Year: 2014
CREEPING TOTALITARIANISM DEPT.
Awaiting the List
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has announced plans to publish his final big leak from the Snowden files: A list of U.S. citizens that the NSA has spied on. Naturally, this raises a very important question: Am I on the list? ‘Cause it would really help my badass libertarian rep if I was. I’m just beside myself… Read more
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT DEPT.
Elliot Rodger’s Motive Says Very Little About Anyone Except Elliot Rodger
A young man named Elliot Rodger apparently killed six people Saturday in Isla Vista California. I say “apparently” because the story is new enough that it keeps changing. When I first heard it, he had shot six people dead, but now it appears that three of them were stabbed, according to a recent version of… Read more
EDUCATION DEPT.
Don’t Disinvite, Just Don’t Invite
It’s graduation season again, which means it’s time for the usual round of news stories about controversial graduation speakers and the attempts by protesters to get them disinvited. For example, after protesters at Rutgers got Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to back out of giving the commencement address, the normally wonderfully cynical P. J. O’Rourke… Read more
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT DEPT.
Crime and Incentives
In response to my post about some of economist Gary Becker’s views on crime, “russ” leaves a comment with a couple of interesting points: I would think the failure of the war on drugs is the evidence AGAINST Becker’s idea that increased punishment reduces crime. Just because criminalizing drugs hasn’t made them go away completely… Read more
ECONOMICS DEPT.
Gary Becker on Crime
One of the giant minds of economics, Gary Becker, passed away on Saturday. Among other things, he and Kevin Murphy were pioneers in the idea of rational addiction, which I wrote about last year. That was just one example of his approach to applying the tools of economic thinking to a wide variety of other… Read more