Mark Kleiman

John Hockenberry interviewed me this morning on the latest from the White House on changing the definition who is “engaged in the business” of selling guns and therefore required to get federal firearms license (and, therefore, do a background check on each buyer before selling a gun). [More on that in this previous post.] As […]

Kevin Drum wants to know how it can be that 10% of people who make more than $240,000 per year – about 4x the median household income – can be reporting that they don’t have the money to buy the things they need, and 37% say they’re cutting back financially. One obvious answer is that […]

Jon Caulkins has a first-rate essay in National Affairs on what the numbers actually say about the dangerousness of cannabis. The real trouble is not that marijuana is more or less dangerous than alcohol; the problem is that they are altogether different, and the comparison is simply unhelpful in informing the debate over marijuana policy. […]

BBC5 called me yesterday – instead of calling someone who really understands either law or gun issues – to comment on the President’s about-to-be-issued proposal to make it harder to get a gun without going through a background check. (Clip here, starting about 1:18:30.) After I finished scrambling to figure things out, the story actually […]

Hyperbole is a constant temptation in debate, especially political debate. Since “terrorism” has now been made into a bogey-man (far out of proportion to any actual threat it poses in the United States) and used to channel anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry, accusing one’s political opponents of engaging in or supporting “terrorism” is an effective rhetorical […]

Something more than 100 “militia” loons, including two of the leaders of the Bundy Ranch confrontation, have now taken over a federal building in rural Oregon in support of the demand that two ranchers convicted of arson on federal land not go back to prison after a federal appeals court found their original sentence to […]

I agree with Eugene Volokh that the charge of “hypocrisy” – literally, playing a role – is way overused in political debate. Whether someone else sincerely believes what he says is not, generally, relevant to the question. Often enough, what seem like inconsistencies in an opponent’s position reflect no more than one’s own reluctance or […]

Ross Douthat notes that extremist parties and candidates are getting more votes than they used to, and warns of a “threat to the liberal order.” But – even putting aside the absurdity of including Bernie Sanders in a list of extremists – Douthat’s piece is oddly selective in its list of causes. It mentions “immigration” […]

This seems like a bad movie plot, but apparently it’s all true: 1. Billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson is involved in a lawsuit in Nevada about the corrupt practices of his casino in Macao. (Technically, it’s a wrongful-termination case brought by someone who claims to have been fired for blowing the whistle.) 2. Adelson has been fighting […]

Debates over public policy are full of what Ambrose Bierce called “vagrant opinions, without visible means of support.” Those of us who try to do policy analysis as a serious intellectual pursuit continually face the charge that the analysis we present is merely a fig-leaf to hide our otherwise naked interest or prejudice. And of […]