It is a cherished belief, in all Objectivist as well as certain fellow-traveling circles, that economic interventionism must collapse under its own weight. Here, for instance, is Ludwig von Mises, in Planned Chaos: Many advocates of interventionism are bewildered when one tells them that in recommending interventionism they themselves are fostering antidemocratic and dictatorial tendencies […]

Next time you’re dilating about how stupid George Bush is — and I know this will be very, very soon — and some annoying right-wing interloper points out that Bush has a Harvard MBA, and you can’t be stupid and graduate Harvard Business School, all you have to do is smile and say: Kwame Jackson […]

Put a libertarian and non-libertarian in a room and you get an argument, always the same argument. Yesterday at my place it was over whether people who got cancer from industrial emissions would be able to collect fifty years hence. A few weeks back at David Sucher’s it was over whether houses would collapse in […]

“In his first 100 days as President, John Kerry will sign an executive order to end influence peddling and secret deals,” Kerry spokesman Mark Kornblau said. Senator John Edwards proposes new restrictions on lobbyists in an effort to end “the nasty business of influence peddling” in Washington. Howard Dean doesn’t like influence peddling either. Neither […]

More pixels for Terry Teachout: he links to a list of Bill Clinton’s 21 favorite books and comments, more discreetly than I will, on its obvious fraudulence. The usual suspects are rounded up — Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, also cited by German ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt as his favorite book, and as sure to appear on a […]

MDMA, better-known as Ecstasy, has been shown to cause Parkinson’s Disease in monkeys if the monkeys had actually been getting MDMA. As it happens they were getting methamphetamine instead. Derek Lowe, himself a pharmaceutical chemist, eviscerates the authors politely, as a professional courtesy: I’m sure that some people are going to point the finger at […]

Like all products of high school social studies classes (the day history became “social studies” was a watershed in American public education), I have been lectured on the evil of voting literacy tests and poll taxes. They are now against the law, thanks to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the 24th Amendment, respectively, […]

Eddie Thomas has a longish and interesting post up about “Whiteness Studies,” in which he is characteristically more generous and fair-minded than I’m about to be. Eddie is firmly anti, but one of his commentators, Ted Hinchman, makes the best case in their defense: What exactly is supposed to be wrong with inquiry into the […]

Sent to The New York Times today. OK, it’s barrel-fishing. I had some free time. To the Editors: Bob Herbert’s mendacious column of April 24th on the near-execution of Delma Banks Jr. in Texas omits every piece of evidence that convicted him. Banks was the last man seen with the murder victim, Wayne Whitehead. He […]

I want a deck of these. Very badly. (Update: Dr. Weevil is tracking the deal and suggests a few games.)