Doing Something About Tuition Debt
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has a plan to deal with tuition loan debt: My plan for broad student debt cancellation will: Cancel debt for more than 95% of the nearly 45 million Americans with student loan debt; Wipe out student loan debt entirely for more than 75% of the Americans with that debt; Substantially… Read more
How Much is 16.5 Tons of Cocaine Really Worth?
A few days ago, the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania put out a Twitter press release with a typical law enforcement estimate of “street value”: *BREAKING NEWS* 16.5 tons of cocaine has an approximate street value of over $1 billion. @ICEgov @CBPMidAtlantic @PhillyPolice @USCG https://t.co/GoY2bz4LlE — U.S. Attorney EDPA… Read more
Sri Lanka and the Ongoing Social Media Panic
Immediately after the terrible Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, the government there took the questionable step of blocking a bunch of social media sites. There can be legitimate reasons for such drastic measures: If you know the terrorists are using cell phones or the internet to set off remote-detonated bombs, it makes a lot… Read more
Getting a Few Things Off My Chest: Game of Thrones Edition
The final season of Game of Thrones is starting today (you may have heard something about it) and there are a few things I want to get off my chest. For one thing, I’m wondering if all the death-related magic is connected in some way. Everybody makes a big deal about the Night King and… Read more
The Software Engineer’s Bar Exam
I follow a bunch of legal blogs, and one of the things they consistently complain about is the content of the bar exam. As Ilya Somin describes it, “the bar exam is primarily a test of memorization that covers huge amounts of material most lawyers won’t need.” As a consequence, time and effort spent preparing… Read more
Classical liberalism, criminal laws, the war on drugs, economics, free speech, technology, photography, sex work, cats, and whatever else comes to mind.