Harold Pollack

Post-Aurora debate has sometimes focused on generic gun control issues, and important but familiar questions about why weaponry holds such an iconic place in American culture and law. As I mentioned yesterday, I don’t believe this massacre raises constitutional issues. One can be a strong 2nd Amendment advocate without believing that some modern-day Raskolnikov has […]

Four years ago, I and a graduate student visited a repository of records in the Illinois Violent Death Reporting System. We perused case narratives from 200 consecutive homicides occurring in 2005 where the victims were Chicago adolescents or young adults. 188 out of the victims were listed as African-American or Latino. More than ninety percent […]

Another atrocity, this time at a movie theater in Colorado. I don’t know if I can prove it, but I feel confident that publicity provides a powerful motive to commit an atrocity. We seem to reward the perpetrators with such publicity every time. We do a lot to glorify villains. Movies like Silence of the […]

Mitt Romney doesn’t like the way many Americans seem to want free stuff from the government: By the way, I had the privilege of speaking today at the NAACP convention in Houston and I gave them the same speech I am giving you. I don’t give different speeches to different audiences alright. I gave them […]

I haven’t been much of a fan of the personalized Romney-bashing this campaign season. I avoid the rudely juvenile moniker “Willard.” I thought the whole “Corporations are people” supposed-gaffe was a stupid nothing. I find thinly-veiled attacks on Romney’s LDS heritage to be idiotic and reprehensible. I don’t know enough about Romney’s conduct at Bain […]

Republican politicians across the nation are pushing voter ID laws and similar measures ostensibly designed to thwart (the largely fictional problem of) voter fraud. Despite various flimsy justifications offered, most of these new laws are obviously intended to prevent or to hinder voting among traditional Democratic constituencies, particularly low-income people, the less-educated, and nonwhites. Various […]

June 27 was National HIV Testing Day. This got lost in the SCOTUS health reform fight, but it’s still worth noting. If you’re wondering, get yourself tested. It is important. It is quick. It’s easy to do. The oral rapid test is especially quick and painless. There are many good reasons to know your status. […]

Like just about everyone else, I am anxiously waiting to see what the Supreme Court will do about health reform. Already much of the commentary is partisan and political: What impact would overturning the Affordable Care Act have on the fortunes of President Obama or Mitt Romney? We have an understandable instinct to view such […]

As we wait for one historic Supreme Court decision, it’s right to remember another. Thirteen years ago today, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Olmstead v. L.C and E.W. Aside from the Department of Health and Human Services, the blogosphere didn’t lavish much love on Olmstead today. That’s too bad, because this was among […]

I am reading Christopher Hayes’ Twilight of the Elites—well worth the $26 I paid for it. Hayes’ book strikes several chords with me. One simple point concerns the pernicious consequences of elites’ great and growing social distance from ordinary people in American society. When less than two-percent of fighting-age adults serve in the volunteer military, […]