Is it possible that the G.O.P would nominate and/or the American people would elect for president a man who as governor more likely than not executed an innocent man? An even more disturbing question would be: Could Gov. Rick Perry be elected president despite his efforts to keep investigators from learning the truth about the [...]

Now, I’m not one to regularly bang the feminist drum around here… But this is f’ing ridiculous: Officer Sashay Brown returned to work in May after having her second child. At first, she worked a desk job. Soon after, though, she was forced to patrol the city streets under a new department policy that was [...]

Ezra Klein has a rather thought-provoking post today about human genome sequencing and its ability to allow doctors to better-tailor treatment to the specific needs of an individual patient. It presents a phenomenal opportunity to both make medicine more effective, and IMHO to make it cheaper by spending less time and energy on substandard treatments. [...]

So the big debate is whether the gov’t should sell their post-IPO shares in GM. At current prices, they’d [unsurprisingly] be losing money on the sale, compared to the amount put up in the bailout. So we have to ask — was it worth it? To determine that, we can’t base our entire calculation on [...]

Why we should go after the online poker vendors: There are plenty of victims of (allegedly) illegal online poker, starting with the desperately-short-of-cash federal and state governments which are deprived of all the taxable revenue ($3 billion, say the feds) from the now-suspected operations. And just ask casino and horse racing executives what they think [...]

Following along the lines of Glenn Reynolds’ proposal of a 50% surtax on the earnings of former government officials, here’s my modest proposal for our elected officials: For 10 years after leaving office, each elected official shall pay the highest income tax rate for which he cast a “yes” vote. Same goes for a president [...]

I posted yesterday about Bernard von Nothaus of the Liberty Dollar being convicted. I definitely think the fact support a guilty verdict on the charge of “issuing and passing Liberty Dollar coins intended for use as current money”, but some of the others seem quite a bit ridiculous, such as “conspiracy against the United States”. [...]

Via CBSNEWS.com: A House ethics committee subpanel today found Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel guilty of 11 of the 13 charges of ethics violations against him. The panel, composed of four Democrats and four Republicans, emerged after private deliberation to announce their findings. […] The subpanel will now submit its findings to the full ethics committee, [...]

@ezraklein Downside of #topsecretamerica: It’s watching everything you do. Upside: It doesn’t know what it’s seeing. I believe that’s intended to be reassuring. What I’m not sure Ezra understands is that this is probably WORSE, because it’s less likely to be indiscriminately applied. Rather, it’s far more likely to be abused for political or personal [...]

If it wasn’t already evident that Hugo Chavez is a complete madman, the exhuming of the long dead revolutionary Simon Bolivar should prove that to you: (Reuters) – Venezuela exhumed the remains of 19th century independence hero Simon Bolivar on Friday and will test them to see if he was poisoned by enemies in Colombia. [...]

As our readers can no doubt see, things have moved to a snail’s pace here. I’m not sure I expect that to change soon [at least for me]. However, I came across this post at TJIC, referencing a post at Coyote Blog, that is an absolute must read. This is a government that is arbitrary, [...]

The journalist responsible for the original uproar about the MMR vaccine and autism has been shown to have produced very shoddy research, and widely discredited. He was even recently banned from the practice of medicine in the UK. This has, of course, not quieted the debate. In fact, it’s gotten even worse, with his vaccine [...]

If you thought thirty was sleazy and dirty what can one say about 700K? >;-)

From the LA Times, a story about the LA City Council. Electronic auto-voting allows council members to avoid actually attending council meetings, much to the chagrin of voters: Still, their physical absence frequently infuriates members of the public who show up to testify only to find themselves addressing one or more empty chairs. Advertisement “We [...]

It’s very simple… Just require federal employees to follow the law, and they’ll make themselves ineligible for service: `SUBCHAPTER VIII–INELIGIBILITY OF PERSONS HAVING SERIOUSLY DELINQUENT TAX DEBTS FOR FEDERAL EMPLOYMENT `Sec. 7381. Ineligibility of persons having seriously delinquent tax debts for Federal employment `(a) Definition- For purposes of this section– `(1) the term `seriously delinquent [...]

I’ll blockquote Peter Suderman over at Reason blockquoting the CAP’s “wonk room” blog on this one: The short version of the argument is that C-SPAN’s coverage would put pressure on legislators to perform for the cameras and thus make the bill worse: C-SPAN is grounded in the belief that transparency produces superior legislation. And maybe [...]

Both relate to Ben Nelson being bought off to provide the Democrats’ 60th vote. Oh, and what a bribe it was! First, David Kotok over at The Big Picture: Senator Nelson of Nebraska sold his vote in return for special treatment for the Mutual of Omaha insurance company and for perpetual Medicaid funding for his [...]

I hate excerpting entire blog posts, but this one at Radley Balko’s place is short and can’t be done justice without the full text: If you follow with any regularity the police misconduct stories I post on this site, you’re no doubt familiar with the phrase “paid administrative leave.” No matter how serious the alleged [...]

In January 2008 I wrote a post calling for the repeal of the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984. As I mentioned in the post, many thousands of lives are being sacrificed because of the moral hang-ups of certain individuals who think its icky to sell organs to people who need them. How dare they. [...]

Gosh, it doesn’t seem like all that long ago the American public was promised hope, change, and a more open, transparent, ethical federal government if we only elected Obama the next President of the United States. Before that, in 2006 Pelosi and Co. made many of the same promises. Now the Democrats have the House, [...]