Mark Kleiman

If the claims that the twice-annual change from Standard to Daylight Saving causes bursts of auto and workplace accidents and sleep-related heath problems are true, it seems to me the argument for getting rid of the changes is strong. I’d appreciate expert reader opinions on the state of the evidence. (Jennifer Doleac at U.Va. warns […]

I have to agree with Keith’s post below: the Connecticut College study does not show that “Oreos are as addictive as cocaine.” The college should not have put out a press release making that claim, and respectable news outlets (plus Fox and HuffPo) should not have published that claim uncritically. But I wouldn’t just put […]

This is really too funny for words. Rachel Maddow nails Rand Paul ripping off pieces of an anti-abortion speech he gave at Liberty University in support of Ken Cuccinelli’s dying gubernatorial candidacy from the Wikipedia page from a 20-year-old dud sci-fi movie. Libertarians are often puzzled why the rest of us have a problem taking […]

Ross Douthat’s essay against “Medicaid for all” – which boils down to opposition to any form of health-care cost control other than loading the cost on the patients – drew praise from, inter alia, Rich Yeselson: Millian. You fairly explicated your interlocutors’ best arguments before astutely rebutting them. A model essay. Agreed as to the […]

Public opinion on cannabis legalization has been trending positive since sometime in the late 1990s. By a couple of years ago, it was just about break-even. But in the latest Gallup poll, the “pro” side has moved to an almost-20-point advantage, 58 to 39. Of course this calls for some caveats. 1. The question, as […]

Legal cannabis will naturally be much, much cheaper than illegal cannabis. A joint is the same sort of item as a teabag: the dried flowers of a plant in a wrapper. A fancy teabag costs a dime at the supermarket; the marijuana in an average joint costs about $4 (0.4 gram of sinsemilla flowers @ […]

Part of the reason for the policy success of the Tea Party crowd is the willingness of the people who pretend to be the adult supervision in the GOP – especially the business lobbies – to tolerate Tea Party nonsense. Combined with the willingness of the ultras to “primary” anyone who casts a sane vote, […]

Richard Posner, who wrote the majority opinion upholding the Indiana voter-ID law, has figured out that he was wrong, and that his colleague who argued that such laws are primarily vehicles for vote suppression was right. This, of course, won’t change the minds of most supporters of such laws, for whom vote suppression has always […]

Despite the massive gerrymander that allowed the Republicans to keep a majority of House seats with a minority of the votes, the “clean” Continuing Resolution (that is, one that doesn’t undo Obamacare) passed by the Senate would pass the House if John Boehner allowed it to come up for a vote (which he might in […]

Mark Kleiman’s statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee.