Who are bobos? What are bobos? As one of my friends put it, rather bluntly: "They're privileged middle-class cunts who think they're cool."

The French were the first to embrace the new expression to describe those who have it all.

The term is short for bourgeois and bohemian, two social castes no one ever expected to find mixed up together.

Bobo takes over where the old Mitterrand-era label "gauche caviar," or caviar socialist, left off. The British used the term champagne socialist. Americans call them latte liberals.   more »

Lost in the babble over the Spitzer story are the dubious prostitution laws. Why exactly is prostitution criminalized?

However, it is, and Spitzer just got finished with a long stint as attorney general, where he hounded others for breaking laws. And now he's governor.

Is he just another Democrat who can't keep his dick in his pants? Well, this situation is a lot worse than any sexual escapade of Bill Clinton's.

Spitzer hooked up with a hooker operation, if the federal complaint against him is accurate. And so he violated the Mann Act and other laws. How stupid is that?

Clinton, on the other hand, violated little more than Monica Lewinsky — and she would have paid him to have sex with her.   more »

More fundamentally, the Bush administration is determined to defend the principle of unrestrained executive power in authorizing the US military and intelligence agencies to operate without any legal constraints.

References to the “war on terror” and “national security” have nothing to do with supposed threats against the US or “ticking time bomb scenarios.”

Within the framework of the American political establishment, these are code words for the willingness to use military force to defend the interests of the American ruling class internationally.

In particular, torture is not used to gain information from would be terrorists, but as a tool in suppressing and intimidating any opposition to American militarism—at home or abroad.   more »

Hillary's comeback is not some fluke or the wages of sin for "going negative" - I'm sure I'm not the only one who does actually worry about an elevated junior senator receiving that proverbial 3am call.

She has maintained her strength all through this campaign with key Democratic constituencies.

It's just the fall of primary contests that has obscured this reality. Constituencies, it has to be said, which are usually mentioned by liberal commentators with a sense of distaste, if not disgust.

They are women - and heaven forfend, older women, ie the ones most likely to vote; blue-collar workers - that is, speak it softly, the working class; and Latinos, the largest minority ethnic group now in the US. That's actually a pretty large chunk of the Democratic coalition.   more »

The Obama campaign is now making a big issue of Hillary Clinton’s tax returns and dropping hints about donations to President Clinton’s library and her secret White House papers.

It’s willing to launch an ethics assault. “If Senator Clinton wants to take the debate to various places, we’ll join that debate,” the Obama strategist David Axelrod told reporters the other day.

These attacks are supposed to show that Obama can’t be pushed around. But, of course, what it really suggests is that Obama’s big theory is bankrupt. You can’t really win with the new style of politics. Sooner or later, you have to play by the conventional rules.

The Obama people seem to have persuaded themselves they can go on the attack, but in the right way. They can be tough and keep their virginity, too. But there are more than five long months between now and the convention.   more »