Roe v. Wade hasn’t been overturned. The rule of law might have been; The Washington Post, Erwin Chemerinsky Dean at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky; “The majority was mute on the right to privacy, abandoned its constitutional role and held, indirectly but unmistakably, that the Constitution is a mere […]
Really modest and meant seriously (apologies to Swift). All Senators and Representatives get a full pension for their natural lives (equal to salary) They may never ever receive any money from any entity other than the Federal Government. No salary and all investments must be in Treasury securities (oh and nooo royalties – ever). No […]
On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a program to study the health effects of climate change, especially on disadvantaged communities (NYT): The Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, which the administration announced on Monday, will be the first federal program aimed specifically at understanding how planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from […]
Coronavirus dashboard: the Delta wave starts to recede in the South, and migrates North Ultimately, that I have to continue to post this material is depressing. At least 80% of all US adults and most teenagers should have been fully vaccinated by now, with the threat of mass outbreaks, even from Delta, retreating into the […]
As debates about booster shots heat up, what is known about the duration of vaccine-based immunity is still evolving. Prof. Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Saint Louis University School of Medicine. Joel participated in the early trials of the Moderna mRNA vaccines for Covid-19. He was inoculated with the true vaccine as determined by […]
John Oliver had a great segment a while back on vaccine hesitancy, in which he shows Tucker Carlson asking absurdly loaded questions about the safety and efficacy of the covid vaccines. You can see the clip here, the Tucker Carlson bit is around 6:15 to 7:45. I bring this up not to praise Oliver or […]
Via Boudreaux, over at Reason, we can read this – evidence, Boudreaux tells us, of “covid hysteria”: Amherst College in Massachusetts is welcoming students back to campus by implementing some of the most restrictive COVID-19 mitigation efforts anywhere in the country. Administrators will now require students to wear two masks while indoors, get tested every other week, […]
I believe that politicians have some discretion to set policy, and that they should use that discretion to enact the substantively best policies they can, taking account of political and policy constraints. Political constraints include the need to satisfy voters and win elections, the status-quo bias in public opinion, low levels of political trust, and […]
Are Former Professors As National Leaders More Prone To Black Swan Events That Overthrow Their Governments? Probably not, but recent events in Afghanistan suggest an example. This would be the sudden departure just over two weeks ago on Aug. 15 from Kabul of then Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, which triggered the sudden collapse of his […]
This is one of the great truths of politics, one that political actors exploit for advantage or ignore at their peril. Suppose that there is a moral norm against littering in your neighborhood. You support the norm even when it is not convenient for you to do so. When someone litters, you could be upset […]