Joel Mathis

I think, after today, I'm going to try to stop writing about Dennis Prager. I have conservative friends who deeply respect him, and I admit to being somewhat confused by that: To me, his liberals are always straw man liberals (who always seem to be pulling the country toward Stalinism) and his atheists are always straw man atheists. We won't even talk about his straw woman feminists. There's always an audience for such things, of course, but the people who give credence to Prager are usually thoughtful. I'm obviously missing something. If Prager has or attempts a moral imagination that lets him consider lives and viewpoints other than his own in non-hyperbolic, non-stereotypical fashion, it is not evident in his writing. And while I admit that my conservative friends might say the same thing about me from time to time, the effect of Prager's style is that it is impossible to really constructively disagree. That means he's mostly irritating, and almost never—i

The following is a chat transcript with my friend Lex Friedman about Tom Junod's Esquire piece examining how President Obama uses drone warfare—and how his actions might be infringing on American civil liberties. Lex : So I read that long long piece you linked yesterday.    About the Lethal Presidency.    I am above making a joke about how the worse crime by far is the overwrought writing style the author brought to the piece.   me : Heh. Fair enough. 9:24 AM  Lex : I understand the author's argument.    But I do not agree.   me : How so? 9:25 AM  Lex : I see targeted killings as he (negatively-ish) paints the administration as seeing them: an evolved form of war. Instead of killing soldiers with little stake in the battle, or putting our own soldiers with limited stakes at direct daily risk, you go for the people who are actively involved in plotting against you. 9:26 AM  If we grant the president the right to send troops to fight wars—and we do!—then we&#

Ben and I chatted with Robert Draper for the latest podcast, on his newest book about the House of Representatives. It's a good read, and a good discussion. Take a listen here .

Not a bad flick. Not a masterpiece, but it's the kind of thing I can see 17-year-old guys gathering in basements to watch for the next couple of decades: I'm not really a hockey fan, and it's hard to watch this movie without thinking of guys who have sacrificed their health-- and maybe even their lives --to this kind of way of living. But 'Goon' does (or almost does) one really interesting thing: It asks us to consider the options available to people who simply aren't that gifted. For Sean William Scott's Doug Glatt, the option is to fight. And that's about it. We're allowed to see him use that option as a kind of triumph for the little guy. But it's hinted to us--through Liev Schreiber's character--that what comes after isn't so pretty. But mostly we're meant to have a good time, so those themes are touched upon lightly. Like I said: Not a great movie. But not the worst, either, if you're prepared to stomach some extreme p

I felt a sense of loss this morning, reading in the New York Times that the western wildfires had destroyed the Flying W Ranch in Colorado . Why the loss? I'd never personally visited the ranch. As a child, my mom had the "Cow Country Gourmet" cookbook—essentially a compilations of recipes from the Flying W Ranch. It seems to me that she used it regularly, though my memory might be faulty on that front. But I remember staring at the cover from time to time: What kind of world did it come from, that one could have a sit-down dress-up dinner under the open sky? Next to cattle? In front of a teepee ?  I've never personally opened the cookbook to make a recipe from it. Yet that cover, which got a little bedraggled over the years, burned itself into my mind's eye. It made the Flying W Ranch—or some fantasy version of it, at least—a part of my childhood. I am sad to see it go.

Yes, we've been watching a lot of Chinese movies lately. Here's one of my favorites on Netflix: It's got young Michelle Yeoh, young Donnie Chen—in the only movie that I've seen of his in which I find him halfway charming—and orchestrating it all: Woo-ping Yuen, the man who choreographed the stunts in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," the "Matrix" films, and "Kill Bill." This early-1990s pic doesn't have the production values of those films—listen to the cheesey soundtrack music above—but the fight choreography is inventive. Don't expect anything epic or narratively complex: This is a light comic piece in the tradition of "The Legend of the Drunken Master." It's a trifle, but a fun, well-made trifle.

I'm not in the habit of pimping my friends' work, as a rule, but my former Lawrence Journal-World colleague Jon Niccum contacted me to let me know about a movie project he's working on—one that's crowdsourcing its funding from Kickstarter. The movie is called "Jayhawkers," and yes it's got some University of Kansas stuff going on, but it also sounds pretty cool . It tells the story of how Wilt Chamberlain went to KU—changing not only college basketball, but helping alter race relations in Lawrence, Kan.: The movie’s emotional climax comes during the triple overtime 1957 National Championship bout between the Jayhawks and their bitter rivals from The University of North Carolina, a game that is decided in the final seconds, and one that has been called the greatest in college history. Jayhawkers tells the powerful fable of how a small group of unlikely allies modernized college sports and changed a small Midwestern town, serving as a parallel to the Civ

In a recent piece for PhillyMag, and more recently here , I've suggested that public unions bear more scrutiny than their liberal allies have generally given them. But I've also said—much, much less prominently, admittedly—that the problems afflicting municipalities these days can't be blamed solely on those unions. In my Scripps Howard column with Ben Boychuk this week, I flesh out the rest of it a bit  with a look at the bankruptcy of Stockton, California. Public unions aren't perfect. Too often, they act as constituencies to whom favors are owed rather than partners in building the cities they serve. Democrats are often loath to acknowledge such flaws, for a couple of reasons: a) Unions are a critical source of campaign funding; and b) You never really see Republicans biting the corporate hand that feeds them. Why alienate allies and disarm unilaterally?  Public unions didn't solely create the problems faced by Stockton, or any other city facing financial t

Great movie: It's kind of like "Rushmore," only if Max Fischer were Welsh, had a complete set of parents, and was much less able to overwhelm people with the force of his personality. Oliver Tate also has a way of being alienating, but it's more in the mode of the usual dumb antics of a teen boy than in Fischer's attempts at being precocious. Charming movie.

I actually found Walter Russell Mead's post --about how American elites have lost their way by losing Christianity--to be somewhat compelling, if not entirely convincing. This was the passage I found challenging and a bit moving. Serious Christians have to struggle continually against the temptation to view “merit” uncritically. To begin with, any gifts that you have are just that — gifts. Your ability to score 800 on the math section of the SAT is something for which you can personally take no credit whatever. It’s like a pretty face or perfect pitch: it’s very nice to have, but it’s God’s sovereign choice, not your sublime inner nature, that is responsible for this. And of course, he doesn’t give his gifts without a purpose.  And guess what: the reason God made you smart wasn’t to make you rich and to make you special and to allow you to swank around in the White House or at Davos. He made you smart so that you could serve — and the people he wants you to serve are exactly al

What a bizarre movie: I'm still scraping my thoughts together about this, but: It's a cross between a gangster film and a Shakespeare mistaken-identity farce, featuring about 13 or so twists and double crosses along the way. It kept doing things that I completely did not expect it to do: For example, Chow Yun-Fat played the villain with queeny ostentation. So I'm going to have to watch it again.

My piece for The Philly Post , documenting how and why a good number of Republicans believe that Barack Obama is spending today--July 4--raising campaign cash, had a good run this week: Mentions at New York Magazine, Slate, and last night on the Rachel Maddow show . Both NY Mag and the Maddow show featured a tweet from Andrew McCarthy acknowledging he'd made a mistake. But that's not quite good enough for me. Maybe it's the old newspaper guy in me, but I think you should acknowledge and correct and error in the venue that you made it. And in this digital era, you should acknowledge and correct and error by noting it on the very post you made it. As of the morning of July 4, Andrew McCarthy's original, incorrect post remains uncorrected . So it's fine he tweeted his correction--it means he's not totally disengaged from the truth. But leaving the original post uncorrected means that it'll sit there, evidence for any activist who Googles it a year from

Perhaps this is my bugaboo, but I cannot stand the way the New York Times mentions torture advocate John Yoo this morning. My problem? They don't mention the torture advocacy. And it seems relevant. Why? Because the mention comes in a story about how conservatives are angry with Chief Justice John Roberts' vote on the Affordable Care Act. By Saturday, John Yoo, a former Bush administration lawyer, was suggesting in The Wall Street Journal that there had been a catastrophic vetting failure in 2005 when the administration was considering Chief Justice Roberts’s nomination.   “If a Republican is elected president,” said Professor Yoo, who teaches law at the University of California, Berkeley, “he will have to be more careful than the last.” But Yoo isn't just a "former Bush administration lawyer" who "teaches law" at Berkeley. He's the lawyer who campaigned for an exceptionally expansive reading of the president's commander-in-chief dutie

That’s the title of a very short essay I have in the July issue of Philadelphia Magazine . (It’s not online, that I can find, but it’s on newsstands now.) It’s a piece I fear will cost me a few friends in this town--and possibly beyond--and so I hesitated to write it. I don’t like making my friends mad! But: I wrote it. And I stand by it. Now I’d like to elaborate. The central point of the essay is that the city’s public labor unions--in virtually every sector of public governance--contribute to the sclerotic can’t-do-much-but-do-it-expensively-and-slowly-but-intrusively nature of Philadelphia governance. Let’s face it: Governance in this city sucks . They’re not the only culprits, but mostly public unions appear to act as constituencies that are owed favors and pandering instead of partners in making the city better. It hurts to write that, because I believe it’s not a coincidence that the decline of unionization in America has coincided with stagnating middle class wages. And I don’

Laura W. Murphy: 'Fixing' Citizens United Will Break the Constitution : "In “Fixing Citizens United,” Professor Geoffrey Stone -- usually a friend to the First Amendment -- argues for a constitutional amendment to “fix” the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Professor Stone mentions the proposal rather offhandedly, but the idea is a nuclear option. A constitutional amendment -- specifically an amendment limiting the right to political speech -- would fundamentally “break” the Constitution and endanger civil rights and civil liberties for generations." Murphy is the director of ACLU's Washington legislative office. They're obviously advancing a radical liberal agenda.

Well, not all of them. But some of them. Take this tweet , for example: Which, well, yes. The second-most-trafficked blog post I've ever written here is one I wrote while reading The Federalist Papers.   It's where I dive deep to discover that the Founders intended that Congress have unlimited power of taxation.  Now they obviously didn't expect that it would be used in unlimited fashion, but they were very specific that the power had to be unbounded. Here's one Constitutional case where we don't have to speculate about their intent, because they told us. Here is Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 31 : As the duties of superintending the national defense and of securing the public peace against foreign or domestic violence involve a provision for casualties and dangers to which no possible limits can be assigned,  the power of making that provision ought to know no other bounds than the exigencies of the nation and the resources of the community.   As r

Heartland Institute Reacts to Obamacare Ruling | Heartland Institute :  "“Today’s decision will go down in infamy. It marks the moment when we all lost our freedom because the Supreme Court drew a road map to guide those dedicated to imposing a totalitarian, statist government on the American people.  “The majority opinion on the individual mandate, authored by Chief Justice Roberts, held that, so long as failure to comply with a government directive is penalized by something ‘reasonably’ called a tax, Congress can force Americans to buy anything. It can force Americans to do something, indeed anything, like eat broccoli. It can force Americans not to do something, like not be obese. Or even not sing the Star Spangled Banner. All of this would be lawful under this ruling today.  “There is no limit on the evil coming, unless we amend our Constitution. A dark day for America, indeed.”  Maureen Martin Senior Fellow for Legal Affairs The Heartland Institute " Emphasis added. N

Ben and I have a fresh-fresh-fresh Scripps Howard column this week , reflecting on what lessons can be learned from the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act. Taking the victory at face value— though maybe I shouldn't —here's my take: Liberals, enjoy the victory -- because now everything gets harder.   And I mean everything. The Supreme Court's ruling doesn't end the debate over the Affordable Care Act, it simply throws it back to Congress. Obamacare-hating Republicans already run the House of Representatives. Further Republican victories in November could lead to an outright repeal of the law. It may be years -- if ever -- before the act joins Medicare and Social Security in relative safety from GOP assaults.   Beyond that, liberals should understand -- as conservatives almost certainly do -- that the fight over Supreme Court nominees will become even more intense going forward. Conservatives don't believe that their argument failed

Although I have a Scripps Howard column coming out soon that suggests otherwise, I think it's possible that Chief Justice John Roberts decided to kill the Affordable Care Act today--not with the beheading that everybody was expecting, but with a slow-acting poison. Consider this. One of the big things the Affordable Care Act does is make it nearly impossible for insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. That removed a big obstacle for many people obtaining insurance, but it also created a problem--burdening those companies with huge medical costs that they were otherwise avoiding. The individual mandate was intended to solve that problem by sending lots of healthy people (and their cash) to the insurance companies, allowing the insurers to still make money. By reframing the mandate as a tax, though, Roberts may have found the mechanism that blows the house of cards apart. Here he is, delivering the majority opinion : Indeed, it is estimated that fou

At Imprimis—the " most influential conservative publication you've never heard of "—Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder argues that the federal government is creating more problems than benefits with its student loan programs, and along the way makes a weird observation : What about higher education being a vehicle for equal economic opportunity or income equality? Over the last four decades, a period in which the proportion of adults with four-year college degrees tripled, income equality has declined. (As a side note, I do not know the socially optimal level of economic inequality, and the tacit assumption that more such equality is always desirable is suspect; my point here is simply that, in reality, higher education today does not promote income equality.) Vedder kind of gives the game away with his postscript—he doesn't care about income inequality, he just thinks it a handy tool to use in the argument against education. And it's true in a