Thanks to Whiskey Fire, I now know about a conservative online magazine called The Federalist.  It looks like former Rick Perry policy analyst Sean Davis started this thing last September.  Davis also writes at Media Trackers, and both offer a pretty standard glibertarian conservative line with a splash of neocon and social conservatism for good measure.  Ben Domenech publishes The Federalist, and employs David Harsanyi and Mollie Hemingway as editors, and this staff list makes me wonder about something:

Why would a bunch of folks who would happily reinstate the Articles of Confederation if they could just keep the Second Amendment name their magazine The Federalist?  Don’t they realize that a huge expansion of the Federal Government was the Founders’ central political goal when they convened the Constitutional Convention?  These guys have more in common with “Centinel” and “Brutus” than with Publius.

Anyway, once there I caught a piece by Davis complaining that Obama had left out some important things we all need to know about the minimum wage.  This response to the President’s SOTU section on the subject is not the standard (and incorrect) “hiring will slow if labor costs more-supply and demand” line – Davis directly responds to two specific items in the speech.  The rest, however, looks like an argument that since most minimum wage workers are young, part-time fast food workers with poor skills, their labor is worth no more and probably less than the current minimum.  But he never comes out and says this, so I’m left with a few questions. Continue reading →