Hugo Chavez is dead, but it looks as if Chavismo lives on. Even with an honest count, Chavez’s successor is likely to win handily. People who know more about Venezuelan politics than I do tell me that’s too bad: Chavez shifted the political window sufficiently that the alternative is no longer the rule of the […]
Mark Kleiman
Mark Kleiman is a professor of public policy at the New York University Marron Institute.
Posted inPolitics
Does the President Claim the Power to Take You Out?
I’ve been known to ask a snarky question from time to time, but right now I’d like to ask a completely serious question: What extraordinary power is Eric Holder supposed to have claimed for the President? Surely it’s not extraordinary to claim that an official may kill a citizen on American soil without a warrant […]
Posted inPolitics
Mitt Romney Writes his Own Obituary
To Chris Wallace, about “47%.” What I said is not what I believe. Just for double irony: it’s clear that the 47% line was the one thing Romney really did and does believe: he said it again, in different words, in the Wallace interview, and made it clear that he was thinking mostly in racial […]
Posted inPolitics
Jack Lew’s Bonus
Pay for senior jobs in big financial services firms consists of salary plus bonus, with the bonus being a large part of the total. If the employee stays at the firm, the bonus decision may be fraught with tension, but it’s reasonably straightforward ethically: the bonus is intended to reward performance in the past and […]
Posted inPolitics
Progress and Prosperity
George Orwell, writing in 1944: No less than 20,000 English girls … married American soldiers and sailors … . Some of these girls are being educated for their life in a new country at the ‘Schools for Brides of U.S. Servicemen’ organized by the American Red Cross. Here they are taught practical details about American […]
Posted inPolitics
Drones Against Prison Rape
Too many prisons are terrible places. Inmates stab and rape one another, mostly with impunity, to the point where gang membership becomes a survival strategy. Gang leaders maintain the capacity to order assaults both inside and outside the institution. Contraband markets flourish. Misbehavior by corrections officers – both brutality and corruption – takes place behind […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
The Stupid Party
The U.S. currently spends about $27 billion a year on biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health, and something less than a quarter of that amount ($6 billion per year) on all other scientific research through the National Science Foundation. Of that smaller amount, less than 5% ($247 million) goes to “social, behavioral, and […]
Posted inPolitics
The Anglican Puzzle and the Burying-place of Richard III
Andrew Sullivan is annoyed that Richard III is to be buried in an Anglican church. After all, living before the Reformation, he must have been a Catholic; why bury him in a Protestant church? Well, that’s one way to look at it. But it’s not the only way. Institutionally, the Church of England maintained its […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
Universities and Information Revolutions
Brad DeLong writes: I will not dare make predictions about the potential Christensenian disruption of higher education until I understand why and how the university as we know it survived the Christensenian disruption that was the coming of the printed book. I don’t understand that. The long answer to that question will be known to […]
Posted inPolitics
Crookback Dick
So the body of Richard III has been found, buried under a parking lot. (Jimmy Hoffa is still missing.) There’s no evidence of the withered arm portrayed by Shakespeare. Oddly, though, there is evidence of severe scoliosis. Tudor literature portrayed him as hunchbacked, but contemporary documents make no mention of it, and the portraits show […]
