Ethics

Loony Right vs Reasonable Right on Sunstein

By Ed Brayton

Dave Weigel has an interesting article at the Washington Independent about how some of the ridiculous attacks from the loony right on Cass Sunstein are in conflict with the support Sunstein has from more mainstream conservatives. The Wall Street Journal, for example, supports Sunstein:

On January 8, when the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein would be nominated to run the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. It was a surprising choice for a job, created in 1980, that monitors and manages the federal government's regulatory apparatus. And it was welcomed as an olive branch from an incoming Democratic president to conservatives and libertarians.

"[Sunstein's] writings on regulation and the herd mentality deserve a voice in the incoming Administration," the newspaper's editorial board wrote, in one of vanishingly few positive assessments it has given Barack Obama's White House. "Mr. Sunstein brings important qualifications to [the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs], and Mr. Obama has made a savvy choice in putting him there." The editorial's headline emphasized just what a happy surprise the appointment had been: "A Regulator With Promise-Really."

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on September 10, 2009 (boomark / email).