Mark Kleiman

If you’re just playing the piano in a whorehouse, maybe people will believe you didn’t know what was going on upstairs. But if you claim to be the madam – “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president” – that gets a lot harder, especially if you make the claim in SEC […]

Today’s GOP threatens the Republic in two distinct but linked ways: by pushing the envelope with respect to the political process – both in the use of obstruction and in attempting to cement themselves in power by corrupting the electoral process with money and disenfranchisement – and by routinely using violent “patriots-and-tyrants” rhetoric. Tom Levenson […]

I’m on my way back to LA tomorrow after a quick trip to London. Today included a meeting with a senior figure in the crime-policy world here, who was reflecting on how hard it is to improve the British police service. He identified, as a central problem, what he called “BPW”: the need to start […]

With the AP following Vanity Fair in going after Mitt Romney’s tangled web of offshore investment vehicles, and Ted Strickland picking up on it on behalf of the Obama campaign, it looks as if Romney’s taste in investment vehicles will join Bain’s record of job destruction in this year’s campaign arsenal. Josh Marshall argues that […]

That’s as good a two-word summary of the Stepford Husband as I’ve heard. Edsall concentrates on the political implications for Romney of looking like a coward, rather than on the implications for the country of electing a coward, and he sticks with the immigration issue, but the picture is beautifully painted, including this magnificent paragraph […]

The consensus among those entitled to express an expert opinion – a class that does not include me – appears to be that Chief Justice Roberts not only wanted and intended to strike down the individual mandate but actually voted to do so before changing his mind. I have seen no one claim that this […]

Just in time for the Darrell Issa/NRA attempt to cite the Attorney General for Contempt of Congress, Katherine Eban of Fortune reports on what actually happened in the “Fast and Furious” case. Answer: not much. ATF tried to make cases against a group of gun-runners, but couldn’t get prosecutors interested. One of the suspects bought […]

Two weeks ago, the University of Virginia’s governing body, the Board of Visitors, fired the president of the university. The move, of which there had apparently been no foreshadowing whatever, was accompanied by a statement about the need to “develop, articulate, and implement a concrete and achievable strategic plan to re-elevate the University to its […]

I’ve never studied any of the esoteric disciplines – such as Kabbalah or Con Law – so I have no idea whether yesterday’s decision about mandatory life-without-parole for juveniles – the one that sparked a hissy-fit from Justice Alito – is good law or not. But to give you some idea how absolutely uncontroversial it […]

Facebook went public at $38 per share, and is now trading at $30. So Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter, and its accomplices partners at Goldman and J.P. Morgan, did an excellent job for their customers (Facebook and its selling shareholders, including Goldman itself) while leaving the public – including Morgan Stanley’s own retail customers at […]