OPM, Again and Again
It wasn't that long ago that one of the first things I'd hear out of committed liberals' mouths was their utter loathing of Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that affirmed that groups of individuals had the same speech rights as lone individuals. Or, in their...
Stinking Drunk With Power
Fans of a certain genre of music may recognize the title of this article from a Metallica song. It popped into my head as I read the Democrats' recent plans, threats, and promises. Some of these are born of the Republicans' plans to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated...
Politics and the Court
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away yesterday. May she rest in peace. You will see (and probably have seen) many such statements today and the next few days. These statements will be followed by a pause and an opinion on what should happen regarding...
Quelling Quackery
Critics of libertarianism often resort to absolutist arguments, such as "without government regulations and oversight, people will die because crooks, quacks, and charlatans will be free to kill them." I usually dismiss these protestations as a variant of Washington...
They Can Only Take It Once
I'm old enough to remember that Saturday mornings were cartoon time on the local television channels, and I certainly partook of my share. Interspersed among the Jonny Quest, Magilla Gorilla, Wacky Races, The Pink Panther, and countless others were tons of Looney...
Pax Trumpicana
Hot on the heels of two substantial foreign policy successes (between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and between Serbia and Kosovo), a member of the Norwegian Parliament has nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. If you were unaware of those bits of foreign...
Hollywood’s Diversity Sham
My morning news perusals brought me a nifty little snippet from the increasingly moribund Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), an organization seemingly unable to balance its reliance on the masses to which it provides entertainment against the giant...
Joe and The Mayors
Apparently, it took a shift in the polls to wake Joe Biden and the Democrats up to the fact that Americans are unhappy with the violence raging in many big cities. To put it mildly. Biden emerged from his basement bunker to deliver an "unequivocal" condemnation of...
Looters’ Lives Matter?
Back in 2014, a "writer, editor, and agitator" named Vicky Osterweil wrote an essay titled "In Defense of Looting," and published it during the unrest following the death-by-cop of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri (for the record, the local grand jury chose not to...
“I’m Not Him”
What an interesting time we live in. With just over seventy days until the election, we are faced with a choice between a boorish wild-man Untethered Orange Id (TM) and a senescent lifetime swamp rat. The President, who managed to have a good first year despite coming...
Big Cities and Black Swans
A long-running hallmark of progressive politics is urban planning - the idea that the Best-and-Brightest (TM) should organize our physical lives in a fashion that advances certain goals. Those goals are purported to include efficiency, environmental stewardship,...
The Many Panes of Broken Windows
The aftermath of George Floyd's death under the knee of a police officer has cast a much-needed light on over-policing in our communities. The philosophical basis for that over-policing is the "broken windows" theory, which holds that degradation in small things will...
Another Lost Opportunity
A window of opportunity opened, shortly after George Floyd's death, to make some real and good changes in policing, changes that would not only improve relations with minority communities, but would benefit policing as well. I discussed some of those changes in this...
A Place For My Trouble
Every morning I wake up, holding my breath while I turn on my phone to see the latest news. I think to myself, 'It can’t be worse than yesterday.' But when the news loads, I think, 'Ohhhhh, yes, it is worse.' Thus spake Barbra Streisand, legendary singer, movie star,...
A Tale of Two Memes
Ponder the meme above. What do you see? Is it violent and thuggish government agents dispersing a peaceful protest? Or is it properly equipped law enforcement officers protecting individual and property rights from a violent mob? The meme's author is looking to make a...
When Seconds Count…
This past December, a "good guy with a gun" stopped a mass shooting in a northeastern Texas town, putting (again) the lie to the anti-gun dismissiveness about civilians stopping crime. Right on cue, nanny-billionaire Mike Bloomberg chimed in with his trademark...
The End of the Middle
An old adage tells us, "the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle." Some old adages give us truth and wisdom. This isn't one of them. In fact, it's so not one of them that it nomenclated a couple logical fallacies (yeah, yeah, nomenclated is not a real word, but...
Cloward-Piven and Cullors-Garza
The social and cultural reverberations of the George Floyd killing continue, in ever-more-worrisome form. Major cities around the nation are devolving into criminal chaos, with shootings, homicides, vandalism, and looting spiking. Urban flight is increasing, with home...
Biden’s Law-And-Order Gambit
Where's-Waldo Biden surprised a good number of my political friends (and me) and picked Kamala Harris to run with him against Trump (and, many speculate, to be President should he not complete his term). Given her unlikeability and her spectacular (and well-deserved)...
Manners Make The Peace
What are manners? Manners are the things that we agree to do, but we are not forced to do. This is the heart of the mask argument: if people don't do it because it's "just the right thing," it's not really possible to make them do it from on-high. When "no spitting"...
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