THE FUTURE OF MADD?….There’s been a spate of MADD bashing in the blogosphere lately, so here’s something to add fuel to the fire. In Japan, it turns out, laws against drunk driving have already slid down that slippery slope that everyone is afraid MADD is pursuing here. To wit: One drink is enough to put […]

ONLINE NEWSPAPERS….A DIFFERENT APPROACH….This is something very cool: the Newseum, an online museum of news. Click on “Today’s Front Pages” and you get a display of front pages from around the world, updated daily. Click on a front page and you get a larger view that allows you to read the headlines, plus links to […]

KEEPING AND BEARING ARMS….A QUESTION….A couple of days ago Glenn Reynolds said this: The wrongfulness in the World War Two internments, after all, wasn’t that they happened, but that they were unjustified. Had significant numbers of American citizens of Japanese descent actually been working for the enemy, the internments would have been a regrettable necessity […]

BONDS, MORE BONDS!….It’s true: California has no constitutional requirement to have a balanced budget. Devra points me here, where we’re told: The State Constitution requires that the Governor submit a budget to the Legislature by January 10. It provides for a balanced budget in that, if the proposed expenditures for the budget year exceed available […]

TAXING TIMES FOR SINGLE PEOPLE….My sister is always complaining about this, so here’s one more problem with the Bush tax plan: it does nothing for single people. My sister is unmarried and has no children, so neither the marriage penalty reform nor the child tax credit do her any good. Her income is moderate, so […]

PLAN? WHAT PLAN?….Patrick Ruffini reports that a poll by Public Opinion Strategies shows that the Bush economic plan is preferred to the Democratic plan by 51%-41%. I’ve got one question: do they really expect us to believe that 92% of the electorate has an opinion on this? That 92% of the electorate has even heard […]

CLASS WARFARE….There’s been a fair amount of comment about David Brooks’ op-ed in the New York Times yesterday in which he says Democrats should give up complaining about tax cuts for the rich. The most popular quote, of course, was this one: Nineteen percent of Americans say they are in the richest 1 percent and […]

SAUDI ARABIA: FRIEND OR FOE?….Saudi Arabia gets a lot of grief in the blogosphere, and the cause isn’t hard to pinpoint: 15 Saudi nationals were part of 9/11, al-Qaeda continues to flourish in the Kingdom, and state-supported Wahhabi schools in Saudi Arabia preach a virulent blend of nationalism, fundamentalist Islam, and hatred toward Jews and […]

POSITIVELY CHURCHILLIAN….Nope, no negotiation with Korea. Well, talks maybe, but no negotiation. But definitely no aid, no no no. Oh heck, maybe a little bit of aid: “We know there are energy problems in North Korea. Once we get beyond the nuclear problems, there may be an opportunity with the United States, with private investors, […]

THE PAST IS PRESIDENT….Have you heard of “dynamic scoring”? It’s a politician’s dream, a theoretical construct that allows you to cut taxes, but then claim that the economic boost from the tax cut is so large that the tax cut won’t actually cost anything! Dynamic scoring was a hobbyhorse of the Reagan administration, part of […]