By Thomas’s reading, Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act, to say nothing of Medicare and Medicaid, might all be unconstitutional. “Justices can be influential by indicating to lawyers the boundaries of what’s possible,” Eugene Volokh, a professor at U.C.L.A. School of Law and a widely read blogger, said. “There is conventional wisdom about what’s possible, like ‘Whatever you think about the Commerce Clause, no one is going to go back to the pre-1937 approach,’ or ‘The Second Amendment is a closed issue.’ Thomas has shown that sometimes the conventional wisdom is wrong.”

Jeffrey Toobin has a fairly terrifying story in the New Yorker about Clarence Thomas’ judicial philosophy and growing influence. “Partners” outlines how Thomas’ strict originalist approach is reopening Supreme Court rulings that have been thought settled for decades.

In aligning his decisions with the Tea Party political maneuvering of his wife, Thomas is leading a block to undermine the regulatory framework that enables many of our governing institutions.

Toobin also touches on the institutions, money and training networks that have brought this viewpoint to prominence. It’s sobering to think how little of a response has been organized by proponents of shared, effective government.

Interesting chart in the Economist showing which states have been net federal revenue contributors and which have been net federal revenue recipients since 1990. I think the government should invest more moneys in the states that need them. But this map seems to highlight a blatant gap between rhetoric and reality.

I’d also like to see in-state versions of how the money flows.

From James Fallows, the Toronto Globe and Mail has some tax charts showing how Americans pay about the lowest taxes of any developed nation.

Ignore the fact that there is still a horrible utility in political violence, the way there was during Reconstruction, or during the labor wars of the early twentieth century. If there were not, it wouldn’t be so hard to get an abortion in Kansas, and assault weapons would not have been accessories of choice at recent rallies purportedly held to discuss changes in the way the country organizes its health-care system.

Charles P. Pierce has an excellent article in Esquire examining recent political violence in the United States. “The Bomb that Didn’t Go Off” centers on a failed bombing on a Martin Luther King Jr. march in Spokane. He uses that incident to showcase right-wing political violence since Obama’s election, highlighting our insistence on not seeing a pattern.

Follow-up: In the New York Times, Scott Shane has an article outlining the influence of American anti-Muslim bloggers on the terrorist behind the attacks in Norway.

In the New York Times, David Leonhardt outlines how America is dreaming when it comes to spending and revenue.

Unfortunately, this nostalgic view depends on a misunderstanding of the budget. It imagines a budget in which the United States indefinitely has the world’s highest medical costs, its largest military, an aging population and, nonetheless, taxes that are among the world’s lowest. Economists have a name for that combination: a free lunch.