Tomorrow, March 21, is the National Day of Action for Syringe Exchange. Since the Reagan administration, Congress has expressly prohibited any federal funds from going to syringe exchange programs. This ban on federal funding is an outgrowth of the ineffectual War on Drugs, the theory being that prev… Read full post »

It’s hard to say that the cost of militarizing America’s civil police forces doesn’t outweigh the benefit. Stephan Salisbury, writing in Salon, observes:

Yes, it’s true that Montgomery County, Texas, has purchased a weapons-capable drone. (They say they’ll only arm it with ta

… Read full post »

Dalia Lithwick, writing in Slate, thinks Judge Stephen Reinhardt’s Proposition 8 decision doesn’t go far enough. She’s right in that he could have gone further. Judge Reinhardt declined to address the reasons offered by District Court for why Prop. 8 was unconstitutional: (1) that “it deprive… Read full post »

Let’s be clear, here. Despite Anonymous’s protestations to the contrary, Megaupload did not exist primarily as a way to let users share large files. That was a sham that Megaupload perpetuated for its own P.R. Quite to the contrary, Megaupload existed primarily to pirate copyrighted conte… Read full post »

The Small Business Coalition, which represents the interests of small businesses, seems to have a problem with Citizens United. Unlike the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents giant, multinational, Fortune 500 companies, the SBC represents those businesses that make up the vast, vast majority o… Read full post »

Libertarianism, says Jeffrey Sachs, is beguiling in its amorality:

By taking an extreme view — that liberty alone is to be defended among all of society’s values — libertarians reach extreme conclusions. Suppose a rich man has a surfeit of food and a poor man living next door is sta

… Read full post »

As it turns out, white people can be terrorists, too.

Tom Junod, “Counter-Terrorism is Getting Complicated,” Esquire, Feb. 2012.

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The 10 Most Ridiculous Lawsuits of 2011. The point of this list, I guess, is to show us that the legal system is wacky-screwed up, and doesn’t there need to be reform? Sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has really no beef at all with large corporations suing smaller… Read full post »

It’s been quite a week for nerds. No fewer than three film trailers have sparked our nerdly interest for 2012. It can’t come too soon, either, as 2011 was a crappy year for the nerds. (Non-nerdly films, however, were great. I’m thinking here of Drive and Tree of Life.)

The Dark Kn… Read full post »

AT&T today announced, predictably, that it was dropping its bid to acquire T-Mobile. In so doing, AT&T didn’t miss a chance to petulantly tell the FCC that they would be sorry:

The actions by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to block this transaction

… Read full post »

I literally can’t count the number of eulogies online for Christopher Hitchens, recently deceased of esophogeal cancer. Hitchens was well-known as a stubborn contrarian and an outspoken atheist. He was also a good writer.

What drew liberals to him is mysterious. Hitchens was definitely an indep… Read full post »

I have seen probably a dozen versions of Charles Dickens’s short story “A Christmas Carol.” I’ve seen the Alastair Sim version, the George C. Scott version, the Patrick Stewart version. These are the “straight” versions. I’ve also seen the derivatives, includ… Read full post »

Should politicians be intellectuals? Not necessarily. But that’s the wrong question. The correct question is, should politicians be thoughtful? A politician doesn’t need to be an academic, but a politician does need to be capable of forming reasoned opinions.

The latest from the RSS world:

• Charities need money, not your random old food. “You’d be doing dramatically more good, in basic dollars and cents terms, by eating that tuna yourself and forking over a check for half the price of a single can of Chicken of the Sea.”
• All
… Read full post »

Sometimes, Americans get a false sense of being cosmopolitan by traveling to other countries. We are an insular people, isolated from the goings-on in Europe and Asia by two oceans, and isolated from the goings-on in the rest of our continent by choice. During college, or shortly afterward, we spend… Read full post »

A look at some of the interesting things I read today, as found in my RSS feeds:

• Fox News thinks the Muppets are brainwashing your children against capitalism.
• Young adult writers (that’s adults who write YA fiction, not minors who write YA fiction) take the writing portion of the SAT.
… Read full post »

Economists are always adding little caveats to their statements, like “rational consumer.” Well, what’s a rational consumer? Just like a “reasonable person,” a rational consumer doesn’t exist. A rational consumer always make the right choice for the right reasons.… Read full post »

Ohio Governor John Kasich’s plan to strip union members of most of their collective bargaining rights didn’t just fail. It failed spectacularly. Issue 2, a referendum to continue or repeal the anti-union bill signed by Kasich in March, died with over 60% of voters telling it to take a hik… Read full post »

So false that you settled out of court. So anonymous that she told us her name (it’s Karen Kraushaar, by the way). It’s just awful that the “Democrat [sic] machine” is reporting on things that verifiably happened in the past. What is this, some kind of inquiry into the reputat… Read full post »

“Supply-side economics” really just means “bring our costs down.” Lower taxes, fewer government regulations, and all that. Republicans believe in supply-side, and that’s why they want lower taxes and fewer regulations. Businesses aren’t making money because so much… Read full post »

It’s pretty hard to argue with these grievances:

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequali

… Read full post »

Of all the reasons to ban a book, the fact that the book criticizes capitalism seems among the most tenuous.

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For the last week, The Atlantic has been running a series of articles on college sports and the NCAA. The most recent one sums up the whole debate: namely, why should colleges and the NCAA reap the monetary benefits of student athletes while denying those same students those same benefits? They shou… Read full post »

From The Economist, via Boing Boing, comes an interesting answer to a question that has vexed liberals for a long time, especially in the wake of the Tea Party’s prominence: “Why do lower middle-class and working class Americans support tax breaks for the rich?”

One possible answer… Read full post »

Drew Westen, writing in The New York Times, has it all right there: pretty much everything I talked about in my earlier post about partisanship and centrism:

The real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want

… Read full post »