Joel Mathis

With Iraq suddenly embroiled in a Sunni-Shia civil war that risks leaving the country in the hands of the "worse than Al Qaeda" comic book name of ISIS — Hydra was already taken — one thing is worth remembering: We knew this was going to happen years ago. It was just a matter of time. Lots of people — conservative hawks, particularly — feel like the Iraq War was won with the " surge *" that came as a last-ditch gamble in the final two years of the Bush Administration. And in fact, the surge — combined with the so-called Anbar Awakening— did reduce the violence in Iraq quite a bit. But the surge was designed to accomplish a number of strategic goals that never got accomplished : A reduction in violence was supposed to give Iraqis the space for crucial reconciliation and institution-building achievements that never occurred. Which is why we're here today. *It's insane how quickly all of this has receded from "current events" to "history.&quo

In May 2011, I entered the hospital with constipation, found out I was on the verge of dying, went into surgery and had my guts opened up. I woke up in extreme pain and deep humiliation from the colostomy bag I was suddenly, unexpectedly (though temporarily) forced to wear. The combination of events sent me into a fairly deep — and, I think, understandable — depression. I remember the first time I laughed. It was that Thursday in the hospital; I was to leave the next day. I was resting with a TV that didn't actually offer audio for all the channels it showed — NBC was among the silent offerings. Still, I tuned into Community that night, which was ending its second season. And that night, I laughed for the first time since the surgery. It had everything to do with this moment: That's the character Troy, popping up out of a garbage can and seeing his friend Abed for the first time this episode, set during an Old West-themed paintball game. There was something about the

A lot has been made about the comments (allegedly) made by Clippers owner Donald Sterling about race. But I think his comments about class are also kind of interesting. Here he (allegedly) is, talking about Clippers' players: The woman reminded him that the Clippers roster is primarily black.  “I support them and give them food and clothes and cars and houses,” said the man alleged to be Sterling. “Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them?”  “Who makes the game?” he continued. “Do I make the game, or do they make the game? Is there 30 owners, that created the league?” And hey, has there ever been a more perfect example of capital's view of labor? Me? I'm pretty sure the league doesn't exist at all without the efforts of its workers. People buy tickets to watch the players. People buy the jerseys of players. Networks pay hundreds of millions of dollars to show players playing on TV. The owner, when he's seen during these broadcasts, is seen

At Power Line, friend (and nemesis!) Steve Hayward replies to my suggestion that he reads rather too much into President Obama's second inaugural by using rather too little of it. Steve originally used just a few words from this line of that speech— “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time.  For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.  —to suggest that Obama's belief system is (ahem) less than fully American. "May be self-evident" suggests residual disbelief in the proposition. I suggest the fuller passage indicates the president's unm

I think most pundits do their worst work when they play armchair psychologist; instead of assessing what (say) a president is doing on its own terms, they try to guess at the man's motivations and hidden beliefs—often in venal terms, if they disagree with that president's acts. My friend and occasional nemesis Steven Hayward , I think, gets caught in this trap in his latest column for Forbes, in which he speculates about why the president isn't showing up for this week's anniversary commemorations of the Battle of Gettysburg, decides that the president just doesn't believe in America the way the rest of us do. One reason may be that Obama has to carefully avoid associating himself fully with Lincoln’s view about the centrality of what Lincoln called, at Gettysburg, “the proposition” that “all men are created equal.” Obama omitted this famous line from the Declaration of Independence in his famous Philadelphia speech about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy

Please oh please oh please world, remember this is how John Yoo* views constitutional questions: With the Constitution being secondary to whatever warmaking policy imperative Yoo is in favor of this week. The Constitution vests power in Congress to authorize war, the executive to, uh, execute it—and, it's generally understood, that power allows the executive to act with dispatch when an attack has been made upon the United States and its forces. Such is not the case here. Tom Woods  (who is almost certainly more conservative than I am) writes: "In conformity with this understanding, George Washington’s operations on his own authority against the Indians were confined to defensive measures, conscious as he was that the approval of Congress would be necessary for anything further. 'The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress,' he said, 'therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon t

Financial stress may hit your brain and wallet : "Being short on cash may make you a bit slower in the brain, a new study suggests.  People worrying about having enough money to pay their bills tend to lose temporarily the equivalent of 13 IQ points, scientists found when they gave intelligence tests to shoppers at a New Jersey mall and farmers in India.  The idea is that financial stress monopolizes thinking, making other calculations slower and more difficult, sort of like the effects of going without sleep for a night." Not much to add to this, except that I've seen other studies that suggest the stresses of being poor do hurt one's decision-making capabilities. Expecting people to "bootstrap up" out of their circumstances thus isn't always realistic.