Mark Kleiman

The Chris Christie/Ft. Lee/George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal is now moving a warp speed. Now we’ve taken what may be the fatal next step, from “overblown,” “mistakes were made,” and “turning the page” – all markers of a simple scandal – to the point where the people directly implicated decide whether to save their […]

Sometimes the forced brevity of Twitter has very good results. Harold Pollack (@haroldpollack, for those of you keeping score at home) put up a Tweet a few days ago that expresses an important and under-appreciated truth in 140 characters: Next time federal gov fails to execute something important w/technical proficiency, I hope we remember nickel+diming […]

Yes, we all know that Megyn Kelly is dreaming of a white Christmas, with a white Santa and a white Jesus. And yes, she’s collecting the mockery she deserves. But look on the bright side. Kelly’s puzzlement is based on her unthinking assumption that Jews are white people. That seems uncontroversial today, but the Megyn […]

Lots of us liberals felt sorry for Dan Rather for having used what turned out to be fabricated documents in reporting on George W. Bush’s derelictions of duty while using the Air National Guard to dodge service in Vietnam. Some of us even suspected that he’d been mousetrapped by Karl Rove: that the phony documents […]

Everyone “knows” that two glasses of red wine a day are good for your health. But, as Will Rogers said, it’s not what you don’t know that hurts you: it’s what you know that ain’t so. A paper by Hans Olav Fekjær and commentaries by Jurgen Rehm and Sven Andréasson, all in the latest issue […]

The federal government runs a program aimed at aiding areas especially hard-hit by drug dealing. Each High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA, pronounced “high-da”) gets some money and a coordinator who attempts to build links among enforcement agencies. The usual Congressional logic has greatly expanded the original list of five targets; there are now twenty-eight, […]

Congratulations to Secretary of State John Kerry and his boss. This seems like a remarkably good deal. According to the agreement, Iran would agree to stop enriching uranium beyond 5 percent. To make good on that pledge, Iran would dismantle links between networks of centrifuges. All of Iran’s stockpile of uranium that has been enriched […]

At last, Harry Reid has concluded that the Senate cannot function with an effective 60-vote threshold for confirming nominees, when the his Republican colleagues are using their minority power to undo basic Constitutional processes. Instead of whomping up the usual insincere objections to individual nominees, the Senate GOP has decided that this President will not […]

Unlike some of my friends, I can imagine situations where the death penalty would be justified. (That doesn’t mean I think there’s a way to make it work under U.S. legal and social conditions.) But life-without-parole – accepted by some as a superior alternative – strikes me as almost always unjustified. Even if you agree […]

A woman tries (unsuccessfully) to poison her husband’s lover. The local prosecutor declines the case. The U.S. Attorney prosecutes under a statute implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention. The poisoner pleads guilty, reserving the Constitutional question, and appeals. The Supreme Court grants cert., and the oral argument features former SG Paul Clement for the poisoner and […]