Ezra links to a critical survey in The Guardian of the late Milton Friedman’s policy achievements—one that appeared so quickly that I have to assume, like obituaries, it had been written well in advance, just waiting for the balding-grey eminence of free-market economics to expire. It’s a sobering tonic insofar as its a reminder of […]

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A week after “message received,” House Republicans decide to shake things up by handing a landslide victory to Rep. John Boehner in his bid for minority leader. What’s that famous old definition of insanity again?

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John Aravosis links to this YouTube video captured by a student at UCLA’s student library. An Iranian Muslim student had been asked to leave after being unable to produce ID. When he stayed anyway, campus police were called to eject him. It looks like he was on his way out, but the confrontation with the […]

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Vertigo has posted the first issue of Doug Rushkoff’s Testament as a free download. I’d meant to start following this when it first debuted but (sorry Doug!) didn’t find myself getting into comics shops with any frequency. But maybe this is a good time to start…

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There’s a lively discussion going in the comments over a Yglesias’ over a recent paper purporting to find that “women are less likely to take tenure track positions in science, but the gender gap is entirely explained by fertility decisions.” Replies Matt: You say the gap is explained by “fertility decisions” I say it’s explained […]

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Via Drudge, the city of Belmont in (where else?) California is set to become the first to totally ban smoking outside the home. Sorry, the single-family detatched home. Everywhere else, verboten. The aptly named Councilman Dan Warden’s “explanation” of his thinking, while on face the vacuous prating of some podunk town imbecile on a day […]

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The blogosphere’s been buzzing about yesterday’s WorldNetDaily story alleging that terrorist groups received $2 million—earmarked for jihad munitions—in exchange for the release last August of two Fox News journalists who had been kidnapped.. Now, who knows if this is true, but something about it smells a little weird. The sources for the story are all […]

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Dana Goldstein has a post up in response to my piece from last week on the new Democratic enthusiasm for “moderation” on abortion. I think a lot of her objection is far more to my tone than the substance of what I was saying: If you’re focused on making the argument that there’s nothing morally […]

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After last week’s elections, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek post at Hit and Run suggesting there was something heartwarming about a picture of Rick Santorum’s young daughter bawling at the result—the headline, as South Park fans will recognize, cribbed from Eric Cartman’s sadisitic gloat in the episode “Scott Tenorman Must Die” (video). This not only prompted […]

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Blog ping pong may not be the ideal way to hash out the fundamental differences between conservative and libertarian approaches to tradition and fallibilism, so let me just restrict myself to a couple quick comments on Jonah Goldberg’s response to my post of last Friday . (Jonah’s original review is now online, by the way.) […]

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