Mark Kleiman

A couple of things to note from the President’s statement after the House stepped back from the cliff (other than his strong reiteration of a refusal to deal about the debt ceiling, which he correctly identified as whether the Congress would renege on paying the bills for spending the Congress had ordered): his list of […]

Basic fact about the fiscal cliff bill:   Aye No D 174 16 R 85 151 Why can’t David Espo and Alan Fram at the Associated Press get that basic fact into a 38-paragraph story, instead of blandly and misleadingly reporting that the vote was “bipartisan”? If there’s no price to be paid for irresponsibility, […]

Shorter Kevin Drum: 1. Lead is remarkably nasty stuff. In minuscule quantities (measured in the single digits of micrograms per decliter of blood) it damages both IQ and the capacity for self-command. 2. The rise of lead exposure from gasoline, and its subsequent decline, accounts for a large share of the crime boom of 1960-90 […]

The story is about the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field are astoundingly good as Abraham and Mary Lincoln. The supporting cast is superb. The writing is pitch-perfect, especially in the way it catches Lincoln’s use of Shakespeare and story-telling. The questions at stake, and the positions and actions of the […]

Earlier this month, Hilary Clinton, having picked up a virus on one of her many overseas trips, became dehydrated, fainted, fell, hit her head, and suffered a concussion. That caused her to postpone her scheduled testimony on the Benghazi pseudo-scandal. While Clinton was still at home on an IV drip to treat her dehydration, The […]

Four take-aways from this National Journal story: 1. Wall Streeters are “all Keynesians now.” (No Hayekians in hedge funds?) Like all sane people, they want the government, in a situation of prolonged inadequate final demand, to boost final demand, rather than shirinking final demand by raising taxes or cutting expenditures. None of them seems to […]

I’m not a fan of mandatory liability insurance for gun owners; Megan McArdle picks some good holes in the proposal, without even mentioning the big problem about how to attribute liability when the firearm used in an assault or homicide is never recovered by law enforcement. But even a flawed concept ought to be considered […]

The usual suspects are pretending to have their fee-fees hurt because Steny Hoyer compared the Republican debt-ceiling threats to hostage-taking. Two things to note here: 1. It was Mitch McConnell who originally made he comparison. The difference is that Hoyer disapproves of hostage-taking, while McConnell was bragging about it. As far as I can find, […]

Senate Judiciary chair Pat Leahy of Vermont has written a fascinating letter to drug czar Gil Kerlikowske. (Full text at the jump.) It’s much friendlier to legalization than I would have guessed. Leahy wants to know: What assurance can and will the administration give to state officials involved in the licensing of marijuana retailers that […]