Arnold Kling, on the “gotcha” mentality of partisanism: If your goal is to accumulate a fan base and fire them up, then of course calling intellectual fouls on the other side is the way to go. However, I claim that if your goal is to contribute to a discussion in which fair-minded people will consider [...]

This is part of The Liberty Papers’ continuing Point/Counterpoint series, where two contributors (or a contributor and a guest) argue competing sides of an issue. In this installment, I will argue that the Supreme Court has a realistic defensible argument to find the Individual Mandate in ObamaCare Constitutional. Tomorrow, Doug Mataconis will respond with a [...]

Is there a more worthless phrase on the political landscape than “judicial activism”? And a court that gave us Bush v. Gore and Citizens United will prove conclusively that it sees no limits on its power, no need to defer to those elected to make our laws. A Supreme Court that is supposed to give [...]

I’m not an old or wise man. I’m assuredly not qualified to dole out advice — particularly to people I’ve never met. I was raised in a family where one didn’t readily admit the existence of ones feelings much less talk about them. For everything I’ve learned, I’m still filled with more dysfunctions than I [...]

America has a love affair with the Presidency. Unfortunately, that love affair is a codependent, abusive relationship, and one in a very long string of the same. It wasn’t always this way. But to fix the problem, as with most abusive relationships, we need to fix ourselves first — ask what it is we want [...]

Over at Megan McArdle’s place, she’s on a leave of absence for some as-yet-unnamed project. In her stead, Katherine Mangu-Ward picks up one of Megan’s common refrains about Americans and obesity: Fat people know they’re fat. They know why they’re fat. And they know that being fat kinda sucks. This may seem obvious, but think [...]

From Don Boudreaux. He’s addressing the Cato/Koch lawsuit*, but more specifically addressing the question of ideas-based ideological battles vs. the more common political election-based battles: At the end of the day in any society, political office holders largely reflect the culture and climate of ideas that prevail in that society. The overwhelming effects of culture [...]

Recently Chris has pointed out (here & here) the stupid/evil fallacy the left often uses* to paint the right. In short, the fallacy goes like this: 1) Republican policies are bad and designed purely to reward the current power structure. 2) If you are a Republican, you then must fall into one of two categories: [...]

Rick Santorum believes that the Obama administration is in favor of some Gattaca-like dystopia, I suppose: “One of the things that you don’t know about ObamaCare in one of the mandates is they require free prenatal testing,” Santorum began telling about 400 people here. “Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and, [...]

Over at David Friedman’s blog, he discusses the thorny position Mormon Presdential candidates (which at the time of posting included Huntsman) may face when taking a position against same-sex marriage. Many opponents of same-sex marriage use the slippery-slope argument that if two consenting gays can marry each other, why not three or more consenting adults [...]

That I believe the set of what’s popular and the set of what’s good aren’t always the same thing should come as no surprise to readers here, especially in the wake of my Kardashian post the other day, but I should make it clear that this idea extends quite a bit farther. As such, I [...]

I doubt he’s filed any sort of FEC paperwork, or has actually put any effort into his candidacy with the exceptions of blog postings, but Scott Adams is better than Obama or Romney: I will assume for now that the pundits are correct, and Obama will face Romney in the coming election. Both of those [...]

Radley Balko: Greece adds pedophiles, exhibitionists, and kleptomaniacs to list of disabilities eligible for state benefits. Sounds like some politicians are ready to retire. Hah!

Over at Cato, Jim Harper responds to proponents of gov’t research that point to the products of that research as justification — they never really consider that such products would still occur via private-sector investment. He takes a bit of a swipe at IP policy in the middle, and in his discussion of the history [...]

There are plenty of folks saying today that while California might be — on its own — in the top 10 largest economies in the world, our political system far more closely resembles that of Greece. High spending and an inability to live within our means despite some of the highest taxes in the nation. [...]

Radley Balko, on the late Christopher Hitchens: The only time I drank with Hitchens… he entertained us with dirty limericks. But the guy’s vocabulary and syntax were so beyond me, I really only know they were dirty because he said so. In the hyper-partisan political world in which we live, there are some people who [...]

Usually my ire for Alabama is reserved for their insane beer laws… …but then I read about how Coyote, to keep one of his campgrounds in the good graces of the state of Alabama, needs to pay his “Alabama Business Privilege Tax”. As a good friend is known to say, this is rigoddamndiculous.

Julian Sanchez on security theater: Security theater, then, isn’t only—or even primarily—about making us feel safer. It’s about making us feel we wouldn’t be safe without it. The more we submit to intrusive monitoring, the more convinced we become that the intrusions are an absolute necessity. To think otherwise is to face the demeaning possibility [...]

By science fiction standards, I’m not exactly an SF buff. A decent amount of the fiction I read might fall into the genre, but identifying many names beyond Neal Stephenson or Robert A. Heinlein calls up blanks. But again I was bitten by the Amazon Kindle $2.99 price point, picked up Chris Dolley’s Resonance on [...]

Those of you that have been around the libertarian blogosphere for any length of time will recognize the name Dale Franks. His main writing gig is over at QandO, where he spends the bulk of his time writing about the economy. In addition, he’s a bit of a gunblogger, and runs a separate blog for [...]