The Escape Hatches Are All Painted On

Switch electoral systems, restore the Founders' actual vision, or take the party back from the inside. All three get tried on for size in this piece. None of them fit, and the reasons are worth understanding in detail rather than taking on faith.

The Right Way Closed While You Were Still Talking About It

Fourteen months ago I argued the "right way" barely exists. Since then they fired a quarter of the immigration judges, deleted legal status for a million people who followed every rule, and still won't touch an employer.

Station Keeping

Sarah Longwell wants the Chamber of Commerce wing back at the center of the GOP. The physics says the room that made that possible doesn't exist anymore, and there's no path back to it.

September 12, 2026 - Week in Review

Posts and notes from the week of September 5, though September 12, 2026

This Fucking Guy: Nathan Myhrvold

NASA's planetary defense chief on Nathan Myhrvold: "He's a very smart man, but that doesn't make him an expert in everything." That's the whole piece, honestly.

Your Neighbor Is a Government

Roughly 75 million Americans live under a body that taxes, regulates, fines, and can take their house. It isn't in the Constitution, and neither party will touch it.

Before Jamestown, After St. Kitts

Empires get remembered with two clean dates, a start and a finish. The actual record refuses to hold still at either one.

September 5, 2026: The Week in Review

Posts from the week of August 29th through September 4th.

Play Up, Play Up

Cricket didn't just teach the empire's children what to value. It sorted them by how well they performed having learned it, and the sorting outlasted the empire that built it.

This Fucking Guy: John Roberts Has Never Once Been Talking About Trump

Forty-five years of paper trail, and exactly one time he found the discretion to swing the other way.

A Brief History of Keeping the Riff-Raff Out

The English aristocracy spent 800 years running an arms race against everyone else's money. This is a tour of every weapon they built.

The Veto Nobody Will Name

My stepfather's last property tax bill was $785. On a house we sold for $1.8 million. He did nothing wrong, and neither did I, and that's the problem with letting people like us decide.