Around 1900, Argentina was something like the third richest country in the world. Anyone who visits Buenos Aires can see this-- there are majestic, still standing buildings from Argentina's golden era. Buildings that used to host some of the world's great corporations. Nowadays Argentina is 71st richest in the world, with per capita national income of around $12,000 a year.

What happened? Juan Peron happened. Or, to be more specific, Peronism happened. Argentina became obsessed with making everything itself and not trading.

Today is the 39th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, and the greatest presidential speech of my lifetime.

Mind you, I wasn't a fan of Reagan's politics. But he understood communication, and it's worth noting why this speech was so good and what other Presidents get so wrong Here's the video of the speech. Watch it. It's less than 5 minutes long.

there's not a good faith dispute that "subject to the jurisdiction" excludes "children of illegal immigrants". Even if you want to argue the other side of the Wong Kim Ark case, the position there was that NO children of immigrants got birthright citizenship. Even legal ones.

https://twitter.com/SeanTrende/status/1881357478631493826

this is important because you don't get to make up a constitutional theory that is "exactly what the GOP wants in 2025". If you actually want to argue against birthright citizenship, the available interpretation (which is wrong) would denaturalize a much larger group of Americans

One more quick thread on ERA. I might as well set out the reasons why Biden's legal theory so quickly got picked up by @badlegaltakes and is a Con Law nonstarter.

The Constitution, of course, says nothing at all about ratification deadlines for constitutional amendments. 1/ And we had a fairly recent example of what this means. The 27th Amendment, which was part of the original Bill of Rights proposed over 230 years ago, dealt with congressional pay raises and was not ratified until 1992. Because it had no ratification deadline. 2/

Someone asked me in one of my Hamas threads "why don't you ever articulate your criticisms of Israel", so let's light this candle. Let's talk about the settlements on the West Bank. They are illegal, and obstacles to peace, and Israel should enforce its laws and stop them. 1/ First of all, what are the settlements? Well, if you go back through history, the 2 state solution has a long pedigree. All the way back to the League of Nations Mandate in the early 20th Century, there were proposals for side-by-side Jewish and Arab states in Palestine. 2/

So the NYT has published an excellent story about the victim in the subway burning.

And while the final horrifying end to her life is not predictable, the rest of it, the downfall, sadly, sounds very familiar to me. Here's the link to the story.

nytimes.com/2025/01/04/nyr…

I'm flying back from Scandinavia soon, and I fly a lot, in different classes of service, so it might be done to do a thread on airlines and how you should approach them as a consumer, something I know a fair bit about. So here goes. 1/ You should follow the following rubric:

1. On a short distance trip, pay only for what you need unless you are frequent flyer who can achieve status.

2. On a long distance trip, pay for as much comfort as you can afford.

Those are the general principles. Now, details. 2/

So, with @mattyglesias writing about The Groups (which many people still deny exist), it might be a good time to share my hypothesis as to why the Groups are so bad for Democrats.

It has to do with what donors want. Donors want deliverables. 1/ Think about just donating to a charity that serves starving children in Africa. What sorts of materials will they send you? That's right, pictures of the food deliveries, the kids eating. Maybe even a thank you note from the kids. All to keep you giving money. 2/

Folks, birthright citizenship isn't just some interpretation of a few weirdly phrased passages in the 14th Amendment. We had birthright citizenship BEFORE the 14th Amendment. It's actually one of the oldest and most fundamental principles of American law. 1/ We inherited our citizenship system from the British common law. Like most British colonies, we got our legal system from them. Our Constitution, with references to "common law" (7th Amendment) and "law and equity" (Article III) confirms the British basis of our legal system. 2/

What annoys me about the whole situation with most favored nation status for China is that it was perfectly clear they were Communist authoritarians and were going to be menace to the world and yet everyone pretended they wouldn't be so they could make money.

https://twitter.com/kdrum/status/1858727790746767777

People act as if we didn't know. We knew! They had just done Tinanamen Square. If their plan was to allow freedom of speech they would have... not massacred people on worldwide television in their Capitol! How could we possibly not know?

I dump on the Ivy League a lot, and I see David Brooks is now joining in, and it might be good to be constructive about solutions to the problem (and it is a problem) that Ivy League sensibilities have too much of a hold on the Democratic Party. I have 2.

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… First, just as liberals would be aghast in 2024 to cast a net that didn't include women or people of color or LGBT people when hiring for important positions, you should be aghast to cast a net that only includes super-elite colleges.

This story has been haunting me a few days. And I think there's something here about our own discourse that is worth talking about.

It has to do with how people say very dumb things about levels of freedom in countries. 1/

https://twitter.com/elicalebon/status/1852787623544467469

There are only a few countries on earth where a woman walking down the street in underwear that covers her breasts and private parts will be arrested, disappeared, and possibly killed. Iran is one of them. There are a handful of others. 2/

@tystiklorius ' piece on sexual misconduct in the music industry is worth reading.

Some observations about the problem follow in this thread.

nytimes.com/2024/10/31/opi… I'm all in favor of creating more avenues for reporting misconduct, whisper networks, and more support for victims. That sort of thing has been happening ever since the #metoo movement got going in the entertainment industry several years ago.

But I don't think it will be enough

I think one of the biggest reasons to prefer Harris over Trump is the issue of normality.

Remember how in 2017-21, you lived in fear of what President Trump was going to tweet next? What he was going to do next? He was completely unpredictable. Take North Korea. I happen to agree with his decision to talk to Kim Jong Un (I think "refusing to talk" is one of the most overrated things in all of foreign policy). But maybe you did, maybe you didn't. The point is Trump was INCONSISTENT.

The entire premise of the pro-life movement-- that banning abortion would deter women from getting them-- was wrong.

Obviously, this is an application of what we learned in Prohibition (you can't ban things people want to do). 1/

jabberwocking.com/abortion-bans-… But I think there's something more to it than that. I think pro-lifers, as a group, don't understand women.

I can see the objection immediately-- how can it be? Pro-lifers include many women.

And, sure, they do. But those women are women who don't understand other women. 2/

Since I always get a lot of pushback from high speed rail advocates whenever I discuss the failure of their pet project, LA-San Francisco high speed rail, a thread on my position on this. Basically, high speed rail is good but magical thinking about it isn't. 1/ Let's understand something up front. High Speed Rail is NEVER going to be the primary way of moving people between cities in the United States. There are several reasons for this.

First, we are extremely spread out, especially out west. 2/

There's only 2 interpretations of the 2nd Amendment that work:

1. Traditional means-ends scrutiny like we use for other rights.
2. Taking the text seriously and tying the individual right to one's service and obligations to the government.

This is why Bruen was unworkable. "Text history and tradition" sounds good. It sounds super-conservative and originalist. But it doesn't work because of all the problems with applying 18th and 19th Century approaches to gun regulation to the problems of 21st Century urban America.

A quick thread on an issue that blew up a bit last night. I think a lot of religious conservatives (and some liberals) with broad sympathies for Catholicism, in a strange way, don't understand exactly why the sex abuse scandal was so bad. They want to minimize it. 1/ Now, to be clear, I am not saying they don't understand lots of children were raped. I think nobody denies that. But a bunch of people replied to me with some version of the following: lots of organizations, like the Boy Scouts and various schools, had similar scandals. 2/

Since "the Supreme Court will interpret the 14th Amendment to ban abortion" is the talking point that will never die, on both the Left and the Far Right, I want to synthesize in one thread all the reasons this will never, ever happen. 1/ First, of all, this is just impossible to do. Literally impossible. What do I mean by this? I mean, the decision as to whether to prosecute people for committing or abetting homicide is in the control of prosecutors, at the state level. 2/

So I read SEC v. Jarkesy this morning. This is the case about the 7th Amendment and jury trials and administrative agencies. And-- I gotta say-- I think the conservatives are right on this one. #appellatetwitter 1/ So the issue is this: the SEC has the power to fine people for securities fraud. Going in to this case they could do it by bringing an administrative action, heard by an executive branch official, whose ruling would be deferred to in any court action. 2/

Unappreciated point: the Democratic Party's commitment to identity politics forces it into bad political strategies and prevents it from implementing effective ones.

I was thinking about this listening to @mattyglesias and @brianbeutler this morning.

politix.fm/p/big-alito-li… Matt points out that one of the reasons the Democratic Party cannot get a campaign to get Sotomayor started is because every time someone steps out and calls for her to retire they get called a racist and a sexist by The Groups. Richard Blumenthal, for instance, faced this.