From M.S. @ The Economist’s Democracy In America blog: To say that most American political discourse takes place at the intellectual level of baboons would be an insult to baboons. Baboons are capable of handling two-factor reasoning problems: if I eat all the bananas now, I’ll have none left for later; better eat enough to [...]

From Steven Greenhut, writing at Reason: Americans suffer under the delusion that transportation systems are just that—systems for transporting people from one destination to another. What most of us fail to recognize is that the politicians, activists and planners who play the greatest role in creating those systems have far different goals than improving the [...]

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 [...]

Over at Reason, Mike Riggs responded to President Obama’s former Green Jobs czar Van Jones’ tirade about “so-called libertarians” at an Occupy rally in L.A. In case you missed it, Van Jones said that libertarians “say they love America but they hate the people, the brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings.” [...]

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 [...]

The sweater vested theocrat Rick Santorum has struck again, this time promising to “vigorously” enforce obscenity laws. Tom Knighton at United Liberty thinks that there are higher priorities facing the next president than lax enforcement of pornography statutes writing: Take a look around for a moment. We have a nation that is falling apart. The [...]

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 [...]

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is unquestionably one of the most infamous famous speeches in American history. In listening to the speech today, I found the following passages that aren’t as often quoted to be some of the most powerful lines in the speech. In a sense we have come to [...]

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!

Jacob Sullum @ Reason writes: Reporters routinely describe Ron Paul’s foreign policy views as “isolationist” because he opposes the promiscuous use of military force. This is like calling him a recluse because he tries to avoid fistfights. The implicit assumption that violence is the only way to interact with the world reflects the oddly circumscribed [...]

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 [...]

December 15, 2011 marks the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights – at least what is left of them. Anthony Gregory’s article at The Huffington Post runs through the list of violations of these precious rights from the Adams administration’s Alien and Sedition acts all the way to the present day violations of the [...]

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 [...]

“Liberty. It’s a simple idea, but it’s also the linchpin of a complex system of values and practices: justice, prosperity, responsibility, toleration, cooperation, and peace. Many people believe that liberty is the core political value of modern civilization itself, the one that gives substance and form to all the other values of social life. They’re [...]

Marks, Percy, “Under Glass”, Scribner’s Magazine Vol 73, 1923, p 47 The idea is, of course, that men are successful because they have gone to college. No idea was ever more absurd. No man is successful because he has managed to pass a certain number of courses and has received a sheepskin which tells the [...]

From Coyote: Had Obama been around 10 years earlier with his green jobs program, Enron might never have gone bust – it could have just gotten DOE loans I guess they were just ahead of their time!

Glenn Greenwald writes in response to the overall positive reaction of the drone assassination of American born Anwar al-Awlaki: What’s most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government’s new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred [...]

Ahh, that veritable font of blogging material, Kevin Drum: And yet, to a large extent, governments are merely responding to the wishes of the public. It’s a simple fact that the average Joe (or Dieter or Emile or Carlotta) believes pretty strongly in folk economics — low inflation, a strong currency, and balanced budgets — [...]

Megan McArdle, on the Solyndra mess: When banks engage in this sort of behavior, we call it a bubble, and try to figure out how to fix things so they won’t do it again. When government agencies do this, we call it a weekday. Zing!

From a commenter over at Kevin Drum’s place. The discussion was about problems with the American educational system: Yep. And as the posts by Aaron Carroll and Austin Frakt have shown over the last year (link below) the same is true of our health care system. We’ve gone through a 30+ year binge of hypercapitalism, [...]