In your excellent book The Conscience of a Liberal, you described the Republicans as a “revolutionary” party–and this was years before the Tea Party movement arose. Which Republican economic idea do you consider the most revolutionary, and why?

Every Democrat who voted for the Patriot Act, which contained a very expansive definition of “domestic terrorism,” ought to burn in political Hell*. Anyone with more than three functioning brain cells should have foreseen that such a statute would eventually be misused to intimidate political opponents.

* And Tom Daschle, who instructed Senate Democrats to roll over and play dead when the act came up for a vote, ought to be in the Ninth Circle.

The story is outrageous, but it does contain an element of farce: the police confiscated beer-making supplies.

The federal ban on homebrewing was repealed in 1978, and only a handful of states–Illinois is not one of them–still ban it.

Ironically, today is opening day of Chicago Craft Beer Week.

There’s no room for D.C. statehood at the top of the Democratic Party agenda. The party’s top priorities are squelching internal dissent, raising boatloads of cash from the usual fat-wallet suspects, walling itself off from rank-and-file members, and wagging fingers at progressives who intend to support third-party candidates.

Pete Peterson has something in common with the Koch brothers. If he spends enough money, he can buy his own set of facts.

Republican-affiliated think tanks move their party’s agenda to the right. Democratic-affiliated think tanks move their party’s agenda to the right.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The last thing the mandarins of the Democratic Party wants is filibuster reform. They would lose their all-purpose excuse for the death of progressive policies in the Senate.

The first time Mr. Marion in Savannah and I heard El Rushbo was years and years ago when we were driving from NYC down here for a vacation. When we ran out of decent music stations and odd local preacher nuts we heard Rush and were absolutely convinced it was a comedy show.

Two years ago, while on a long road trip, Mrs. Tiger insisted on listening to an hour of Limbaugh. What struck her, aside from Limbaugh’s repetitiveness, was the amount of commercials–almost half the time she listened. Ironically, many of the ads were public service spots placed by the Advertising Council.

Where the hell was Hand-Wringing Harry Reid in 2009 and 2011 when the Democrats were in the majority and could have scaled back the GOP’s use of the filibuster?

As far as I’m concerned, Reid has zero credibility.

In 2004, Peterson wrote a book titled Running on Empty in which he argued that Social Security was unsustainable. On a number of occasions, he conflated Social Security and Medicare, which have different cost structures. He also trotted out the argument that the Social Security trust funds are “stuffed with IOUs” and that retirees and near-retirees are waging generational war against younger workers.

I’ve seen a number of proposals for privatizing Social Security, all of which ignore the issue of administrative costs. In traditional Social Security, those costs are less than 1 percent. I don’t see how a privately-managed system of retirement accounts could keep administrative costs that low, even if they didn’t pay their executives huge salaries and bonuses and their sales reps refrained from steering account owners into products with big sales loads and administrative fees.

Has anyone explored the idea of making K-1 distributions subject to the Social Security tax?

Color me pessimistic. The Democrats controlled both houses of the last lame-duck Congress and traded away renewal of the Bush tax cuts and got bupkis in return. With Boehner and his Carnival of the Animals in control of the House, what comes out of the next lame-duck Congress can only be worse.

The Iraq Resolution, the Patriot Act, and the FISA amendments; and this administration’s willingness to consolidate the worst constitutional abuses of the Bush 43 administration as part of its own foreign and national-security policy.

Barack Obama’s insistence on “reaching out” to Republicans like Charles (“Death Panels”) Grassley is the number-one reason why he has all but whiffed on an entire presidential term. That’s the bad news. The even worse news is that there isn’t a shred of evidence that Obama has learned anything from his experience.

We got nailed for hefty increases twice in one year by Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan. Both times, BC/BS accompanied the notice of rate increase with a flyer that expressly blamed the Rube Goldberg Act for making the the increase necessary.

Yet another wonderful aspect of The Rube Goldberg Health Insurance “Reform” Act of 2010. Just think, this legislative pile of pink slime is the signature accomplishment of the Obama presidency.

Better yet, the crowd enthusiasm you’d find at a Charlotte Bobcats game.