Politics Professor, Author, "Bureaucracy in America." Next book on Congress and Parties. Husband, Dad, Hiker, Boardgamer. Native Ohioan.
Joined June 2011
- Tweets747
- Following161
- Followers463
- Likes740
Pinned Tweet
Civics ed is a hot topic these days but most people seem to think it's the university's job to do it. I just published an (open access) article arguing that political parties have historically been the greatest schools of civic ed in America. Check it out! mdpi.com/2075-471X/14/1/10
Joe Postell retweeted
It took months after GOP waves to start turning on the leaders--truly impressive stuff.
Jennifer Welch: “I want to say this Chuck Schumer: we won in spite of you and we will do everything on this channel, everything, to make sure that you are not the Senate Majority Leader. You do not represent us. You’ve made it crystal clear who your loyalties are to. What you did to Angie Nixon, I will never ever forgive you. Quit taking victory laps on Twitter like you won this. Nobody likes you”
One potentially enormous effect of today's elections: the National Popular Vote movement for the next presidential election. (But again, it was more likely that *Harris* would have lost the popular vote and won the EC in 2024, than vice versa.)
This quoted post is unavailable.
I'm sorry, but I can't stop laughing at Sen. Collins having to explain that "there are very few maternity charges under Medicare"
Joe Postell retweeted
News: Sens. Daines (R) and Merkley (D) have a BIPARTISAN rules change proposal to make the Senate function better
- Get rid of archaic delays like the "intervening day"
- Suspension votes at 2/3 margin for popular bills
- Fast track to floor for bipartisan bills from committee and for bipartisan Appropriations bills
They need 2/3 of the Senate to support it and they want to do it this year. They've talked to Schumer, Thune and the White House
Daines: “More bills passed, more votes taken, less time wasted"
Merkley: “If we don’t solve this, eventually one team or the other is going to get rid of the filibuster"
semafor.com/article/10/07/20…
Joe Postell retweeted
A couple of kids from Marion Ohio said some things at Harvard Law School this week.
Fantastic self-own
I've served in two White Houses and in Congressional leadership, and I can tell you when the last time a CEO or an industry at large asked to be regulated: never. That's what makes Dario's letter so striking — it's an admission that we're driving down a dark, winding road on wet pavement with the headlights off. And where's President Trump? Looks like he nodded off again. It’s time to turn the lights on, put both hands on the wheel, and regain control before it’s too late.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Industries and CEOs have often asked to be regulated. Examples include 19th century railroads, Allstate in 2009, hedge funds and tech companies. washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/305871… fee.org/articles/we-wa… nationalreview.com/corner/be-wary…
Joe Postell retweeted
MIT published a brutally honest report on what AI is doing to students.
A committee of professors and students spent five months studying how AI changed learning on campus, and the findings read like a warning to every university on the planet.
Study groups are disappearing. Office hours are emptying out. Problem sets and take-home exams no longer prove anything, because AI can produce credible solutions to almost any written assignment in the undergraduate curriculum. Students who lean on chatbots lose mastery and confidence, and some slip into what the report calls cognitive surrender, reaching for AI at the first hint of struggle.
The numbers are rough. 46 percent of surveyed MIT undergrads use LLMs daily. 90 percent worry about their own overreliance. Undergrads who feel AI makes them replaceable now outnumber those who feel it makes them capable.
The committee's answer surprised me. They refused to fight AI with surveillance. The report calls AI detectors unreliable, says lockdown browsers feel like spying, and warns that policing students builds a classroom atmosphere of mutual distrust.
Instead, MIT wants to rebuild education around the things AI can't replace. That means oral exams, semester portfolios, in-person project work, and a required social component in every subject. The report even floats the idea of rethinking grades entirely, since without a GPA to optimize, much of the incentive to cheat with AI evaporates.
The committee warns professors against replacing undergrad research assistants with AI agents just because they're cheaper, because a university exists to grow people, not output.
The most famous tech school on earth admitted the machines broke its way of teaching. Its answer is more humans, not more software.
Joe Postell retweeted
“And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.”
Thank you for the blurb @GregMcBrayer3 ! Too kind.
Joe Postell retweeted
How bad was life before modern science, technology, and economic growth? Awful.
The example I will use in class this Wednesday is Henry Clay (1777-1852). He was one of the most powerful men of his time in the U.S., not just among the elite but among the elite of the elite: Speaker of the House, Secretary of State, Senator, and three-time presidential candidate. He was also rich and a large slaveholder. The U.S. was among the richest countries in the world (perhaps only behind Great Britain) and among the most technologically advanced. And we are not talking about the early Middle Ages, but about the first half of the 19th century.
Given the constraints of his time, he had nearly everything within reach.
Clay and his wife, Lucretia (both in the photograph), had eleven children: six daughters and five sons. He buried all six daughters. By 1835, all were dead: two as infants, two as children, two as young mothers. He also buried a son in a war his father had opposed. Another son, Theodore, fractured his skull as a child, but since nobody could treat him, he spent decades in an asylum in Lexington.
Think about this for a second: seven children dead and one handicapped out of eleven, in the first half of the 19th century, among the elite of the elite, in one of the richest and most advanced places on the planet.
And I was angry yesterday because my cell phone coverage in Toddington (England) was poor.
This - Hill staffers using AI to help craft talking points on legislation and issues - has seemed inevitable to me for a while. AI is going to play a huge role in staff work on the Hill and thus in our political discourse more generally.
Mo Fiorina vindicated again
Conservative radio host Erick Erickson on Senator Jon Ossoff: You talk to farmers in South Georgia, they can get him on the phone. They can get his staff on the phone. They can get help. You talk to Republicans in Houston County, very Republican part of the state, they know they can reach out to Ossoff, and he doesn't care that they're Republican. If they need something, he's going to get it done.
Joe Postell retweeted
Clarity/NIL heads, the reason you need a time agreement from all 100 senators to finish these bills this month -- even if you have 60 -- is the lengthy Senate process if someone is filibustering
1. File cloture on motion to proceed
2. Intervening day
3. First cloture vote (needs 60)
4. 30 hours max post cloture time
5. Motion to proceed (needs 50 + 1)
6. File cloture on the bill (and possibly fill the amendment tree)
7. Intervening day
8. Final cloture vote (needs 60)
9. 30 hours max post cloture time
10. Final vote (needs 50 +1)
More: congress.gov/crs-product/RL3…
Joe Postell retweeted
KAY GRANGER, longtime House Republican from Fort Worth, is dead at 83, per @SpeakerJohnson
Granger was chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
She spent the final months of her House career in an assisted living home in Texas.
Kay Granger devoted her life to serving her Fort Worth, Texas community — as a teacher and businesswoman, on the Fort Worth Zoning Commission and City Council, as Mayor, and in Congress for nearly three decades, where she also served as Chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee.
Throughout her career, she broke barriers for women in public service. She was the first woman to serve as Mayor of Fort Worth, the first Republican woman elected to represent Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the first Republican woman to chair the House Appropriations Committee.
Kelly and I send our prayers to her family, loved ones, and the Fort Worth community as we remember her extraordinary life of service and lasting legacy. She was a dear friend who will be greatly missed.
RT @Reinsch84: After the Slaughter decision, @JoePostell on Justice Gorsuch's warning about consolidated executive power and the need for C…
Every Founder of whom I’m aware believed that securing Liberty was an essential condition for any polity to promote the common good. So a post liberal polity would seem to be a problem for them.
"Post liberal" is not a rejection of the principles of America's founding. It's a rejection of the 20th century reinterpretation of it by the 'small-l' liberals who took over the American right. The founders believed in the common good. You can find the phrase everywhere in their writings, arguments, and even the earliest state Constitutions.
Joe Postell retweeted
A big afternoon for Speaker Mike Johnson.
He cleared the NDAA, a quasi-ban on members of congress trading stock and a budget resolution.
Three big wins in one day.
New from me at Civitas Outlook, focusing on Justice Gorsuch's warning in his Slaughter concurrence. Now that the unitary executive proponents got their way (mostly), we have to be concerned about the massive concentration of power in the presidency.
'Slaughter' may have rid us of the headless fourth branch of government, but it might end up leaving us with an all-powerful presidency.
New from Civitas Outlook contributing editor @JoePostell: civitasoutlook.pulse.ly/6nnv…
Joe Postell retweeted
Just filed: cert petition asking the Supreme Court to strike down the federal home distilling probition and overrule Gonzales v. Raich dropbox.com/scl/fi/305jmbaj1…
