Three posts worth checking out elsewhere on the site.
In his latest entry, Damon Linker discusses the continuing and worrisome influence of political theorist Carl Schmitt's ideas within the Republican party:
But Schmittian assumptions were hardly limited to the executive branch of the Bush administration during the past seven years. They were so widespread among conservative intellectuals, in fact, that most of them responded to the president's decisions [involving the unitary executive] with enthusiasm, putting their minds to work justifying and defending his extra-constitutional actions at nearly every turn, while also impugning the motives and patriotism of those who dared challenge the president's sovereign authority.
Also be sure to read John McWhorter's new post on the etymology of "baby mama":
Hunt up the derivation of the term these days and even the OED has fallen for a tasty but mistaken idea that the source is Jamaican Creole (“patois”), in which there is a term “baby-mother.” However, the chance that a random locution from Jamaican Creole becomes common coin across all of black America is small--a fluent speaker of Black English could go several years without uttering a single word born in Jamaican Creole. Plus, usually the Jamaican term doesn’t really mean what baby mama does, referring more generally to a pregnant woman.
And McWhorter's post on Cam'ron and constructive rap:
I wrote that hiphop espouses a futile kind of politics -- and many object "But hiphop taught me politics!" They miss, if we may, my point that the issue is the kind of politics. If Cam'ron wants to call attention to how crucial it is that inner-city ex-cons do not wind up back in jail and teaching young people in their neighborhoods that spending time up the river is 1) normal and 2) a right of passage, then I say rap away.