I'm not a nuclear plant engineer, or a financier, or a logician, but I am a lawyer and this article was full of logical leaps and argumentative gaps.

First, where do these cost assumptions come from? What about economies of scale? Of course N-plants are expensive now: we haven't built one in 30 years. As other letter-writers have said, if we standardize design, and start building them by the dozen, the price will fall drastically. The author never mentions this.

Second, he rhetorically asks why we would want to follow France's example, as if the article answered the question. But it does not. What are the prices for nuclear power in France? What does it cost to build a plant there? If the answer is lower than what is set forth in the article, why is that so, and is there any reason we couldn't match the cost and efficiency in France if we started building more plants here?

Third, putting aside cost, what about the gain from producing power with zero carbon emissions and reducing our dependency on foreign oil? France is not held hostage by the Middle Eastern oil producing states; it exports power to the rest of Europe and has a very low per capita carbon expenditure. Why is that not a model we should emulate?

This article comes across as anti-nuclear screed. It is not the sole answer, but neither are wind and solar. Together, however, those three methods could form a triumverate of clean power generation. We have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, and it would be silly to write of nuclear power, which we are already using and have been for decades.

I feel in reading this article transported to a hazy, overserious, dorm room clouded with marijuana smoke. Mr. Lind states these conclusions as if they are earth-shaking revelations, when they are simply self-evident conclusions. Of course his proposed Newer Deal Coalition would work if only social conservatives and social liberals had nothing dividing them that either of them care about. Unfortunately, they do. The Roosevelt party collapsed because once abortion, affirmative action, and other social issues became federal issues, people who disagreed on those policies could not leave those disagreements at the statehouse steps. Blame the Supreme Court, or lawyers, or activists who weren't content to fight these issues in Albany, Austin, and Sacramento, but propelled them to Washington. Now that those issues are part and parcel of national politics in America, those groups are probably irrevocably split.

What secular, East Coast, agnostic, professional woman is going to support a candidate who vows to appoint a pro-life justice to the Supreme Court, endangering her right to lead her secular lifestyle? What working class Catholic, or devout Southern Baptist is going to support a candidate who is in favor of dropping all federal restrictions on abortion whatsoever, including partial birth abortion and the like and vow to keep Roe v. Wade in force, and expand it to late-term abortions, or euthanasia or some other social cause anathema to him or her? Very few. And if those people are in the same party, they will have to agree on a presidential candidate, and that candidate will have to take a stand on those issues because they are now in the realm of control of the federal government.

Sorry I don't share the author's feeling of epiphany, but I feel like I learned nothing new by reading this, except that the author thinks it would be cool if people would just stop caring about anything besides economics.

They know they've been in control of the executive branch almost without exception since 1968, and Congress from 1994-2006, but that doesn't matter. The mantra is that the judicial branch is to blame. Never mind that now most federal judges are Republican appointees, most of the damage was done by Democrat judges in the 1970s and '80s, and the planned overturn has been blunted by Clinton appointees and Republican turncoats (Tony Kennedy! David Souter!). When they're up against a wall, they can always blame the judiciary.

Sadly, except on social issues, the GOP judiciary has rolled back consumer protections, voters' rights, civil rights, tort laws, and anything else perceived to be anti-business, so they're wrong there too. That leaves one area where they can continue to be the victim.

Conservative social values usurped by the judiciary. Primarily, abortion and gay rights. Here, conservatives blame the judiciary for usurping the democratic process to impose "liberal," "elite" values on America. The thing is, they may actually be right about that.

Had progressives and Democrats simply waited and used the legislative branch to enact these changes, they could have deprived the right of even its lone potentially plausible argument. Judicial decisions have rightly (to the progressive minded) blocked discriminatory legislative acts (Brown v. Board), but even liberal scholars and lawyers shake their head when reading Roe v. Wade, which squarely dodged the issue of when life begins. Same with the gay marriage rulings in California and elsewhere.

Those matters should have been decided by grass roots campaigns to change state and federal law through the democratic process, not through the courts. Conservatives are right to claim the courts are overreaching. They may be right, but they have overreached in many instances. Sometimes the patience to win in the statehouse and in society at large pays dividends.