For the Balkinization on Mark Tushnet and Bojan Bugaric, Constitutionalism and Its Discontents (Oxford University Press, 2026).Laura Gamboa Though often thought as linear and cohesive the literature on democratic resilience struggles with two relatively opposing premises. On the one hand, the rise of would-be-autocrats is portrayed as the outcome of political establishments unable to adequately represent voters and strong well-entrenched institutions that sustain minority government.[1] On the…

This is Joseph. This article got me thinking about the idea of elites. Because I am actually in agreement with one major thread here, which is that the focus in American life has been on intra-state competition and not inter-state competition. This shift in focus to internal competition has often gone poorly for states. Stalin weakened Russia versus the Nazi's by seeking internal purity. Byzantium lost to the Ottomans because they couldn't overcome internal strife. It is generally not a good…

What if we have been reading the Musk story wrong? What if the story of Musk isn’t an economic — or to some, an innovation — story at all? What if it isn’t a story about entrepreneurship or vision or personal failings at all? What if, instead, it’s a story about the potential of a full-scale action against a democratic nation-state? These thoughts are still very much developing, but let me lay out a few considerations: We have the richest man in the world engaging very openly in politics, or…

3rd September 2027 How settling litigation is being (wrongly) used for broader political goals * There have been two interesting examples of litigation settlements in the United States being used for wider political goals. In respect of one example, the liberal minded may go Boo! In respect of the other example, the liberal minded may go Hurrah! This post sets out why one should go Boo! to both. * The first example is President Trump’s supposed settlement of his claim against his own…

The Bond Market Is Not Happy Actually, it is worse than that. The bond market is in turmoil, and that has political implications for November. The federal government is spending far more money than it takes in via taxes, so it has to finance billions of dollars of spending by selling treasury bills, notes, and bonds, the difference between those being the time to maturity. Treasury bills are for a year or less and don't pay interest, so they are sold at a discount and pay face value at…

There’s a passage in an interview of former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, published by Frontline on September 1, that many people seem to have misunderstood, especially on Twitter, where — perhaps unsurprisingly — it has been reduced to “India shouldn’t make chips because it can smuggle them in instead”. Excerpt:I want to emphasise that I’m not against self-sufficiency in defence. That’s very important. If you want foreign presence, get them to manufacture in India because at least we will have…

The G20’s Asheville message was blunt: growth is the only way out. The emerging playbook points Matt Dines toward “Quantitative Credit Guidance” instead of quantitative easing: private-sector lending, reindustrialization, and a broader sovereign debt restructuring agenda.

I am on a roll with an exciting new income stream – payouts from class action law suits! The cash has been flowing in and I’m rolling in settlement moohlah. Milking the legal system and then some! The Big One: Blue Cross Blue Shield Subscribers Settlement My email trail indicates I heard about this lawsuit in April, 2021, from the health insurance I had years before when I lived in Arizona. I was not even sure I fully understood the Blue Cross Blue Shield Settlement Plaintiffs claim that the…

“Lady” Lucy French, the CEO of Fleet Street Quarter (FSQ) is trying desperately hard to be completely on-message with the City council ‘leadership’. She used promo for a ‘charity’ bus tour of the square mile taking place today to parrot their spin about minister for housing and planning, Matthew Pennycook, requesting a targeted re-examination of the City Plan 2040 – to reassess the visual impact of tall buildings on heritage sites such as the Tower of London. Like our local authority ‘leaders’…

Executive Summary: A look at the legacy of CL Fouvy, a transport engineer who identified the need for SRL-style orbital rail lines as early as 1975 and proposed a massive suburban rail grid for completion in 2025. It's fair to say that this State Government has had some difficulties with the Suburban Rail Loop project in the last few weeks. New Premier Ben Carroll regards it as a lower priority than his predecessors did. Construction will proceed but with cost reductions that lessen…

American-Assembled – When Marketing Claims Don’t Match the Product The LiFePo4 battery industry has finally matured. Unfortunately, the marketing departments of some US based battery assembly companies matured into bold, bogus tall-tales, right along with it. Today, far too many battery companies have discovered that selling batteries is no longer about engineering. It’s about storytelling. Terms like solid-state, marine-grade, ABYC compliant, 5,000 cycles, safest battery available, and…

In one federal TV studio [in Russia], the cameras were rolling, the host was ready, but the politicians were nowhere to be found. Another … broadcast managed to do slightly better: one candidate actually appeared in the studio, but … he spent his alloted minute in complete silence. –TVP World’s “Break the Fake” with Benjamin Lee, Sept. 2, 2026, https://youtu.be….

Maybe my perceptions are incorrect on this point, but my sense is that a lot of people believe that the US economy is making strong progress toward clean non-carbon energy, driven by increases in solar and wind power. I don’t see it that way. My own reading of the evidence is that the solar/wind presence in the US energy sector is barely getting underway, with some high hurdles to come. For an overview, here’s a figure showing the US energy sector from the the US Energy Information…

For the Balkinization on Mark Tushnet and Bojan Bugaric, Constitutionalism and Its Discontents (Oxford University Press, 2026).Sabrina Ragone There is much to admire in Mark Tushnet and Bojan Bugaric’s Constitutionalism and Its Discontents, beginning with the ambition and provocation reflected in its title. The book revolves around a fundamental paradox: constitutionalism seeks simultaneously to empower democratic self-government and to constrain the exercise of that very power. The three parts…

This week at Balkinization we are hosting a symposium on Mark Tushnet and Bojan Bugaric's new book, Constitutionalism and Its Discontents (Oxford University Press, 2026). We have assembled a terrific group of commentators, including Colm O'Cinneide (University College London), Laura Gamboa (Notre Dame), Roberto Gargarella (Torcuato di Tella University and University of Buenos Aires), Mark Graber (Maryland), Madhav Khosla (Columbia), Sandy Levinson (Texas), Martin Loughlin (LSE), Fernanda Nicola…

At Reason, Veronique de Rugy rightly takes Republicans to task for sneakily doing what the Democratic Socialists of America at least have the decency to be open about, reagrding government stakes in private companies:As Cato's Tad DeHaven notes, "The seven nonbinding letters of intent would provide up to $874 million in CHIPS and Science Act research and development incentives." Remember when most Republicans were against the CHIPS Act passed under former President Joe Biden? I do. And remember…

For those who find [drag shows] offensive, the solution is relatively simple…just don’t go. – Judge David Hittner To Molest and Rape When will amateur women learn cops are dangerous sex predators? [A Baltimore cop named] Daniel Oxendine…[raped] a woman…[who foolishly approached] him to [ask him to] drive her…home…[when they got there,] Oxendine [forced his way] inside and [raped] her…Investigators [believe]…he may have [had other victims so he]…is being held [without bail]… Undead Powers…

In early August, Temporary Protected Status—also known as TPS—was canceled for hundreds of thousands of immigrants by the Trump administration as part of the regime’s barbaric immigrant efforts. Since the 1990s, TPS has allowed individuals from countries that were impacted by things like civil war and environmental disasters (or any extreme condition where they could ... Read more The post A life taken by cruelty and why we can’t turn away appeared first on Shay Stewart-Bouley.

By David Tuller, DrPH Last month, I was delighted to hear that my friend Anil van der Zee, who has been bed bound with ME/CFS for years, had been selected to receive a royal honor for his indefatigable efforts to advocate for patients. The award—Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau—was presented to him in his […]

We have already done a 5-year voyage over 13 countries from the North Sea to the Black Sea, crossing the entire European continent through scenic internal arteries. After arriving back, last year we bought a bigger lifeboat to fit out for the next adventure https://www.patreon.com/c/boatingeurope The voyage, tracing the historic Volga trade route and travelling across completely contrasting geographic and cultural worlds. But it is frustrating when geopolitics get in the way of a planned…

Voters in Massachusetts Like Their Politicians Aged, Like a Fine Wine Voters in Massachusetts headed to the polls yesterday to choose the Democrats who will represent them for the next 2 years (or more). Here are the results: Click here for full story

Ukraine identifies another asymmetric weakness in the terrorist state—its size, its underdeveloped transportation system, its reliance on air transport. “Zelensky vows ‘Russian sky will be de facto closed,’ warns airlines, foreign governments…” kyivindependent.com/the-russi… #RussoUkrainianWar

I just found out that I'm ineligible for the Medicare Bridge program for GLP-1 medications. Because I'm a military retiree covered under TRICARE For Life for my prescription drug coverage, and so I don't have Medicare Part D coverage. TRICARE For Life doesn't cover GLP-1 medications for anything but Type-2 diabetes. It seems interesting that the people who came up with the Bridge program didn't anticipate that military retirees would be ineligible. I'm looking at paying cash directly to Eli…

And what a brief month it was! In posting terms, anyway. Here's what tickled the fancy of the internet travelling public. Not that they had much to choose from. 1. The New Road to Serfdom 2. What Was the Point? 3. On Rearranging Deckchairs 4. Tinashe - Melatonin 5. Local Council By-Elections August 2026 Taking the top this month was my review of Jodi Dean's latest book on class dynamics. It looks at how capitalist relations of production are not just producing a new oligarchy, but are beginning…

I am attending the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors, so look to my upcoming Mine Print Hash episode for my take on what I heard and saw at the summit. Today is just a quick post. The charts we all the ministers are referring to when they talk about yields, “borrowing costs,” sovereign debt, etc.: Mine Print Hash On last week’s episode, we discuss Bessent’s “economic D-Day,” Operation Economic Outcast. We follow the sanctions through the banking layer, connecting everything back…

Link: AI safety is designed in the West, and failing users everywhere, by Rina Chandran in Rest of WorldAmnesty International believes that Facebook was complicit in the genocide against the Rohingya people in Myanmar:“In 2017, the Rohingya were killed, tortured, raped, and displaced in the thousands as part of the Myanmar security forces’ campaign of ethnic cleansing. In the months and years leading up to the atrocities, Facebook’s algorithms were intensifying a storm of hatred against the…

Thanks to the power of musical theater and the genius of Lin-Manuel Miranda, I can now speak in public spaces about Alexander Hamilton and the First Bank of the United States without watching people’s eyes glaze over in real time. And I am duly grateful. But there is a preceding chapter to this story, which Matthew Wells tells in “The Bank of North America,” subtitled “Before the First Bank of the United States, another, less well-known institution helped the fledgling United States find its…

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 170, 172: Trade was very much two-way, with Chinese manufactures in strong demand in return for the exotic products of the south and west. Trade was also highly profitable for the government, which normally took 30 per cent of imported products to sell. Yet Chinese merchants were not involved in this burgeoning overseas trade. As in earlier times, as previously noted, it was…

The UK government is consulting on changing the rules around fireworks and pyrotechnics in the UK. Like many people, I enjoy using P1 pyrotechnics safely and responsibly as part of playing Airsoft. I had fun this weekend with both flashes and smoke grenades at my local Airsoft site, Red Alert. Although the kind of devices used in Airsoft is not the main focus of the consultation, some of the questions that the government is asking indicate that changes to the rules could still have an impact on…

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT), of which I am a member, was planning a ballot on industrial action. The reason for the ballot is that the Public Service Agreement, covering pay and working conditions for all public service workers in Ireland, lapsed at the end of June this year (2026) and there is currently no pay settlement for the second half of this year or next year. Salaries have fallen behind inflation under the existing Agreement…