In my booze paper, I included an item about anti-alcohol activists (under not-so-subtle threats of further action) having persuaded bar and taverns on a Madison, Wisconsin strip frequented by college students to cease with happy hours and drink specials for one year, to see if there might be a corresponding drop in alcohol-related crime. There wasn't.

But now, students have launched a class action suit against bars on the strip, as well as the University of Wisconsin for price fixing and violations of state and federal anti-trust law.

On the one hand, it's hard to feel sorry for bar and tavern owners who buckle and climb into bed with the enemy. On the other, the suspension of drink specials was brought on by a federally-funded program, heavily supported by the university's chancellor and powerful politicians. You're a bar owner. Do you really want to put yourself on these people's shit list? Damned if you do...

I'd like to see the class action name the federal government, too, since it was the feds' operation "PACE" that came up with the scheme to begin with. But I'm guessing some interpretation of sovereign immunity will keep that from happening.

Hat Tip: Jacob Sullum, at Hit & Run

1) California takes its assault on smokers outside. Public parks and beaches are now banning cigarettes, too.

2) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution endorses a state-wide smoking ban, one that would include a ban on smoking in any vehicle where children are present. Yes. That means you aren't permitted to smoke in your own car in front of your own children. Think they aren't coming into your home next? Predictably, the editorial misses the property rights angle completely.

3) Also from Georgia, lawmakers have decided you aren't allowed to pierce your genitals.

4) In Virginia, a woman could get up to five years in prison for receiving oral sex, which the state has deemd "a crime against nature." Selfish men across the state now have a "but honey, I can't..." anecdote for wives and girlfriends.

5) Here's a quick round up of other things you aren't allowed to do with your genitals.

6) The Heartland Institute reports that earlier this month, Mendocino County, California became the first jurisdiction in the country to ban all genetically engineered plants and animals. So the allegedly "liberal" county assures it will have no part in finding better ways to feed and medicate the world's poor, while aiding the environment in the process.

7) Reps. Frank Wolf and Lucille Roybal-Allard have joined Rep. Tom Osborne in sponsoring a House bill calling on the NCAA to ban all alcohol advertising during college sports events.

8) Following the lead of European enviro-wackos, Angola becomes the second African country that would rather allow its people to starve than to feed them genetically modified food.

9) Ireland institutes a nationwide ban on public smoking. Other EU countries are expected to follow suit, beginning with Denmark.

Be sure to check out Julian Sanchez at 12:00pm today on the Kojo Nnamdi show, WAMU 88.5AM.

He'll be discussing the smoking ban with Kevin O'Sullivan of the Irish Times, Michael "Tac" Tacelosky of Smokefree DC, Andrew Kline of the RAMW, and Andrew Hyland, a research scientist at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

Interesting fact: Andrew Hyland is currently funded by a grant sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Shocking.

Also of interest, in Tacelosky's statement (linked above), he says "We don’t allow workers to be exposed to known carcinogens in any other workplace –even if the owner discloses it, even if the employees say they don't mind, and even if it would be cheaper for the employer to provide a less safe environment."

Well now, that's not true at all. Broad spectrum ultraviolet radiation (the sun); wood dust created in the shaping of wood (furniture manufacturing, for example); steroidal estrogens (birth contol and estrogen replacement therapy); nickel compounds (used in industrial applications); and beryllium compounds (used in everything from jewelry to nuclear reactors) have all been listed as carcinogens. And people work in the presence of all of these things every day.

My e-mail newsletter from Smokefree-DC says that it's a call in show. 1-800-433-8850. Let's ask "Tac" why he isn't trying to pull all the lifeguards in from the beach.

Paul Cameron: You know, Stanley, it's very important that we continue this fight against gay marriage.

Stanley Kurtz: You speak with truth and might, Paul.

Paul Cameron: Because, as I've written, men inherently know better how to please men than women do, and women inherently know better how to please women than men do. We're all more familiar with our own equipment, you see.

Stanley Kurtz: I follow you, Paul.

Paul Cameron: So once sex is used on a wide scale for mere pleasure and orgasm, instead of for procreation, it's just a matter of time before...

Stanley Kurtz: I'm not sure I like where you're going with this, Paul...

Paul Cameron: ...we...

Stanley Kurtz: Away with these abominable notions!

Paul Cameron: ...all turn gay.

Stanley Kurtz: Never!

Paul Cameron: It's true. Why ask a woman to do what a man can do better? We're all gay on the inside, Stanley. You know it. You've written it: The state's imprimatur on man-woman marriage is but a thin, vulnerable membrane that keeps you and I loyal to our wives, from going all Midnight Cowboy at the local movie theater for rent money.

Stanley Kurtz: Or just for fun. I make a fine living.

Paul Cameron: Look into my eyes, Stanley.

Stanley Kurtz: I can't, Paul. They smolder. They light tiny fires in my thighs. And it shames me.

Paul Cameron: State-sanctioned hetero marriage is the only thing that keeps....

Stanley Kurtz: Hush....

Paul Cameron: ...me from...

Stanley Kurtz: Shhh!

Paul Cameron: ...wanting you.

Stanley Kurtz: Enough! We must pass a constitutional amendment!

Paul Cameron: Why, yes! We must!

Stanley Kurtz: My heart's pounding, Paul.

Paul Cameron: Those beads of perspiration on your forehead, Stanley. You're shivering!

Stanley Kurtz: What...what if it doesn't happen? What if we can't get the votes? What if there's no amendment?

Paul Cameron: No amendment? Can't get the votes? Don't tease me, Stanley Kurtz.

If we fail in our mission, dear Stanley, we'll see more San Franciscos, more Portlands, more Vermonts. Stanley, every state, every city, every jurisdiction -- every public official that lends credibility to queer marriage, well, it brings us one step closer...

Stanley Kurtz: No...

Paul Cameron: ...to...

Stanley Kurtz: Silence, vile words!

Paul Cameron: ...hot man love.

Stanley Kurtz: Good Lord n' Butter! New Mexico just fell!

Paul Cameron: Loosen your tie, Stanley.

A few goings-on in the world of Radley y'all might (or might not) be interested in...

1) A week ago last Saturday I took a day trip to Annapolis, MD. While tooling around in the town, we found a little shop on a sidestreet that wasn't quite open yet, but boasted a few Segways in the window. We went in, talked to the owner, and spent the next half hour motoring around the store.

Review: Very, very cool. Easy to learn. And all you've read is true. You simply think about moving forward, backward, or stopping, and the machine does all the work for you. It's impossible to fall off of. Lose your balance one way, and the thing just rolls up under you and keeps you steady.

Once he officially opens, the owner plans to certify Segway riders with a one-time training run out to the Naval Academy grounds, about an hour-long trip. After completing that run, you're free to rent them by the hour, and take them anywhere in the city. I'm really surprised someone hasn't brought the idea to Washington yet, certainly a walking town, and a place with much more to see than Annapolis.

Very creative name of the store: Segs in the City.

For what it's worth, they also teach Yoga.

2) Wednesday of last week I had lunch with Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, the result I guess of the flattering piece I wrote about him for Fox.

I've never been all that enamored with meeting politicians. Or anyone famous or powerful, for that matter. My experience has always been that private personalities are generally less impressive than public ones. And there are two kinds of people in Washington -- people who fill their walls with pictures of themselves with famous people, and people who think those people are rather silly. Sure you can guess where I fall.

That said, Sen. Fitzgerald was a pleasant surprise. Not full of himself. Not a windbag. And refreshingly aware of and wary of the Washington political game. He's no libertarian, of course. I couldn't sell him on Social Security reform, and his website unfortunately sings the glories of ethanol.

But he does have a pretty solid core set of principles. He's a stalwart free trader. He's pro immigration. And he told some pretty jaw-dropping stories of influence peddling and seedy incestuous relationships among Chicago and Illinois politicians, journalists, and power brokers. He seems to be a guy who managed to avoid catching the Potomac Fever that grips and transforms most folks in this town into Beltway zombies. Fitzgerald spent his one six-year term standing up to pork projects championed by some of Illinois most powerful interests, including Speaker Hastert, Mayor Daley, Governor Ryan, Boeing, and United Airlines.

And for that, his own party promptly ran him out of town.

Nice guy. Probably why he's not coming back to D.C.

3) Friday night I went to see Flip Orley, the comic hypnotist at D.C.'s Imvprov. It's' the third time I've seen him. Generally, he brings about 15 people onstage, puts them under, then concocts various scenarios for them to act out which can range from amusing to just plain riotous.

In his first skit, for example, he tells this woman while she's under that she will under no circumstances remember her name, which is Jennifer. When he brings her to, he asks her name. No answer.

"I'll give you a clue," he says. "It starts with a J."

Nothing.

"I'll give you another clue. It rhymes with 'Jennifer.'"

Nada.

Usually, about half the people on stage are able to go under, then Flip looks to the audience and brings up a few more folks who were able to get hypnotized from their seats to join in the fun.

This time, after the induction, I look over to my date and see that, yes, she's out! I of course pointed her out, and Flipped pulled her on stage. She was pretty much the star of the show for the rest of the night.

In one sketch, Flip had each person take a drag off a regular cigarette, which he told them was actually a joint, filled with the best weed they'd ever sampled. They were then to give a speech to us, the audience, who would vote one of them the new president of NORML. The speech was to explain why marijuana should be decriminalized.

My date's pithy speech: "Y'all are doin' it anyway."

It wasn't the best of Flip's shows I've seen (there were only five people total who went under), but it was pretty cool to watch with someone I know on stage. Of course, my guy Flip had to ruin it all by making some casual comment to the crowd about, if only his wife would let him, how much he'd like to take my date home with him while she was in hypnotic sleep.

Pshaw. Didn't work, Flip.

Glen Whitman has put up a webpage of all the "rule of two things" submissions he's collected.

Humorous "recall" from Southern Living magazine:

Urgent Safety Notice Regarding Ice Box Rolls Recipe in April Issue on Page 154:

Potential Fire and Safety Hazard.

Please DO NOT USE the Icebox Rolls recipe that appeared on p. 154 of the April 2004 issue of Southern Living. It has been determined that heating the water and shortening, as described in the original recipe, is dangerous, and may pose a fire and safety hazard. DO NOT USE this recipe. For the corrected recipe, click here. It will also be reprinted in the May 2004 issue. If you have any questions, please call 1-888-836-9327.

Sorry.

Hat tip: Crooked Timber

Here'a a nice piece in the Washington Times featuring Zoe Mitchell, the Green Party activist-cum-pro-smoking advocate and co-founder of the group fighting D.C. smoking prohibition, Ban the Ban.

On the evil side, try to hold back the rage whilst reading this interview with Nurse Bloomberg on the one-year anniversary of New York City's smoking ban.

These are great! An illustrated list of your typical comments thread discussion types. Go find yourself!

The superb and tragically short-lived drama Freaks and Geeks comes out on DVD next week.

I remember in 2000 some cable channel (FX, maybe?) ran every episode back to back in a F&G; Memorial Day marathon.

Watched 'em all in about three sittings.

I think it's the referrer script that's making your favorite website impossible to load.

I've asked noble web deity P.J. Doland to pull it off.

It's a cool little tool, but it's been down way too much of late. Hopefully we'll be back to normal soon.

Here's a spiffy list of some of the cool stuff Google does, including:

Google is the Department of Motor Vehicles. Type in a VIN (vehicle identification number, which is etched onto a plate, usually on the door frame, of every car), like "JH4NA1157MT001832," to find out the car's year, make, and model.

Google is an aviation buff. Type in a flight number like "United 22" for a link to a map of that flight's progress in the air. Or type in the tail number you see on an airplane for the full registration form for that plane.

Google is a package tracker. Type a FedEx or UPS package number (just the digits); when you click Search, Google offers a link to its tracking information.

Google is Wal-Mart's computer. Type in a UPC bar code number, such as "036000250015," to see the description of the product you've just "scanned in."

His appearance in the poker game tonight might be the single best cameo in the history of entertainment. I mean, if you had to guess what David Lee Roth does for fun these days, doesn't playing high-stakes poker with mafiosos make perfect sense?

I didn't think it was possible, but The Sopranos just got even bigger in my book.

"I used to be able to write off condoms," he says.

Also, I'm sold on Deadwood. Sunday nights are shot.

Okay, so I learned my lesson with that little girl who can't feel pain.

So I will not make a humorous comment about this. Even though about a thousand jokes come to mind.

Nope. Won't use any of them.

Damn. I just posted on the Fourth Amendment. I can't go to the gym for two hours before the Bill of Rights takes another hit.

A federal appeals court has opened the door for police officers in three states to search homes and buildings for evidence without a warrant -- a ruling that two dissenting judges called "the road to hell."

Acting on a Baton Rouge case, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that police do not need an arrest or search warrant to conduct a swift sweep of private property to ensure their own safety.

Any evidence discovered during that search now is admissible in court as long as the search is a "cursory inspection," and if police entered the site for a legitimate law enforcement purpose and believed it may be dangerous.

My favorite response comes in another article, from New Orleans police department spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo, who promised the new power "won't be abused."

Lessee. Spokesperson for the most corrupt major city police department in the country promises that a sweeping new power to search without warrants won't be abused.

Yeah. I feel better already.

Sometimes you gotta' wonder why we bother having a Fourth Amendment at all.

Police raided with drug-sniffing dogs a Carlsbad, California family's home after obtaining a warrant from a local judge (more here).

Reason for the search? The five-member family had a $300 electric bill, which cops thought might indicate the presence of the high-intensity sun lamps some folks use to grow marijuana.

That, and the family had put its trash out that day, on trash day, which cops say drug growers sometimes do to get rid of evidence (well, no shit).

A high electric bill and putting trash out, on -- of all days -- trash day. Amidst drug war hysteria, that's enough for cops to come in and nose around your stuff.

And is anyone else troubled by the fact that cops are permitted to comb utilities records for suspiciously high electric bills? What other records are they allowed access to? Can they look through your cable bill to see what pay-per-view movies you're ordeing?

Speaking of the prescription drug debacle, Glen Whitman raises an excellent point.

If the bill just barely passed when the pricetag was $400 billion, and it's now known that the bill will cost $550 billion, it's pretty clear that the more expensive version would never have passed.

(The lower figure was disingenuously thrown out the White House, which knew the bill would never pass if the real numbers were known, and thus threatened to fire in-house analysts if they dared to tell the public the truth.)

So why doesn't Congress simply revoke the bill?

We all know the answer. They're cowards. And no one wants to enter the 2004 election having just revoked a (useless, wastefull and ultimately unworkable) handout to seniors.

Someone just sent me an AP interview from May 2003 with House Speaker Denny Hastert. No link, unfortunately, because it's a wire service article.

But when asked to name three accomplishments from the 108th Congress he's most proud of, Hastert cited a $300 million bailout for Chicago-based United Airlines, an $800 million grant from the federal government to help Illinois government cover its budget shortfall (brought on by excessive spending), and a $16 billion Pentagon pork project to lease modified jet liners as fuel tankers, which would be a boon to the Boeing plant just outside Chicago.

Your Speaker of the House, your top Republican in Congress, when asked to name the three accomplishments he's most proud of, cited three pork projects that cost U.S. taxpayers $17.2 billion. And no doubt if asked the same question today, he'd add that $400 billion prescription drug benefit, which immediately after passing grew to $550 billion.

And some of you in the comments section are suggesting we should give the GOP a supermajority in the next election? Please.

Again, I'm voting for gridlock.

"I absolutely hate taxes. But I love Virginia more."

--Thomas K. Norment, Jr., Republican floor leader in the Virginia state senate, on sponsoring a $4 billion tax increase, well more than what was asked for by the state's Democrat governor, Mark Warner.

Here's a blurb from the front page of ESPN.com's NBA section:

David Stern thought the East had a good shot to produce a champion, Marc Stein writes. But its chances depend on teams like the Pistons (who routed the Knicks on Saturday) and the Nets (who lost at Cleveland) being healthy.

A little respect, please?

Even though I just did this, I promise that I will never, ever, ever buy a sweater for my dog.

Josh Parsons gives us the flags of the world, graded based on their aesthetic qualities. Most of his comments are very humorous, as are the grading criteria. My personal favorite, Libya: "Did you even try?"

You may have noticed the ad on top of this page, and the two ads to your left. Do me a favor and click over -- check them out.

I had planned on linking to the Institute for Justice story on the Arizona pest control kid anyway.

Typical bureaucratic BS. And a typical victory for IJ.

IJ's probably doing more to win back huge chunks of economic freedom these days than any organization in the country. And if you factor in budget and bang-for-buck, no one else comes close.

I wish I had known about places like the Institute for Humane Studies when I was in college. I'd have been much, much smarter much, much sooner.

But you, Agitator.com reader and college or graduate student, you're different. You're smart enough to be reading my website, and so you now know about places like the Institute for Humane Studies, a rockin' organization that sponsors a variety of conferences, contests, lectures and symposiums for college and grad students to learn about and discuss the ideas and concepts of liberty.

You also now know about the Social Change Workshop, a what looks to be intellectually stimulating to the point of intellectual climax seminar to take place this summer at the University of Virginia, and run by none other than onetime co-Agitator Will Wilkinson.

A staff stacked with preeminent libertarian thinkers, academic all-stars and Nobel laureates. A student body consisting of intellectually rugged individualists like yourself. A gorgeous setting designed by Thomas Jefferson himself.

What more could you ask for?

Also, you'll emerge from the conference taller, and better looking.

Here's the kicker: It's free! As are most of IHS's conferences.

Go now, and apply for a slot.

Yuck it up, Mr. President.

You might try your shtick out on these guys, too.

UPDATE: Some of you have pointed out that Clinton/Kerry have also made jokes about grave matters. Doesn't do a thing for me. This "the Dems do it too" stuff doesn't work on me. Frankly, I think Clinton should have been impeached and removed from office for the act of receiving a blowjob while discussing the deployment of U.S. troops with a U.S. Congressman all by itself.

And I'm voting for Kerry because I want divided government, not because I like the man, or much of anything that he stands for.

We just engaged in a war that killed several thousand innocent people and 600 U.S. troops. It's a war that was precipitated on claims that Iraq had vast stockpiles of WMD. Due to false intelligence, selective culling of data, outright manipulation and deceit or some combination of the three, that claim was flat wrong.

People are still dying in Iraq. U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians.

For the guy ultimately responsible for everything we're doing in Iraq to crack jokes about the failures that put us there in front of a bunch of callous Washington insiders -- while people are still dying -- is, well, tacky. And that's about the nicest word I can come up with.

So no, I won't lighten up.

For the eighties babies...

I challenge you to pick eight words, and order them in a way more delicious than:

Chocolate sandwich, dipped in butter and deep fried.

My results for this personality disorder test:

High narcissistic. High histrionic. Medium paranoia. Rest are low.

He turns 90 today.

Most of you have probably never heard of him. Most of you probably have heard of Rachel Carson.

Here's the difference between the two:

Norman Borlaug likely saved more human lives than any human in history. Rahcel Carson is probably responsible for more human deaths than any human history.

Guess which one environmentalists love? Guess which one they loathe?

On a related note, Cato releases a paper today on bringing back DDT to erradicate third-world malaria.

...is the topic of my new Fox column.

It was really heavily edited. The original version touched on EPA regs, asset forfeiture, and takings as well. The edited version zeroes in mainly on anti-smoking laws.

Lots and lots of email on this one so far today. And most of it has been very heartening. Several "you changed my mind on this" messages, which are my favorite kind.

The Wall Street Journal reports (sorry, subscription only) that states are increasingly abanding roadside breath tests and instead forcibly taking blood from drunk driving suspects. In some cases, that means pinning or strapping suspects down and sticking them with a needle. In at least one case, a suspect from blut force head trauma when cops got too rough with him.

Then they asked for something else: his blood. Having been convicted of drunk driving once before, Mr. Miller refused to cooperate. So after he was taken to a hospital, five officers pinned him to the floor as a medical technician stuck a needle in his arm. His blood-alcohol level was 0.266% -- more than twice the legal limit. Mr. Miller, who declined to comment, challenged the tactic in court but lost. He pleaded no contest, was sentenced to up to 90 days in jail and lost his license for 18 months...

...The circumstances under which blood can be taken vary. In some states, blood can be taken only from repeat offenders or in cases where people are killed or injured in crashes. Some allow exceptions for members of religious groups that oppose certain medical treatments and for those with health conditions that make blood draws dangerous, such as hemophiliacs. Warrants usually aren't required because alcohol dissipates from the bloodstream, leaving police little time to seek one -- an "exigent circumstance" long allowed by courts as an exception to Fourth Amendment warrant requirements...

...These days, though, blood often is obtained under much different circumstances and sometimes via more-forceful means.

State and federal courts have countenanced a range of police conduct in obtaining blood, from putting a chokehold on the carotid artery of a suspected drunk in California to shooting one in the arm with a stun-gun in Delaware.

And blood often is extracted in police lockups and jailhouses -- just the sort of environment the Supreme Court said might be constitutionally troublesome.

Stephen Chapman reports that a court has knocked down an absolutely absurd New York City law that allows cops to confiscate the cars of drunken driving suspects. Even when acquitted, the city forced the suspects to file lawsuits to get their cars back, suits that cost car owners well into the thousands of dollars. And if you didn't yet own your car, you were still making payments on it all the while.

The decision means New York City will have to give back over 6,000 vehicles it wrongly confiscated. But the city still won't have to pay court fees for the owners of those cars, nor will it be required to pay renumeration for lost value and lost use while the cars were impounded.

It’s not cold out at night here in Los Angeles, nor is it warm.

Ran a late night errand and saw an older woman sleeping on the cement outside a storefront. There aren't more than a few homeless folks in my hood. And this was someone I had never seen before.

The woman's arm was bent so that her hand was parallel to her head, maybe when she fell asleep it was tucked under her head for comfort. It was the only thing aside from her face (resting flush against the concrete sidewalk) that I could see outside of the ratty, filthy blanket.

She wore a tattered fingerless lycra glove, the sort you wear for repetitive stress injuries.

At first I walked past her and then doubled back.

Pulling out a couple bucks, (no, not much but all I had), I bent down and carefully tucked it inside her fingers.

Walking away I was giddy imagining that she would wake up holding something she could use to buy water, beer, something to eat....whatever.

Now, I sit around worried that my good deed will never be realized should someone else walk by and remove my donation.

Hopefully it's the thought that counts.

I admit it.

I really like the song "I Miss You," by Blink 182.

So a while back, I told you I'd be moving on to a policy analyst position here at Cato -- just as soon as we found a suitable replacement for my current position as web editor.

Well, we just found one. And it's none other than co-Agitator and Agitator graphic design department head Brian Kieffer!

Kieffer will be moving to D.C. from Chicago, and will start work at the world's greatest think tank on April 12.

As I understand it, he's currently under negotiations to rent the basement apartment in Gene Healy's house, and will audition for 3rd base on the much-vaunted Cato Running Dogs softball team, coached this year by none other than Brooke Oberwetter.

So yes, Brian has yet to step foot in D.C., and he's already enmeshed in the incestuous Washington D.C. libertarian social circle.

But Kieffer deserves a hearty congratulations. Cato's getting a smart and talented guy. Kieffer's getting a principled and respected employer. And I get to motormouth and have opinions on stuff as my real-life full time job.

Everybody wins!

The Onion's first post-9/11 issue was apparently seriously considered for a Pulitzer, but ultimately nixed because it was "too different" and "too risky."

I'm with Neal Pollack, who wrote a while back that for the billions of words written about 9/11, that issue of The Onion will likely be among the few pieces of writing to survive the test of time.

It was brilliant, and put to bed the absurd notion (first uttered by CNN's Jeff Greenfield, I believe) that with the 3,000+ souls it took that day, al-Qaeda also killed irony, and that it simply wasn't permissible to laugh anymore.

The Pulitzer folks missed an opportunity.

He didn't make it, but he's an American hero for trying.

I have little problem with Israel assassinating an avowed terrorist with the blood of thousands of Iraelis on his hands. In fact, I think the U.S. ought to drop its own policy against assassinating political leaders. I'd much rather we have decapitated Saddam and his sons covertly, thenn let the country sort itself out, than waste several hundred billion dollars, six hundred U.S lives, and thousands of innocent Iraqi lives for what will eventually amount to pretty much the same conclusion -- letting Iraq sort itself out.

But I digress.

I have no quarrel with Israel. And on one level, I also think the Bush administration was correct to distance itself from the hit (I believe the President said he was "disappointed" in Israel's decision). The last thing we want to do is unnecessarily incur the wrath of an international terrorism organization, particularly if we can avoid it. Hamas has never specifically targeted U.S. interests. There's no reason to provoke them into blowing up pizza parlors in Omaha the way they do in Tel Aviv.

But if the Bush administration agrees that Hamas is a terrorist organization, if Israel is an ally, and if the the Bush administration truly believes the "you're either with us or against us in the war on terror" mantra, how is President Bush distancing himself from Israel's assassination of Yassin any different than Spain distancing itself from the war in Iraq?

If anything, Bush's refusal to publicly support Israel's knocking off a known, ruthless terrorist is an even more egregious betrayal than Spain pulling troops out of Iraq. Saddam Hussein to my knowledge has the blood of a precious few (if any) innocent Americans on his hands. Yassin has murdered thousands of innocent Israelis.

I happen to agree with Bush on this one. But it's wholly inconsistent with what he's asking of every other U.S. ally.

I have a new piece up at Tech Central on the topic.

I'm digging the graphic they came up with.

Only in nanny-statist America could a major corporation announce that it would henceforth give consumers less product for the same amount of money...and so-called consumer activists would hail that as a good thing.

Sure, every class of college grads thinks they've got the toughest job market in years, but man, this is pretty rough.

I should've added Steven Landsburg (along with David Friedman, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams) to my list of folks who are great at making economics understandable to those of us born without the math gene.

Friday, Landsburg tackled the economics of faking orgasm.

Fake an orgasm? I'm not sure I follow...

UPDATE: Via Courtney, here's a piece on....orgasm fakery among men?

UPDATE II: Via Jacob Grier....also, trout?

Don't say you didn't learn something today.

The Reason Public Policy Institute has set up a clearinghouse website of essays and articles on outsourcing, including a couple by yours truly.

Jesse Walker has a nice piece on the American Spectator site today on South Park. Here's hoping the whole "South Park Republican" thing gets put to bed for good.

I picked up a South Park DVD a couple of weeks ago, mainly because it had two of my favorite episodes, the hillarious "Sex Education," and "Cripple Fight," featuring the debut of Jimmy, the "Handi-Capable" Stand-Up Comedian.

Well this almost makes up for Indiana having no teams left in the NCAA tournament.

Proud to be a Hoosier, I am.

Hat tip to law school chum David Littlejohn.

I never like to abandon anyone...especially not my favorite Agitators. Life became frenetic and it's at last bearable again.

Here are a few things you may or may not want to read (links because I despise double posting). From my fingers to your eyes:

--> Separating the men from the boys. Falling down, Kerry vs. Bush -- who is the man, who is the boy?

--> The Los Angeles Press Club had a party for Sandra Loh, unfortunate victim of KCRW's fear of the FCC free speech crack down.

--> And this should irritate Radley...I have now hired a Nanny. Or so my parent's like to call her. Does that make Moxtopia a nanny state?

This is just silly.

Congress gets extra-constitutional powers and is empowered to overturn 200 years of jurisprudence -- because Congress says so?

It won't pass. And even if it did, it would of course be subject to and ultimately killed by....judidical review.

Irony, delicious.

Amusing. And a little painful.

Y'all know my biases. But I think Alterman kicks his ass.

Last December, I did an interview on neoprohibitionism for the radio show Culture Shocks with Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

I was pretty impressed with Lynn, as he was one of the few people who interviewed me where it was obvious that he'd actually read my paper.

It was also a long interview, which gave us time to actually delve into the issues, instead of me merely ripping off soundbites.

It's now available online.

Listen here.

Amy Sedaris and Steven Colbert (perhaps the funniest man alive) are bringing the bawdy classic but short-lived Comedy Central series Strangers With Candy to the big screen.

I was stoked until I saw the casting. Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick?

Hat tip: Chris Kilmer.

A simply wonderful editorial on the benefits of free trade and outsourcing from, of all places, the Missoula Montana Missoulian. The author localized the complexities of international trade down to a single product of considerable import to lots of Montanans -- fly fishing lures.

My Final Four: Kentucky, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Connecticut. Guaranteed only to be wrong.

Sadly, my home state could only muster one team this year -- 15th seeded Valparaiso. First time I can remember that Indiana produced less than three tournament teams. A few years ago we had seven, tying California for the record.

Also, Illiniois head coach Bruce Weber once took me to the orthodontist. I was at Purdue's summer basketball camp, back when Weber was an assistant to Purdue coach Gene Keady. One of my brackets popped loose, and Weber drove me to the local ortho to get it repaired.

You won't hear that from Billy Packer this weekend.

Andrew Sullivan continues to hammer away at the "imminent" meme, the argument from the pro-war side that it's a slander to say Bush administration officials ever indicated Iraq posed an imminent or immediate threat. Sullivan writes:

Rumsfeld never said that the threat from Iraq was imminent, or immediate, but that he could not know for sure.

"Right here it says," Friedman said, " 'Some have argued' -- this is you speaking, 'some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons; I would not be so certain.' " Friedman said that was "close to imminent."

"Well, I've tried to be precise," Rumsfeld said, "and I've tried to be accurate."

" 'No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people,' " Friedman quoted Rumsfeld as telling Congress in September 2002, " 'and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.' "

"Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years, or a week, or a month, and if Saddam Hussein were to take his weapons of mass destruction and transfer them, either use himself, or transfer them to the Al-Qaeda, and somehow the Al-Qaeda were to engage in an attack on the United States, or an attack on U.S. forces overseas, with a weapon of mass destruction you're not talking about 300, or 3,000 people potentially being killed, but 30,000, or 100,000 . . . human beings."

Source: Secretary Rumsfeld Live Interview with Infinity CBS Radio, Infinity-CBS Radio (11/14/2002).

"[N]o terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq."

Source: Testimony of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Senate Armed Services Committee (9/19/2002).

"Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other."

Source: Donald Rumsfeld Addresses the Conference of Army Reserve Operators, Defense Department (1/20/2003).

"On its present course, the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency. . . . it has developed weapons of mass death."

Source: President, House Leadership Agree on Iraq Resolution, White House (10/2/2002).

"Today the world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq. A dictator who has used weapons of mass destruction on his own people must not be allowed to produce or possess those weapons. We will not permit Saddam Hussein to blackmail and/or terrorize nations which love freedom."

Source: President Bush Speaks to Atlantic Youth Council, CNN (11/20/2002).

Of course, in my opinion, this is all beside the point. If the Bush administration never believed the threat to be imminent, they shouldn't have invaded in the first place.

But it seems pretty clear to me that though they may never have used the word "imminent," they did use "urgent" and "immediate," and they certainly attempted to instill in our minds the idea that Saddam had both the capability and the means to kill thousands of Americans very quickly.

You always gotta' feel bad for the guy who's depressed enough to try to kill himself, but can't quite get that right, either:

A Hartland man was treated at a Pittsfield hospital after he nailed himself to a cross. The 23-year-old man apparently was trying to commit suicide Thursday evening in his living room, the Bangor Daily News reported...

...Lt. Pierre Boucher said the man took two pieces of wood, nailed them together in the form of a cross and placed them on the floor. He attached a suicide sign to the wood and then proceeded to nail one of his hands to the makeshift cross using a 14-penny nail and a hammer.

"When he realized that he was unable to nail his other hand to the board, he called 911," Boucher said.

It was unclear whether the man was seeking assistance for his injury or help in nailing down his other hand.

Andrew David Chamberlain got himself a new paint job.

New focus, too -- largely on economics. Hopefully this means he'll be writing more, too.

Julian drives home a point that occured to me this morning:

Appeasement, after all, is largely a matter of perception: What really matters, in terms of encouraging or discouraging future attacks, is not so much whether Spanish voters were trying to appease terrorists, but whether the terrorists themselves perceive the result that way. By insisting that the election results constituted capitulation to terror, the hand-wringers are perversely, irresponsibly bringing about the very result they pretend to decry.

So perhaps it wasn't Spanish voters who gave aid and comfort to al-Qaeda, but the pro-war punditocracy.

It's at least possible that Spanish voters had made up their minds before the act that allegedly caused them to reconsider.

It was the war's supporters who jumped to credit al-Qaeda with victory before giving the election results due time for study and scrutiny. Couldn't we say that they bear at least some responsbility, then, if al-Qaeda walks away from Spain with the impression that it can alter the outcome of western elections?

Cato trade guru Brink Lindsey obliterates common myths arrising from the offshoring debate in a new Briefing Paper.

Handy fodder for bar-room debates with unemployed techies, union reps, and America-Firsters.

Here's hoping Dobbs has the stones to go head to head with Brink on CNN.

Agitator.com regular commenter and Catallarchy regular Micha Ghertner has a nice piece on Tech Central about Gabby Gingras and the economics of pain.

Thomas Hazlett, meet Radley Balko.

UPDATE: Radley Balko, meet Jesse Walker.

Dammit.

Brian Greene, Columbia University professor of physics, today on Fresh Air.

You may have read his book, The Elegant Universe, or seen the PBS special. While intended for armchair physicists, Greene’s lucid explanations make complex ideas such as String Theory and special relativity accessible without oversimplifying, much like Hawking or Sagan. He is able to construct examples in the form of thought experiments, thus eliminating much of the associated mathematics.

Greene’s new book, Fabric of the Cosmos, is next on my reading list. It should make for great bar-room conversation.

In the little over a year that I've lived in my current apartment, I'd estimate that my dog has left me some sort of "gift" while I was away about 18-20 times. By "gift," I of course mean that she evacuated a gag-inducing substance of some kind from one of her three gag-inducing-substance-producing orafices -- somewhere in my apartment. I've detected no noticeable pattern in where she leaves these gifts. Except one.

My apartment is about 80% carpeted. The kitchen and bathroom are tiled. You would think, then, that the law of averages would mandate that in the last year, Harper would have left somewhere between 2 and 4 gifts on the easy-to-clean tile flooring, and the reamaining 16 to 18 gifts on the much-more-difficult-to-clean carpeted flooring. If that were the case, at least 20% of the times I come home from work to find a pile of shit, a puddle of urine, or a pile/puddle of vomit, I could at least take solace in the fact that said pile or puddle was left on a surface that required less work to clean up.

Not so. She has a perfect record of shitting, vomiting and/or urinating on the carpet. She's a freak of numbers.

Speaking of which, I have a complaint about carpet cleaners. Unless you live in 1970s cinema, odds are that if you're cleaning carpet, you're probably cleaning a stain that's on the floor, and not on a wall or ceiling.

Yet every carpet cleaner I've seen comes in a conventional spray bottle. Because you're cleaning the floor, you're of course required to tilt the bottle somewhat so as to accurately direct the cleaning solution at the stain. After about 1/4 of the bottle's gone, you're already noticing some lapses in the consistnecy of the spray stream. After 1/2 the bottle's gone, you've got serious gaps in the stream. And beyond that, you find yourself moving further and further away from the stain, to the point where once the bottle's 3/4 gone, you're required to keep it nearly perfectly horizontal, which means you need to have mastered trigonometry in order to accurately gauge the reach of the stream with the amount of pressure you apply to the trigger in order for enough of the solution to actually reach the damned stain for you to clean it.

Has no one figured out a way to produce a consistent stream of cleaning solution, even while the bottle is tilted, and less than 1/4 full? Perhaps the people who make those anti-gravity pens could help.

If, that is, the cleaning solution manufacturers would even want such advice.

My theory? This is an obvious conspiracy among the various carpet cleaning solution manufacturers to cause you to waste vast amounts of cleaning solution. You go through solution more quickly. They get to sell you more solution.

I propose a federal Department of Obnoxious Goo Stains and Haphazzard Ineffeciency in Topical Spraybottles to address this egregious market failure.

Acronym: DOGSHITS.

A U.S. Attorney has determined that former Congressman Bill Janklow, who once boasted to friends about regularly driving 100+ mph, who was repeatedly let go by local cops who clocked him at such speeds, and who was recently convicted of manslaughter for speeding and blowing a stopsign, which killed a motorcyclist, should not have to pay any damages, as he was acting within the scope of his duties as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

That means U.S. taxpayers will foot the bill for damages Janklow inflicted on his victim.

Just a week ago, pro-war folks were calling for flowers and donations to be sent to the Spanish Embassy, and declaring with touching solidarity that, "we are all Spaniards." How quickly sympathies fade when victims of terror dare to question the pro-war camp's sacred cows. Today, pro-war pundits are tripping over themselves trying to find the appropriate superlatives, even writing poetry, to accurately depict what a vile, cowardly, shameful people it is that occupies most of Iberia.

How about some perspective?

Al-Qaeda didn't win the Spanish elections. Self-preservation did. In supporting the U.S. in Iraq, Aznar bucked the will of 90% of the Spanish electorate. You can pretty easily trace that support to the murder of 200 Spaniards. Aznar then lied about who was behind the attack, which looked to Spain like a man exploiting warm corpses for political gain.

So Spain opted for new leadership.

The pro-war side's outrage at Spain stems from the pro-war tenet that to be a true believer in the war on terrorism, one must support the war with Iraq. There are no exceptions. Dare to question any facet of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and you're a coward -- and your opposition gives aid and comfort to al-Qaeda.

Bullocks.

Does anyone really believe that the Spanish electorate wants anything less than al-Qaeda's collective spleen on a stick right about now?

Perhaps instead of interpreting the Spanish vote as a nationwide cower from the war on terror, one might just as easily interpret it as Spaniards declaring that the war on terror ought to be fought against actual terrorists, and not on diversions that amount to stick-poking at hornets' nests.

Not only is the "support for Iraq=support for the war on terrorism" view a load of tripe, you could make a strong case for the contra. Perhaps if just a bit of the $100 billion, the intelligence, the translators, and the remaining resources we devoted to Iraq had been devoted pursuing al-Qaeda, we might have captured bin Laden by now, or uncovered a few more cells, or perhaps thwarted the attacks in Madrid, Bali, or Riyadh. Instead, what do we have? We have a decade-long commitment to build an entire society from scratch. We have terrorists in a country where there were few if any terrorists before. And we've given more fuel and confirmation to Arab world fears about U.S. power and intent.

I find many of your responses to my post on terrorism and risk, as well as the pro-war pundits rash rush to stomp on a people still reeling from tragedy pretty depressing. There seems to be this prevailing opinion among pro-war folk that all aggression against Muslims or Arabs is good aggression, all forfeitures of liberty in the name of the war on terror are appropriate forfeitures of liberty, and that in the wake of 9/11, there's simply no room to question our government, or for us to ask for perspective, skepticism or propriety in his policies.

Some of you asked what I would do that Bush hasn't. Well, how many people did Bush fire after September 11? Two separate commissions have now concluded that the 9/11 attacks were preventable. So why do the people who should have prevented it still have jobs? That's one unforgivable intelligence failure. Here's another: How many people were fired for the bad intelligence about Iraq's WMD program?

Osama bin Laden cited Bush 41's war with Iraq and the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia it required as his chief reason for carrying out the 9/11 attacks. Domestically, the clues two commissions said should have tipped off U.S. intelligence about the impending 9/11 attacks were lost in a sea of bureaucratic turf wars and red tape. War with Iraq and bureaucracy -- two huge players in the run-up to 9/11.

So what are the two biggest public policy decisions President Bush has made since September 11, 2001? He went to war with Iraq. And he created the biggest federal agency in the history of the United States.

President Bush hasn't made government more accountable since 9/11. He's simply made more government, at home and abroad.

I fear we've sunk into this negative feedback loop when it comes to foreign policy where every possible scenario in the war on terror points to the need for us to kill more Muslims. It's reminiscent of the drug war, and that shouldn't surprise you. Every time the government declares war on amorphous entities, the resulting rhetoric creates cause-solution loops that can lead only to more government intervention.

When we see statistics showing diminished drug use, our government tells us this means the drug war is working, so we of course should take heart, and be as vigilant and determined as ever in our support for the drug war. But statistics showing more drug use mean should support the drug war, too. It means we're falling behind. More of our children are getting hooked. Now more than ever, we need more resources for the war on drugs.

Never mind that the drug war itself creates most of the problems that come with drug abuse.

How about the war on poverty? Stats showing declines in poverty rates mean federal handouts and assistance programs are working, so we of course ought to enact more of them. But stats showing iincreasing poverty also mean we need more government intervention -- to alleviate the suffering that comes with poverty. Never mind that government interference creates dependence, and itself is a big cause of much of the poverty to begin with.

And now we have the war on terror, specifically as it applies to foreign policy.

Advocates of an an aggressive foreign policy have twisted public debate into a feedback loop that unfailingly calls for more aggression, regardless of the circumstances.

Long stretches without terrorist attacks mean our aggressive foreign policy is working, that it's putting fear into would-be terrorists, and that, of course, it ought to be continued. But when we do have terrorist attacks, we get the same response. Does anyone doubt that if, God forbid, there's another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, pro-war forces will seize on it, and proclaim that now, more than ever, we must be vigilant about "bringing the war to the terrorists?"

More terrorist attacks means more war. Fewer terrorist attacks means the wars we've launched are working, so why stop now? Never mind that our aggressive foreign policy is what inspires Arab hatred of Americans to begin with.

Iraq's a fine microcosm of this kind of thinking. When we go days or weeks without terrorist attacks in Iraq, we're told it's because the war and occupation is succeeding. But when the attacks intensify, we're told they're signs that it's more important than ever that we commit to the occupation for the long haul. Not only that, but increases in attacks apparently prove that there was an Iraq/al-Qaeda connection all along, meaning the war was justified. Never mind that our presence in Iraq is what caused al-Qaeda to take interest in Iraq in the first place.

The other common response to al-Qaeda attacks in Iraq is that our presence in Iraq is merely drawing out the world's terrorists -- the "flypaper strategy." Never mind that, as I've noted here, dead bodies not only attract flies, they breed them. Attacks in Iraq certainly don't seem to have preoccupied al-Qaeda from coordinating attacks elsewhere.

We're also repeatedly told that this is a "different kind of war." We're fighting a people not just willing, but eager to die killing infidels. Death is not merely a means to an end with these people, we're told, death in itself is an ends.

(I think this is correct, by the way.)

But at the same time, we're told that military action in Iraq was necessary, even if Iraq had no WMDs, because 9/11 called for an American show of force in the region, and "force is the only thing these people understand."

Well which is it? People who believe that dying in the process of killing others is a surefire way to heaven aren't deterable. By definition, deterrence requires fear, and you simply can't inspire fear in someone who already welcomes death. I don't think the 85% of the Arab world that has a virulently hostile opinion of the United States ever doubted our ability to invade and conquer an Arab country. And that we proved to them that we can invade and conquer an Arab country does nothing to shrink that pool of 85% from which the likes of bin Laden draw support. It only intensifies it, and makes it more likely that an ever bigger chunk of that 85% is willing to support the likes of bin Laden in more active ways.

Yes, after Iraq other despotic governments in the Middle East may now think twice before officially supporting terrorists (or not -- see Saudi Arabia), or developing WMD programs.

But we aren't fighting governments, we're fighting al-Qaeda. In many cases, al-Qaeda is an enemy of the governments we're trying to deter.

Muslim governments didn't carry out the 9/11 attacks, Muslims did -- individual, militant Muslims pissed off enough at the United States that they welcomed death as an opportunity to kill Americans (the Taliban is the exception, and we (correctly) removed them from power). That in mind, how can our continuing military presence in a Muslim country do anything but inspire more of the same? Tanks and cruise missiles mean nothing to the world's Mohammad Attas.

Does anyone really think a would-be suicide terrorist in, say, Algeria watched the Iraq war on al-Jazeera and was dissuaded from a future suicide attack because of the might he saw in the U.S. military, and feared it? Isn't the more likely scenario that lots of potential suicide terrorists watched the Iraq war on al-Jazeera and were nudged from "potential terrorists" into finding more affirmative ways to express their hatred for America?

What's depressing is that if/when the next 9/11 does come, we'll of course again feel the need to take yet more military action, probably more rashly, harshly and thoroughly than we did after 9/11. We'll invade and occupy another Muslim country or two. And in doing so we'll inspire more terrorists.

And I don't see how the cycle gets broken.

There are 1.3 billion Muslims. More of the Arab world is under 30 than any region on earth, save for sub-Saharan Africa (which is becoming increasingly Muslim). That means in ensuing generations, the Muslim world will continue to grow, not only in sheer number, but in proportion to the population of the rest of the world.

There are 300 million Americans.

Seems we have a hell of a lot of dying ahead of us.

Hilarious.

I'm speechless.

...of relief or sadness.

Not sure which.

From Knight-Ridder:

The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan...

...Withholding the higher cost projections was important because the White House was facing a revolt from 13 conservative House Republicans who'd vowed to vote against the Medicare drug bill if it cost more than $400 billion...

...Five months before the November House vote, the government's chief Medicare actuary had estimated that a similar plan the Senate was considering would cost $551 billion over 10 years. Two months after Congress approved the new benefit, White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten disclosed that he expected it to cost $534 billion.

Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which produced the $551 billion estimate, told colleagues last June that he would be fired if he revealed numbers relating to the higher estimate to lawmakers.

"This whole episode which has now gone on for three weeks has been pretty nightmarish," Foster wrote in an e-mail to some of his colleagues June 26, just before the first congressional vote on the drug bill. "I'm perhaps no longer in grave danger of being fired, but there remains a strong likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of important technical information from key policy makers for political reasons."

Because when it comes to matters of war, our government has always told us the truth.

The General Accounting Office rules that unlike other government agencies, the ONDCP is permitted to spend taxpayer dollars spreading mistruths about the drug war in an effort to defeat anti-prohibition ballot initiatives.

Oh boy.

Hat tip: Swamp City.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the U.S. is runninga $55 billion surplus in "private services," which includes "legal work, computer programming, telecommunications, banking, engineering," and management consulting. That means more foreign companies outsource services to the United States than the other way around.

Wanna' see jobs disappear? Put up barriers to offshoring, then watch that surplus dissipate as the countries we shut out put up retaliatory barriers.

I think John Kerry has a point.

Just heard Tom Brokaw on Imus this morning. I didn't see it, but apparently Condi Rice defended President Bush shirking the 9/11 commission on the Sunday talk shows yesterday by noting that the President is a busy man, and that he must make "judicious" use of his time.

Okay. But we know that the President works out an hour each day. He has time for rodeos and galas at Ford's theater. Despite $100+ million in the bank for this November, he seems to have time for quite a few fundraisers. And he hits the sack by 10pm every night.

Is it too much to ask that he give more than hour to the comission investigating the terror attack that occured under his watch?

There's a skit in an epsiode of Chapelle's Show where Dave Chapelle's in the sack with a woman. As things heat up, he stops, pulls out a clipboard and tells the woman that she'll need to sign a sex consent contract before they go any further, including initialing her approval for oral (she signs, but only after he assures her, "Don't worry, I'll do you, too."), and anal (she declines -- "I knew that," he says, obviously disappointed). It's a faux commercial for celebrity sex contracts, designed to protect stars from later accusations of assault.

You guessed it. Somebody's doing it. Satire, meet the real thing.

My favorite media critic Jack Shafer takes aim at the blogosphere's two gossip queens, Wonkette and Gawker.

Shafer's description of the two is pretty creative -- "the twin offspring of a date-rape incident between Drudge Report and the original Spy magazine." Funny. Though I'd say the ruthlessness of both sites smacks more of National Lampoon.

But Shafer's piece reads more like an excerise in soul-searching than it does an actual critique. He unloads heaps of praise on both sites, and spends a good deal of time chastising himself for liking them so much. Only then does he note that he finds them mean.

It's true that there's a touch of Mencken-ish misanthropy to both sites, but that's part of the charm. At least with Wonkette. Every three-dimensional person I know who's lived in D.C for more than a year has grown to love the city, but loathe the people who occupy it. You can only do so many cocktail receptions on Capitol Hill, or have so many beers at the Hawk n' Dove before the mere thought of one more red tie, sport blazer, or the letters "L.A." make you want to vomit. That's when you get yourself a dog. Wonkette's brutality toward D.C. celeb culture I think captures these feelings quite nicely.

Besides, she's not mean to everyone. She's a Josh Marshall groupie, after all, and high priestess of the cult of Matthew Yglesias. Speaking as a guy with a fair amount of dork cred, chicks who dig dorky guys can't be all bad.

Is anywhere safe from the nanny reach of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation?

NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is making more and more sense these days. Trips to the developing world have helped him see the light on free trade, and why sweat shops are a necessary, if regrettable, stretch on the road to prosperity.

Today he strikes a blow for another libertarian theme -- the need for sound, numbers-based risk assessment in public policy, instead of basing our laws on perceived risks, hype, symbolism, and message-sending. The Cliff's Notes version of Kristof today:

Cars kill 43,000 people every year, or 117 per day. The flu kills 36,000 per year. Guns kill 26,000. Food-borne illness kills 5,000.

Excepting 2001, wanna know how many Americans terrorism kills every day? Almost zero. Much closer to zero than to one. Even if we isolate 2001 and the 3,000 people killed on September 11, the deadliest year for terrorism in U.S. history, that boils down to less than 10 deaths per day, or one tenth the number killed the same year in car accidents. Yet we've created the largest bureaucracy in the history of government, we've suspended the rules of criminal procedure, and we've launched what could amount to a trillion-dollar war -- all in the name of fighting a threat that's not even amont the top 20 killers of Americans.

Kristof unfortnately uses these numbers to suggest we need to spend more money on highway safety, AIDS resarch, gun control, and so on. I'd like to see us go the other way, and perhaps consider spending less on a huge bureaucracy that, if history is any indicator, isn't going to do a whole lot to make us safer.

No, we shouldn't forget September 11. Nor should we stop searching for, apprehending, and bringing justice to those who want to kill us. And Kristof's right -- the damage a one-time stray nuke could do is alone worth considerable vigilance and preventative effort.

But you might keep those numbers in mind the next time you hear an elected official or Bush apologist tell us we'll need to sacrifice our money, our skepticism, and a bit of our civil liberties in the name of safety and security.

UPDATE:: I'll respond at length later to the comments to this post. Short version: No, I don't favor more spending on any of the items that pose a greater threat to us than terrorism. I'm just pointing out that we take risks every day without much thought that pose a far greater threat to us than terrorism. Yet we're willing to support all sorts of measures of questionable value and that take away our freedoms in the name of the war on terror. I'm asking for a little perspective and propriety in how we fight terrorism, and that we not let fear rob us of our healthy skepticism for our political leaders.

More later.

That's what HHS Sec. Tommy Thompson says at the end of this article.

Quaint, almost charming when a powerful political leader slips up and speaks the truth, isn't it?

Sec. Thompson might want to cc these guys on the memo. I don't think they got it.

A friendly reminder, just in case you forgot to get me a card.

I have enormous respect for Walter Williams. Along with David Friedman and Thomas Sowell, he's probably one of the best writers I know when it comes to making economics understandable to the layperson.

But he wanders way off the reservation with his column on gay marriage. He bites the "next they'll want to marry horses" bait without hesitation. He ought to know that the beastiality argument fails because, of course, an animal can't consent to a contract. As for polygamy, so what? Why should Williams, a libertarian, mind if four people decide a four-adult family suits them best? More importantly, why does Williams, a libertarian, want the state's blessing on private relationships to begin with?

Williams' smoking analogy fails because anti-tobacco activists seek to take rights away from property owners and smokers -- pretty open-and-shut where a libertarian might stand on that. Gay couples, on the other hand, are seeking to end state favoritism of one relationship over another. It's much murkier.

A good libertarian would object to the state sanctioning any kind of relationship with special rights and privileges. But you could also make a pretty good case that so long as government's granting its blessing to one-man-one-woman committed relationships, it oughtn't leave out man-man or man-woman-woman committed reationships.

In other words, a libertarian can take the position that the state shouldn't sanction any kind of marriage at all. And a libertarian can take the position that so long as the state is sanctioning straight marriage, it might as well sanction gay or polygamous marriages, too. And a libertarian can take either of these positions while still holding personal reservations about homosexual or polygamous lifestyles.

But I gotta' call a foul when a libertarian says the state should discriminate and favor one relationship over another, and that to hold a contrary position somehow exemplifies America's "moral decline."

Never thought I'd read such a disappointing column from someone I admire as much as Williams.

If you'll excuse me now, I need to go re-order my world.

Hat tip: Kate Duree.

Sometimes, RNC press releases write themselves.

A thoroughly confusing post from immigrant foe Mark Krikorian over at The Corner:

A recent Boston Globe story (reprinted by the International Herald Tribune here) makes clear that immigrant colonization of the low-skilled job market is not the result of decadent American teenagers opting to shop at the mall rather than work. Quite the opposite -- immigrant competition is elbowing teenagers out of jobs they would otherwise be filling. One economist said employers "like the fact that immigrants can work more hours and more shifts than teenagers." A job counselor said "Typically when kids apply for a summer job they might want a week off to go to camp or do something else. I tell them, 'You can't do that. You are up against someone who is going to be there every day and you need to deal with that.'" As a result, the percentage of teenagers holding jobs is the lowest it's been since statistics started being compiled in the 1940s.

Is it healthy for the future of our society to freeze our children out of low-wage, rite-of-passage jobs? When I was younger, I washed dishes in restaurants, packed tomatoes, did lawn work -- this kind of thing is essential if we are to preserve a middle-class society that values work, rather than the Old World model that mass immigration is pushing us toward, where only inferiors ever get their hands dirty.

Well, shucks. Krikorian's sold me. I say any employer who hires a hard working immigrant looking to feed his family over an American teen looking for his due rite-of-passage short-term busing Waffle House tables for date money isn't doing his duty to preserve Anglo-American culture.

Start the boycotts.

Looks like No Child Left Behind might do a wee bit of good after all. A key provision in NCLB is to cut federal funding for education programs that can't prove their effectiveness. Most of you probably know by now that the DARE program has been a wholesale failure since its inception -- unless you count as "successes" the families DARE destroyed by instructing kids to rat out their pot-smoking parents.

And so thanks to NCLB, it's gradually being fazed out of elementary and junior high curriculum.

Wonder how Betty Sembler feels about this?

NCLB bureaucrats might want to take a look abstinence-only sex ed next.

Bonus points for catching the headline reference.

One more group Lou Dobbs may want to consider adding to his blacklist of greedy corporatist America-haters:

American consumers!

Reader Matt Gaffney is fed up, and is moving his two businesses out of Washington, D.C.

He wites:

I've had it with DC. I operate two small businesses out of my home, and the DC government's constant taxation, regulation, and meddling is driving me nuts. I'm moving to Pennsylvania this year.

I write, edit, and sell crossword puzzles under these two businesses to newspapers, magazines, and websites. I do this from my Adams-Morgan apartment. The business is all done via computer and US mail (very small volume -- just people sending checks). It's so unobtrusive that people who I've lived next door to for 5 1/2 years here don't even know I work from home.

I received a piece of mail from the DC government today informing me that I need to pay them $250 for one of my businesses for something called a "Business Corporation Report". This involves me filling out a one-page report and sending them a $250 check. This is separate from a $200 payment I had to send them last year for something called a "Master Business License," which also involved me sending them a check and filling out a one-page form. This is separate for an acronym called CHOP, which "allows" me to operate a small business out of my home, and for which I had to fill out a one-page form and send them a check for $50.

This is all in addition to the 9% DC state tax I pay and 5.75% sales tax. Plus there's an 11% DC restaurant tax.

I attempted to call bullshit: called the relevant agency and asked what I got for my $250. The bureaucrat on the other end of th line politely told me: "Well, you don't *get* anything, but if you don't pay, you'll be charged penalties and interest."

I asked her how this "Business Corporation Report" differed from the "Master Business License," for which I also received no service, and how each differed from the CHOP fee, which also provided no service.

"Those all have nothing to do with each other," she told me.

A couple of years ago, I had to go down to some building on North Capitol St. in person (wasting a morning's time) to file forms for some useless license in person because the DC government had lost the forms TWICE (and one of those times they cashed the check I had sent, but lost the forms!). There were two black women in their early 20s or so in line in front of me who, as I overheard it, were attempting to start a hair-braiding business. The bureaucrat behind the counter asked them some questions and it was clear this was going to be a low-budget operation, but the women were told they needed to pay $85 for some kind of license. The two looked at each other, looked sort of embarrassed, and told the bureaucrat, "OK, well we'll come back later." How much you want to be they never started the business because of that fee?

For me, these fees are an annoyance. But how many poor, mostly black entrepreneurs in DC have their businesses killed in cradle by this kind of crap? The DC government is so dysfunctional that it's almost as if it'd rather have these two women be wards of the state that productive, striving entrepreneurs.

Well, I've had enough of it. I'm off to buy a house in Pennsylvania. Top state tax rate: 2.8%! I already wrote my city council member a long e-mail explaining that DC will get this $250 from me, but it won't get the thousands of dollars in taxes I pay them each year. In my case, they've killed the goose. Hope they enjoy this $250 egg, 'cause it's the last I'm laying.

Not really. But he sort of implies that I helped.

In a really bizarre column, the bomb-throwing editorial cartoonist partially cites your humble Agitator for giving momentum to his firing last week from the New York Times website:

The Internet has become the tool of choice for the previously powerless. Email forwarding, hyperlinks and blogs--a genre dominated by right-wingers--allow anyone with a used Gateway computer and a dial-up connection to rally hundreds of likeminded individuals to point and click, instantly firing off fiery letters to the bosses of radio talk show hosts, cartoonists and columnists who offend their sensibilities.

"Here's the feedback form for Yahoo!'s opinion syndicate," a blog called "The Agitator" suggests. "Write and tell them it's time to drop Ted Rall's column." "No paper should ever run Rall again," howls Andrew Sullivan, a Time magazine columnist who also writes the country's most prominent extreme-right blog. "I urge all of our readers to write to the NY Times," urges another hate site. "Here is their Contact page. I wrote to the publisher this morning."

A few liberals try to censor conservatives, but most opponents of the First Amendment reside on the right.

1) I'm flattered at Rall's estimation of my influence, but let's be honest, here -- he gives me way too much credit. "Hundreds of likeminded individuals?" That post went up on October 30, 2002, when this site was a mere eight months old. According to my logs, I had 852 unique visitors that day. For us to break into the "hundreds," about 25% of you would had to have clicked over and fired off a nasty email to Yahoo!.

And if the number of you who read it are representative of those of you who commented on it, a fair portion of you actually disagreed with me.

2) How in the world is a post from seventeen months ago relevant to Rall getting fired last week? I asked Yahoo! to drop his column. That had nothing to do with the NY Times.

3) "Extremist" and "right wing," eh? Lemmesee...

I'm very much against the war with Iraq. I'm against a federal marriage amendment. I favor the legalization of all drugs, gambling, and prostitution. I believe sodomy laws should be repealed. I believe in the right to die. I believe the PATRIOT Act should be repealed. I think we should liberalize our immigration laws.

I asked Yahoo! to drop Rall's column because the column in question carelessly and recklessly suggested that Sen. Paul Wellstone was murdered by Republicans, without any significant supporting evidence. If he'd been working for me, I'd have fired his ass on the spot.

4) Rall also seems to confuse censorship with calling for the firing a crappy writer who makes wild, baseless accusations that drain all credibility from his publisher. If John Ashcroft attempted to coerce Yahoo! into firing Ted Rall under some sort of sedition order or creepy PATRIOT Act provision, I'd be the first to defend Rall. That's not what happened. I asked you, Yahoo! consumers, to ask Yahoo! for his head. Because he's an idiot.

5) I'm guessing the folks at FIRE would quibble with Rall's last sentence. Seems to me that conservatives generally try to clean up speech they don't like via grassroots/activist means -- consumer boycotts, public shamings, letter-writing campaigns etc. That ain't censorship.

That hasn't always been the case, of course. But there's been a noticeable shift in strategy among conservatives in the last decade or so. Even when they rail against the Natioanal Endowment for the Arts, it's really not a call for censorship. Most I gather would just rather not be forced to pay for the stuff they find offensive.

I generally disagree with them when they wage these campaigns, of course. But I have no problem in principle with them waging them. And at least they usually steer clear of attempting to employ state coersion to achieve their objectives (usually -- not always).

More recently, it's been the left that silences speech it dislikes with harassment suits, university speech codes, hate crimes laws, and the like.

6) I'm baffled by Rall's assertion that the "genre" of blogs, hyperlinks and email forwarding are dominated by right-wingers. Howard Dean? MoveOn.org? And even if that is true, so what? What's preventing left-wingers from utilizing the Internet the same way right-wingers do? And aren't they doing just that?

By the way, here's the contact page for Universal Press Syndicate. Send them an email and tell them to drop Ted Rall's column.

Not because he's controversial. Not because I disagree with him.

But because he can't write, he's obviously lazy with his characterizations, he can't think, and there are about six dozen lefty writers who could make better use of the space.

Go forth, my hundreds (hey, thousands now!) of right-wing extremist minions!

A new restaurant opened near me called "Valentino's New York Style Pizzeria."

Monday night, I paid a visit.

For weeks now, I have heard of this mysterious New York City-dwelling creature called "the ziti pizza." I was intrigued, but I'd always assumed it was a mere urban legend, a carb-blasted pile of greasy goo that image-conscious New Yorkers merely dreamt about between cigarette tokes and treadmill sessions.

Pasta stacked atop pizza dough? With three kinds of cheese? And marinara? Had anyone laid hand on such a creature? Or was it merely the stuff of water cooler talk and blury pictures in the Weekly World News?

Monday night at Valentino's, I found the rumors to be all too true. There, behind the slightly fogged-up sneeze guard, I found it -- a nest of just-born ziti-pizza slices.

Yes. I ate me some ziti pizza. I can't begin to express the glorious gluttony. A three-dimensional hunk of warm, salty pie. Not a slice, a fucking pyramid. Of mozzerella, ricotta, parmesean, baked ziti and greasy New Yorkish pizza dough.

As for Atkins, I might say I cheated, but that would be misleading to the point of deception. This wasn't cheating. This was cheating with three hookers, a Boy Scout, and a pony. This was wrong. Sinful. Slothful. Dirty. I might as well have poured a quart of sugar down my throat.

Sigh. Okay. I pretty much did that, too.

For desert, I had something called "spumoni cake." Spumoni cake is six layers of gellato (chocolate, vanilla, rum raisin, mocha, mint, and one other I can't remember) all slathered over a crushed Oreo cookie crust. And yes. It's everything you might think it would be.

As I was leaving, I noticed a foreboding sign hung crookedly to the exit door.

It said, "we deliver."

That gooey, glopping sound you hear would be the slow obstruction of bloodflow through my arteries.

Glen Whitman gets the just-passed "Cheesburger Bill" right. The bill would forbid all obesity-related lawsuits against fast food companies in both state and federal court.

I can't tell you how very much I want to support this bill. The U.S. Congress has finally taken a small stand for personal responsibility. And I think you could even make a strained argument that it's a legitimate use of the Commerce Clause -- if California, for example, decided to open its courts to all fat-suit takers in an effort to protect its own consumers against obesity and health care costs, consumers across the country could feel the pinch. The effects of such a move would, after all, be well-felt outside the borders of the state passing a friendly "fat tort" law.

In the end, however, I think the argument fails. This is Congress dictating by federal fiat what each state's tort law ought to be. And I suppose if I'm going to interpret the Commerce Clause narrowly enough to criticize federal action on telemarketers and prison rape, I ought to be consistent, and say that this fails, too. Of course, I'd support each and every state legislature passing its own version of the bill.

It damn sure hurts to stick to principle on this one. For the love of Dom Deluise, I'm on the same side as CSPI!

"EPA Studies Vapors From Microwave Popcorn."

Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns obviously wants you to get adult-onset diabetes.

For shame, governor.

Jesse Walker has a thoughtful post on the proper vision for libertarianism.

That's the gist of my new Fox column.

Go now, and read it.

Make your own here. Half the fun is trying to sneak negative messages by the Bush campaign's filtering software.

Hat tip: Wonkette. Scroll up and down to see suggestions from her readers, as well as ways to get around the filter.

1) Occasional Agitator.com contributor Brooke Oberwetter writes on self-interest and Social Security for the American Spectator.

2) Also via Brooke, I learn that when we free marketeers derisively refer to Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme," it's actually an insult to Ponzi!

3) New publication worth checking out, for both readers and writers: The NYU Journal of Law & Liberty.

4) Daniel Drezner responds to the much talked-about Samuel Huntington essay on problems with Hispanic integration. I read Huntington's Foreign Policy article. His book on the subject hasn't come out yet. I think Drezner does very well. But then, I come at the issue from a squishy, pro-immigrant, corporate-whore position.

5) Speaking of corporate whoring, my piece on outsourcing ran on National Review Online yesterday.

6) This season, Slate's brought on two mob experts to discuss each episode of The Sopranos. Also, all about the gall bladder.

7) Interesting post from Andrew Sullivan on John Kerry's first marriage. After eighteen years and two kids, the Catholic church granted Kerry an annulment, even though it was fiercely contested by his first wife, Julia Thorne. Hmm.

8) On the 60th anniversary of Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, celebrate by taking a virtual tour of Adam Smith's grave.

Send contributions to:

The Corinne Jeannine Schillings Foundation; c/o Premier Bank; 320 S. Center Ave., Jefferson, WI 53549.

Donations will establish a scholarship fund for Silver Award Girl Scouts wishing to pursue a career in the study of languages.

I need to finish my Fox column tonight. Back to less somber blogging tomorrow. Thanks for the well wishes, particularly from old Cato friends and employees. I'll see if I can pass the comments left on this site to Corinne's parents.

I won't beat you up with this. One more post, then we'll move on to sunnier topics.

But there's a very nice article in the Chicago Tribune about Corinne and Andrew. Link goes to the Baltimore Sun's run of the piece, which doesn't require registration.

I was off a bit in my previous post. They weren't yet engaged. He had apparently planned to ask her father for her hand this weekend. The picture in the article still sits on her desk.

The Saturday capsize of a ferry in Baltimore's Inner Harbor hit too hard, too close.

Corinne Schillings, a friend, a Cato colleague, and a terribly sweet person, is among the three still missing and presumed dead, along with her fiancee, Andrew Roccella.

Corinne and Andrew were recently engaged, and had invited both sets of parents to Baltimore for the weekend so the families could get better acquainted. Both Corinne's and Andrew's parents survived the accident.

Corinne was 26. She was Cato's webmaster, and a native of the Chicago area. Those of you who frequent the Cato website probably note how often the site changes over the course of the day. All of those changes and updates were Corinne's handiwork.

Her charming gullibility, sweet demeanor and tendency toward shyness I think led many people (myself included, until I got to know her better) to underestimate just how serious a person and thinker Corinne was.

About six months or so ago, I inadvertently revealed my surprise (I'm a terrible actor) at spotting an issue of The Economist poking out from Corinne's bag. I guess she just never struck me as the kind of person who would read The Economist, much less have a subscription. Yes, awfully elitist of me. And awfully wrong. That's when I learned Corinne was spending her nights pursuing a master's degree in international finance. She was also fluent in three languages. And of course, she was proficient in or in the process of learning lots of web-based programming stuff as part of her regular job.

The coincidence that Corinne and Andrew would be two of the three missing from some 30+ people on the ferry makes me inclined to think something noble happened, that perhaps one perished while coming to the aid of the other. Both were in excellent shape, far too fit to imagine that the two of them could be swept up in the current. Hard to think that the two people on that ferry most likely to survive such an event were two of the few who didn't. Risking her own safety to help someone else -- particularly her fiancee -- is certainly something I could see Corinne doing. And from the way she spoke of him, it's an act one could envision from Andrew, too.

I'm afraid that anything I might write at this point risks coming off trite, tired and cliched. It's hard to express the thoughts that come with the too-soon death of a good person in terms that haven't already been expressed thousands of times before.

But the hell with it. Let's just embrace the cliches. Because they couldn't be more accurate.

It is unfair. It was too soon. It's an inexplicable waste of two young lives, so-far well-lived. And yes, the rest of us really are left with nothing but a big, fat "why?"

For some, I guess a sudden, justless void like this one brings them closer to their faith. For others, like me, you look at two people plucked from life with such randomness, and you sorta' wonder how anyone could have any kind of faith to begin with.

To be honest, I'm still a little numb. My job at Cato put Corinne and I in conversation every day, several times a day, for the last year and a half or so. I still half-expect to get an email from her when I get to the office tomorrow morning.

I suppose the abundant tears, sullen faces, and heavy drape of grief hanging over Cato today are better testament to Corinne's character, cheer, and the number of people to whom she was important -- and just how important she was to them -- than any pap I could muster to write on a website.

She'll be very missed.

I went in to have a little bit of dental work done today for the first time in a while. It was a lot better than I expected, just a couple tiny cavities. Then the dentist, who is a friend of mine, said to me, "The oral surgeon is in today. Since we're going to be numbing you up anyway, do you want me to see if he can pop those wisdom teeth out of there for you? They're going to be a problem if they don't come out soon."

Right side wisdom teeth.... gone. The other two are out of there next week. The Novocaine is just now starting to wear off. I'm feelin' your pain, Moxie!

My name is Brian and I'm an information addict.

I often spend hours scanning the newspaper, magazines, online news sources, message boards, and blogs. Often, I will find myself visiting the same website several times a day, just to make sure I haven't missed anything. For some of you, my problem will sound too familiar.

My solution...

RSS, or "really simple syndication" is an XML spec for syndication of online content, some of you may have heard it referred to as a feed. Radley has a link to his over on the menu that says "XML/Syndicate", and many other bloggers, as well as a growing number of news sources, are beginning to make RSS feeds of their content freely available.

If that last paragraph didn't make any sense to you, let me put it another way. RSS probably saves me an hour or two a day. Instead of visiting 100+ websites and checking each one for new content, I click a single button and the results come back to me instantly. In fact, my program can be set up to automatically check my feeds at a regular time each day. I immediately see which sites are updated along with a quick blurb about the story, and if I'm interested I can click on a link that takes me to the actual story. Sound simple? It is.

Personally, I've been using a program called NewsGator. It runs in Microsoft Outlook, delivering contents to folders in the program that I already use every day. Of course, there are many other aggregators out there.

The possible applications of RSS are vast. Companies can save network resources by eliminating company-wide emails that apply only to a small number of employees. Legitimate advertisers, instead of using spam, can make offers available through RSS, thereby targeting only customers who really wish to recieve the notices. Organizations that distribute newsletters through email can avoid the hassle of being blacklisted as spammers.

Check it out... you'll see what I mean.

I got a 98.

I've been saying for months now that the next deep-pocketed demon the nannies and trial lawyers will set their sights on will be caffeine. Coming soon: scare-headlines, junk science studies about the deleterious effects of the drug, and stories about the cruel indifference of Big Coffee. Then, the inevitable tort suits against Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, and Juan Valdez.

Enter Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns, who has declared March "Caffeine Awareness Month." The acompanying press release warns that the drug can lead to "headaches, jitteriness, irritability, difficulties in concentration, mood swings and other maladies."

Yeah? You should see me without my morning coffee.

Note that the champion of the declaration quoted in the article is founder of a company called Soy Coffee, LLC.

If you want my morning coffee, governor, you're gonna have to come and pry it from my dehydrated, jittery hands.

Will Baude has more thoughts on the NAMBLA-ACLU case.

Upon reflection, I'd like to adjust my position a little. I've never thought the NAMBLA pamplet ought to be banned. And I don't think NAMBLA ought to be held liable in this particular case.

But that position isn't consistent with me writing that the ACLU should never have taken the case under any circumstances, even if the organization were of unlimited resources. If the ACLU had unlimited resources, and I feel the pamphlet is protected speech, then of course, in that scenario, the ACLU should take the case. Will's right. I was wrong.

I still don't think the ACLU should have taken the case, but that's precisely because the organization has limited resources. And I'd rather see them take cases that effect more freedom for more people, such as fighting the PATRIOT Act, or congressional efforts to silence critics of the drug war, then fighting for the rights of pederasts to publish how-to guides.

The traditional argument for the ACLU defending offensive speech is the slippery slope argument -- that once you let the state censor the Ayran nationalists, they'll next come for the Nazis, then the fascists, then Pat Buchanan. And I think history has largely proven that argument legitimate.

I just don't think NAMBLA's a slippery slope. The pamplet shouldn't be banned, or found to contribute to the commission of a crime, but I just can't see this case getting a heck of a lot of space in your Emmanuel con law outline.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe 25 years from now, we'll all be sitting around in a drab Orwellian nightmare, and someone will stand up and say, with regret...

"First, they came for the child-rapists..."

But I doubt it.

UPDATE: There's a great discussion going on over at Crooked Timber. I thought the following was a particularly strong critique of my position:

In a world of limited resources, NAMBLA is fairly obviously about as undeserving a recipient of aid as any organization could be — if the ACLU could protect anyone else’s rights before NAMBLA’s, it should. However, if, in the judgment of the ACLU’s lawyers, the legal tactics that are being used against NAMBLA won’t be limited to being used against similarly horrible organizations, but will be used against publishers generally, the ACLU must defend NAMBLA — the question isn’t whether NAMBLA is the most deserving recipient of aid, it’s whether the point of law being litigated is the most important attack on the civil liberties law.

Buy here. If you'd like something a little more Martha-ish, try here.

I'm in India's Hindustan Times today.

Fun with newspaper editors.

Well now this is pretty outrageous.

Get the feeling this is the result of Macomb, Michigan law enforcement not fully understanding the ins and outs of this whole Internet doohicky thing?

Um...

According to the upcoming issue of "Stuff" magazine, the hottest dance trend in New York clubs is "gancing," a term for when guys boogie oogie oogie together.

One popular "gance step" features one guy pretending to be a shark while his pal runs away in fright. Another manly move has the guys pretending to be kangaroos complete with pouches and Fosters beer.

It sounds gay but editor Bill Schulz says gancing is actually a carefully choreographed way that straight guys use to meet women.

In fact, one Manhattan travel agent says he gets more phone numbers from ladies from doing a dance routine where he pretends to give birth to a pal than he ever did hanging out at the bar.

In Virginia, state Republicans vowed not to raise taxes. Of course, they haven't the backbone to cut spending, either. So when Democrat Gov. Mark Warner sent over a budget that called for substantial tax increases, what did the Republicans do? They raised them even more!

They then took a principled stand against carpool lane abuse, ensuring that 90% of Virginia taxpayers who drive get more stringently punsihed for not leaving vast stretches of taxpayer-bought Virginia highway unused, as is generally the case with HOV lanes.

Never fear, though. Old Dominion Republicans are sticking to their guns on the really important issues. Like gay marriage. The Virginia House of Delegates passed by a 79-18 vote an "Affirmaton of Marriage Law," an extra-super-terrific, beyond-the-call-of-duty declaration of principle, considering that Virginia already has a "Defense of Marriage" law.

Hence, hetero marriage in Virginia is now not only defended, it's also affirmed. Just in case, you know, any gay people in Virginia thought the Republicans were just yankin' their chains the first time.

Thanks, Republicans!

The bill's sponsor, Del. Bob Marshall said that without his legislation, "you could have a cross-dressing teacher trying to explain things to schoolchildren."

Meanwhile, at the national level, congressional Republicans are secretly hoping for a Kerry victory in November. Why? Because it takes a Democrat in the White House for Republicans to remember their principles.

Where have I heard that before?

Here's a more detailed write-up in the WaPo.

The guy pulled a pump-shotgun out of a long-stem flower box. How quaint!

I don't see any mention in this story about the alleged "lookout" mentioned in earlier accounts. That never made much sense to me. You're robbing the armed driver of an armored car in the lobby of a bank with armed guards at high noon in one of the busiest areas of the city on the first spring-like workday of the year.

What in the world might an accomplice be "looking out" for?

Check out these fascinating graphs from Foreign Policy plotting the relationship between globalization and life expectancy, and between globalization and the well-being of women.

The globalization-religion connection is a little more ambiguous.

But then, you already knew that.

Hat tip to the brilliant Marginal Revolution, where you'll also find this gee-whiz post on punctuality.

Justin Logan has more on libertarianism and animal rights.

I just got an email inviting me to the "2004 Multicultural Business Conference," sponsored by diversitybusiness.com, and billed as "the premier diversity event for large and small businesses."

Just for kicks, I checked out the agenda for last year's conference. Notice anything peculiar?

Not a single white male among the presenters!

A regular reader who asks for anonymity writes:

I witnessed the robbery from a bench across the street and I’m not going to lie – it was really scary. The strangest thing was the woman at the bank ATM who calmly continued her transaction in spite of the gunfire and armed men not ten feet from her.

I sat in the squad car in front of the building for about 1 ½ hours (you can see my leg in the Post Metro section photo) and then went down to police HQ at 300 Indiana. I was there for 5 1/2 hours waiting, filling out a report, etc. The FBI agent bought me a soda and was especially nice.

I never remember feeling fearful, even though I probably should have been. My first reaction was to head straight to the scene, so I'd have something to write about.

I'm still wondering if it was bravado or sheer stupidity that made the guy think he could heist an armed car at noon on a sunny day in a crowded city square in downtown D.C.

Glen Whitman doubts my assertion that lengthening yellow lights will stave off red-light runners. Glen suspects longer yellows might deter motorists for a bit, but that they'll soon become acclimated to the longer yellow lights, and adjust their sense of risk appropriately.

It's an intuitive theory. But the available evidence suggests otherwise. In 2001, the National Motorists Association persuaded the Virginia DOT to lengthen the yellow light at one particularly egregious intersection in Faifax by 1.5 seconds -- from 4.0 seconds to 5.5. A camera installed at the intersection monitored the number of infractions. About 70 days after the yellow was increased, infractions fell from 52.1 per day less than one per day -- or about 96%.

That was three years ago. NMA reports that infractions at that intersection have remained at about .80 per day in the three years since.

NMA also lists four studies (though, unfortunately, they aren't available online) discrediting the notion that motorist adaptation offsets the safety benefits of longer yellows.

There's also a 2003 study from two Texas A&M; professors which concludes that while there may be some driver adaptation, a 1.5 second increase in yellow time generally produces about a 50% long-term reduction in red light running at the intersections in question.

Whatever the case, I can't conceive of an argument where shortening yellows without warning -- as Bethesda, Maryland did -- could in any way improve the safety of motorists.

Still other studies have shown that other structural improvements (see page 3) at problem intersections, such as installing magnifying lenses on traffic lights, or allowing 1-2 seconds of "clearence reds" (where all lanes stay red for a moment), do more to prevent red-light runners than cameras.

More importantly, all of these alternate adjustments protect motorists without creepy surveilance systems and perverse adjudication processes. When D.C. and San Diego first installed cameras, for example, the private corporations running the cameras got a cut of every ticket issued. Not only that, but if you challenged a ticket, you were sent to a "court" run not by the city, but by the very corporation that gets money from every ticket issued!

When cities grow reliant on revenue from tickets, and the corporations running them profit from more red light runners, not less, you've incentivized your public officials to encourage law breaking. Any structural adjustment that might improve the safety of an intersection will by definition decrease the revenue generated by traffic fines.

Indeed, a 1995 study from Australia (the first country to implement traffic cameras on a large scale) suggests that cameras might increase accidents and injuries.

As D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams conceded (then later recanted after public outcry), cities install these cameras to generate revenue.

Protecting motorists is an ancillary concern, if it's a concern at all.

I've always been of the opinion that, like Hitler, any invocation of NAMBLA in a discussion of public policy is a call for an end to debate.

Yes, it's a despicable organization. Yeah, I'd probably turn my head and whistle were one of its members jumped and beaten senseless by a vigilante gang of fathers of kids who were victims of sexual abuse.

But the proportion of NAMBLA's actual influence and clout to the number of times it's invoked by family-values types in the course of debate is seriously out of whack. It's tiresome how often they're brought up, and almost always out of context, and without attention to proportion or propriety.

All of that said, Deroy Murdock's piece criticizing the ACLU's defense of NAMBLA is very well-done. It's pretty tough for me to see any First Amendment value whatsoever in a pamphlet that teaches grown men how to molest young boys, and evade capture after the act. Yes, I know that the ACLU exists to protect the most objectionable of speech, and I think the ACLU's on the right side when it defends the likes of Nazis, Black Panthers, militias, or anti-abortion militants (though the same organization regretably then turns around and defends speech codes and anti-harassment law).

But there's nothing remotely political about the NAMBLA pamphlet. It's a how-to guide to rape. Even if the ACLU were privy to unlimited resources, it ought to have let this one go. And of course it isn't. There's only so much money to go around, only so many cases its lawyers have time to litigate. And that makes the ACLU's decision to take this particular case all the more shameful.

Witnessed my first bank robbery at lunch today.

I was having a ham n' brie sandwich in McPherson park in midtown D.C. Apparently, the guy came out of the Chevy Chase bank, when a security guard or cop -- not sure which -- put two bullets in him.

This was about a hundred yards from me. Is it wrong that I thought the whole thing was kinda' cool?

UPDATE: Here's the write-up. The guy was robbing the armored car outside the bank. He was shot twice in the leg, by a security guard.

Commenter Mark Fulwiler writes in response to this post:

Radley, your comment was in really poor taste. The poor child's condition is nothing to laugh at. She's lost her teeth, is blind in one eye and could very well die someday because of her inability to feel pain. Shame on you!

At any rate, it was a pretty thoughtless and schmucky post.

My regrets.

I've emailed the story's reporter to see if there's a fund to help out with Gabby's medical bills . If so, I'll donate, and post info on how you can, too.

Check the third rock from the center plate of the rover. See the number "19?"

Yeah, it's a stretch. But I got to reference Paul Hardcastle.

This article in today's New York Times outlines the approaching Social Security meltdown.

"The Medicare trust fund will start running deficits in 2013 and run out of money by 2026. Starting in 2018, the Social Security System starts paying out more than it takes in and will have to dip into its trust fund. By 2044, the trust fund will be exhausted."

The trick is that the Social Security "trust fund" isn't really there.

When Social Security revenues exceed payments, the surplus is used to buy bonds from the Treasury and the money is spent to finance the government's general operations. The Treasury covers it's bond obligations from taxes, or by issuing more bonds. The idea, of course, is that the government will be able to pay that money back at some future date, with interest.

Currently The Treasury can meet it's bond obligations for Social Security, because there are more Social Security taxes coming in than payments going out. However, as noted in the article, that won't be the case much longer.

When Social Security payments begin to exceed the Social Security taxes coming in, the difference will have to come from the general fund. Even if we had a balanced budget today, this would be a huge problem. Unfortunately, a Congressional Budget Office estimate pegs the 2004 budget deficit at $478 Billion, with a 10-year projection of $2.75 Trillion.

"In 2002, two senior economists at the Treasury Department were asked by Paul H. O'Neill, then the Treasury secretary, to come up with a comprehensive estimate of the federal government's long-term fiscal problems. The total, calculated Kent Smetters, then a deputy assistant secretary for economic policy, and Jagadessh Gokhale, an economist on loan to the Treasury from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, was an almost unthinkable $44 trillion."

"Adding in the new prescription drug program, (Professor Kotlikoff of Boston University) said, the imbalance is closer to $51 trillion."

Clearly, something has to give.

Get more info on Social Security choice

UPDATE: Steve comments that Paul Krugman has an op-ed today that looks at the issue from another side. In a way, Krugman helps to illustrate part of the problem with the Social Security debate. His article rests on the premise that Social Security and the federal budget are independent of one another.

Happy birthday day to my brother Steve, who turns 18 today.

Sniff. Seems like only yesterday that I was handing out milk chocolate "It's a Boy!" cigars to my fifth-grade classmates.

Also, Steve will be heading off to Marian College in the fall.

Congrats on that too, bro.

1) The Dept. of Health and Human Services announced a federal, taxpayer-funded nationwide anti-bullying campaign today. The program "is designed to stop bullying, including verbal or physical harassment that occurs repeatedly over time, that is intended to cause harm, and that involves an imbalance of power between the child who bullies and the child who is bullied."

2) No link, but Broadcasting & Cable is reporting that Sen. John McCain (who else?) will "tackle advertising to kids and its links to child obesity." Last week, the American Psychological Association called for restrictions on food ads aimed at kids.

Sweden, by the way, has already tried this. It's illegal to market foods to children under 13, and has been for some time. And Sweden's is among the highest childhood obesity rates in Europe.

Provocative title. Interesting article.

The article says she's the only person in the country with her condition.

I don't know, I think I've dated a few women who showed similar symptoms.

Cato colleague Jonathan Block has a letter to the editor in today's Washington Post:

The Feb. 14 editorial "Focus on Red-Runners" mentioned a Fairfax City study that apparently showed a 44 percent drop in one year in red-light running at five intersections with cameras. But it did not mention the results of a 2001 analysis by the National Motorists Association of a Fairfax County intersection. That organization found that red-light violations dropped 96 percent at the intersection when yellow light time was increased from 4 seconds to 5.5 seconds.

A 1998 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety also found that 80 percent of red-light entries occur within the first second of the light turning red, indicating that inadequate yellow time is the major cause of red-light entries.

Increasing yellow-light times would reduce red-light violations and increase safety. Localities have not done so because it would negatively affect a major source of revenue for local governments.

Incidentally, I presented this information recently during a hearing for a red-light ticket I received in the District after entering an intersection 0.6 seconds after the light turned red. The infraction was upheld.

Sure enough, last summer the city of Bethesda was caught shortening the yellow light at an intersection that brought in $1 million+ annually in fines.