Cure-alls and Remedies
Corey Robin got some nice jabs in at the current class of younger non-academic pundits a while back : A lot of these pundits and reporters are younger, part of the Vox generation of journalism. Unlike the older generation of journalists, whose calling card was that they know how to pick up a phone and track down…
[caption id=”attachment_3029″ align=”aligncenter” width=”300″] by Seany2000[/caption] Via Metafilter’s kliuless (who definitely has a kliu): The Conservative War on Prisons: “Right-wing operatives have decided that prisons are a lot like schools: hugely expensive, inefficient, and in need of root-and-branch reform. Is this how progress will happen in a hyper-polarized world?” Raise The Crime Rate: “Statistics are…
It is my considered opinion that the next three months will involve no serious deliberations regarding substantive public policy. Though readership and viewership for such matters will be at its highest, none of the things discussed will be discussed in a way that comports with public reason or with anything like the goal of exchanging…
Tyler Cowen’s new e-pamphlet ( The Great Stagnation ) takes on the slowing gains to be had from social and technological progress and offers an interesting explanation of some of the trends that many people see as troubling: the flat arc of median incomes since 1973 and the apparently universal surprise that the last decade…
Last week, Greg Mankiw posted this graph without comment: I thought there was something weird about the graph, and it’s been nagging at me. For one thing, it compares the bottom four quintiles to the top 5 percent of Americans. For another, it ignores non-federal taxation. (State and local taxes are more difficult to calculate,…
Can Liberals Take Their Own Side in an Argument? (PDF) Robert Talisse takes on Robert Frost and Mozert v. Hawkins . Epistemic dependence is unavoidable because every individual has limited cognitive resources. However, this dependence in itself is not a bad thing; great stores of knowledge and information that could not be produced by a…
There’s a great little article about prison growth and reform over at Slate . Fordham Law Professor John Pfaff notes that prison populations in the United States have grown unsustainably large, and suggests that this recession is a good time to reconsider our illusions about the causes of that growth. He then goes on to…
I’ve not seen much mention of one of the most important complaints about the FISA reauthorization: the claim made by Joseph P. Nacchio and Qwest Communication International that the Bush administration sought the power to engage in warrantless wiretapping in February of 2001 , seven months before the events of Semptember 11th and the Authorization…
Two recent “Intelligence Briefs” from PINR caught my eye: ” Iran’s Covert Operations in Iraq ,” and ” The Implications of Strategic Withdrawal from Iraq .” As some readers know, I’m a big fan of PINR for supplying ‘open source intelligence,’ which is to say, generalized insights into foreign policy and educated guesses based on…
So the 1936 case, US v. Curtiss-Wright Corp , contains some real gems of fascist legal philosophy sewn amongst highly turgid references to other decisions and statutes. It helps to understand the current battle over the unified executive doctrine, however, so we’re stuck wading through Sutherland’s poorly-reasoned and poorly-written prose. “Rulers come and go; governments…
There’s a rumour going around, perpetuated by bumper stickers and politicians, that “God is pro-life.” It’s an interesting claim, and since everyone seems to want God (i.e. the heavy guns) on their side, I thought I’d examine it. Michael Sandel, (yes, that Sandel) while working on the presidential Council on Bioethics, wrung this statement from…