The best laws inspire the law-abiding.
Jack Shafer on the limits of gun-control legislation: As Noel Perrin wrote in Giving Up the Gun: Japan’s Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879, cultures can change ...
Category: power
politics, history, force
Peeling back the layers of nonsense around the “Catholic, contraceptives” campaign talking point
Garry Wills expertly peels back the layers of nonsense and cynicism around the American bishops decision to make common cause with Rick Santorum: Catholics who ...
What if rigging elections is the extent of Putin’s power?
A fascinating argument by Stephen Holmes and Ivan Krastev on the symbolic function of rigged elections in Russia: Thus, by far the most important political role...
Panic: single working moms, unemployed single men, and high finance.
One way to explain the moral panics of our day: a society governed primarily by old, rich white men of European descent apprehends an economy driven by single, ...
Bingo in Baghdad
From Daniel Voll’s The Hunter Becomes the Hunted in Esquire: Clemente arrived to interrogate the suspect, a handcuffed middle-aged man named Zaid, and und...
why are they so religious? also, camels, needles and the 1%
Many religions offer the promise of a supreme and perfectly fair authority. Such an eternal and just arbiter offers relief for people who live daily under unjus...
toxic math labs devastate nation
toxic math labs produce synthetic highs that lead to a devastating crash, expensive cleanup. math teeth: before, after
Less black and white, still good versus evil.
Patricia A. Turner: To suggest that bad people were racist implies that good people were not. Jim Crow segregation survived long into the 20th century because i...
the microscopic battles that conquered the Americas
If the Spanish who arrived to the Americas in the 1400s had become infected with native viruses that felled them, they might never have become the conquistadore...
For whom is government the problem?
The Republican Party of Wisconsin, a private organization, is conducting a daring attack* on behalf of its benefactors and co-conspirators. Their target is not ...
What’s so vulgar about The Hangover? Not nearly enough.
I remember exactly where I was when I read the obituary for the music industry on the front page of the Wall Street Journal: it was a gray and cold morning in M...
What Would Carlos Do?
The movie series Carlos is a must-see thriller for anyone born in the last half-century. It fits neatly alongside other chronicles of political terror like Muni...
Good cops, bad cops and the costly failures of the SEC
Matt Taibbi: Yet the case still somehow ended in acquittal — and the Justice Department hasn’t taken any of the big banks to court since. All of which rai...
Overheard at ORD: what about us Americans?
A few minutes ago, I was sitting near two men in their 50s at an airport in Chicago. They were talking current events, headlines. The economy, the dollar. One w...
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About a year of tweets, archived here for posterity.
I began this current journal, XSML, with the intent of reducing my own notes to extra small, XML-friendly updates. Increasingly, I have been drawn by the allure...
re: Egypt. Enough with the prattle about new media. It’s the economy, stupid. (And satellite TV.)
Here’s a headline you don’t want to miss, from January 18, 2007: MIDDLE EAST: Population growth poses huge challenge for Middle East and North Afric...
on politicians reading the U.S. Constitution out loud, as if it were a prayer
I wrote the following last Saturday, with the state of Arizona on my mind, in a fit of anger. Soon after, I decided against posting it. I am doing so now that t...
Reading Matt Taibbi’s excellent “The Crying Shame of John Boehner”
From Matt Taibbi’s tour de force portrait of John Boehner as a shill for highest bidder: “He cries sometimes when we’re having a debate on bil...
Diagram as commentary: how Goldman Sachs circumvents SEC with Facebook offering.
Reggie Middleton’s diagram for his post, Goldman Creates a Facebook Hedge Fund for HNW Clients Historically Ripped Off By Such Vehicles, Spits In Face Of ...