Mark Kleiman

I’m agnostic as to the merits of building the Keystone Pipeline, designed to take oil derived – with enormous environmental damage – from Canadian tar sands to Houston. It would be far better to leave the bitumen in the ground, but not building the pipeline arguably wouldn’t prevent the stuff from being mined: it might […]

Glenn Loury says that James Q. Wilson – his friend, and mine – “died with an awful lot to answer for.” Well, yes. Goes with the territory. All of us who try to shape public policy with our ideas run the risk that our ideas turn out to be wrong, or that expressing even correct […]

Mitt Romney’s “pranks” seem to have had a common thread: picking on the vulnerable. Not just boys perceived as effeminate, but also the handicapped: One venerable English teacher, Carl G. Wonnberger, nicknamed “the Bat” for his diminished eyesight, was known to walk into the trophy case and apologize … As an underclassman, Romney accompanied Wonnberger […]

Of all my political mistakes, helping Jimmy Carter get elected in 1976 has to have been the worst (so far). In four years, he managed to blow what should have been the indestructible partisan edge the Democrats inherited from Watergate. No Carter, no Reagan. And he did it while compiling a very limited record of […]

Thomas Mann (Brookings) and Norm Ornstein (AEI) writing in the Washington Post. Sounds like a formula for Inside-the-Beltway even-handedness between the firefighters and the fire, doesn’t it? But not at all. They have some frank observations: We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them […]

I’d like to hear the folks who hold Barack Obama accountable for the long-ago crimes of Bill Ayers explain why Mitt Romney isn’t accountable for the much more recent crimes of his business partner. Turns out, the former Wal-Mart CEO who helped shut down an investigation of bribery by store officials in Mexico is an […]

For those of us who hope that the democratic republic will turn out to be the only long-run-stable form of governance, the biggest threat comes from the self-perpetuating semi-meritocratic oligarchy; the hereditary principle eventually promotes too many dopes, let alone the problems of minorities and succession struggles. The best example of the self-perpetuating semi-meritocratic oligarchy […]

Inspecting the politically target-rich environment that is Mitt Romney’s personality and record, Barack Obama’s strategists are reportedly torn between two approaches: pointing out that Romney is a soulless vote-seeking zombie with no actual core beliefs, or instead trying to label him as a right-wing lunatic. But as Howard Raiffa said, when given a choice between […]

Let me see if I have this straight. When Hilary Rosen pointed out that Ann Romney doesn’t have a clue about the struggles of women in the workplace because she’s never actually been in a workplace, she was insulting all mothers (including herself) by suggesting that making a home and raising kids wasn’t actual work. […]

Dick Cheney has received a heart. In related news, George W. Bush will be given a brain. Mitt Romney’s request for some courage has been taken under advisement. [Cross-posted at The Reality-Based Community]