmegan.bsky.social:

Americans have a right to know what their government is doing. Law enforcement needs to ditch the masks. wapo.st/4oClJgV

I don't understand how the LA Times union thinks a strike will end well. Can someone help me out? What's the plan?

"Is it justified, or just political theater?" Robert Gebelhoff, Jason Willick and @mcmegan.bsky.social discuss: wapo.st/4ftv8mK

Firing the head of the BLS is not only destructive; it's stupid. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Monthly reminder: Many people have a book in them, but it takes a special kind of freak to leave the Land of Laziness, cross the Plains of Procrastination and Insecurity Mountain, find the Blade of No One Made You Do This, and use it to cut your chest open and yank that book out.

Surprising number of people interpreting this as an endorsement of Trump policies rather than a prediction, even though I lay out many reasons that Trump's actions on tariffs and brutal immigration raids are bad.

Coming next week! I'm hosting a @cato.org online panel discussion with @davedaley.bsky.social, @mcmegan.bsky.social and John Ketcham (Manhattan Institute) on lessons of the NYC mayoral primary for ranked choice voting and other election reforms. It's Wed. Aug. 6 at 3 p.m. Eastern. Register here: /1

If your law is good when there are good people in office, but dangerous when there are bad people in office, your law is bad.

I think it's not just that it's seen as a conservative thing, it's that military and defense issues are seen as a *lower-class* interest - and by academic historians that most dreaded of all things, a popular interest.

Let's face it, as Trump outrages go, his actions on the TikTok ban wouldn't seem to rate very high. But what he's claiming to do here -- suspend the operation of a federal law, even as to its enforcement by states and private parties -- is actually among his most radical and king-like moves.

I've been asked about my evidence for saying Bluesky is a left-wing bubble. Mostly, my eyes. But here's a striking table from a recent pre-print on Bluesky: the progressive side (A) is extremely dominant in political discussions, to the point where the opposition is often essentially unrepresented.

I hope that AI can be used to clean up messy and obstructive regulations that load the civil service down with process. I fear it will be used to generate more lawsuits and campaigns to weigh the civil service down with process.

By curious coincidence, just got this response to my Bluesky column. Takes me right back to my Old Twitter days There's a point to this: the left usually doesn't see left-wing trolls or how awful they can be, so for them, Muskian moderation genuinely just was worse. For me, it was differently bad.

As I was saying www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

“either I personally or my unstable friend should be able to set your mother on fire if we think it’s right” is kind of a dealbreaker for a political movement. just imo.

The replies seem to run strongly in favor of the idea that centrists are a plague and it's good to get rid of them. Doesn't seem to occur to those folks that if the platform keeps losing users, eventually it will run out of money and there will be no more community for anyone.

Ah, I have discovered who inspired this scintillating reader email.

"Biden and his family have my best wishes as they embark on a challenging fight. And oh, how I wish this announcement hadn’t come just before the release of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book, 'Original Sin.'" The latest from @mcmegan.bsky.social:

This @mcmegan.bsky.social piece is very important: everyone on this site should take it to heart. t.co/f0Eg9p3fTE

The number one issue for voters who were polled about Biden was his age.

People keep making the mistake of treating electronic communication as an informal oral medium rather than a formal written medium. Everything you write down is discoverable, and likely to be discovered, and your delightful in-group jokes will not read so funny to outsiders.

as kotkin put it after studying the soviet archives exhaustively: "the key thing to understand is that these guys were communists"

This rule was quite likely to result in more people becoming unbanked. Checking accounts are low-margin business, and default rates on overdrafts are significant. When overdrafts are capped banks raise other fees, structured to discourage the marginal customers whose default risk is highest.

Be like WilmerHale. And good for Paul Clement.

But of course the problem isn't that spaces have been created for groups that used to be excluded, it is that the spaces for men - which used to exist in abundance - were allowed to wither and decay. No one killed them, they died of neglect.

Regulatory background on Trump FCC chief Brendan Carr's plans to use the public interest standard, news distortion rule and other doctrines to bring to heel broadcasters who displease his boss. At some point, only the courts' willingness to defend the First Amendment may matter [Clay Calvert, AEI]

Budget season in Halifax again.

"Interest Costs Would Explode with $5.5 Trillion Reconciliation Package" https://buff.ly/4hNkfwg

Time for a spicy hot take that is actually ice cold.

The "might" is touching.

So I get (and largely share) the principled objections to this but it is also a fact that in a democracy, if you can't get political consensus that something was an unpardonable breach of civic norms, then it definitionally was not an unpardonable breach of civic norms.

What are the best examples of mainstream fact-checkers erroneously siding with Republicans, or giving Republicans more benefit of the doubt than Democrats?

So much of my social media feed is posts from across the political spectrum sharing dumb stuff some tv host said. Interestingly, everyone who shares these things appears to believe that all the truly, stunningly, revealingly moronic stuff is happening on the other side.