Happy Doofus Day!
Happy Father’s Day, or as it might be more appropriately called in today’s entertainment world, Happy Doofus Day! Look at any number of TV shows, movies, or other elements of pop culture, and you’ll often, though not always, see fathers–when they’re even around the kids–portrayed as buffoons and doofuses. At the same time, we’re suffering, as a nation, from an epidemic of fatherlessness, leading to […]
Summer at highway speeds
What happens when you raise speed limits on highways? Slate has some answers. In brief: more severe crashes, but no increase in their number. And here’s something with implications for law more generally: Compliance with the law goes up. In other words, people are able (at least in the context of driving on the highway) to use their own self-interest and judgement to self-regulate. Making a […]
Sen. Stabenow: American ag is so successful it needs government help
People who write about federal policy, such as Sallie James, have so many opportunities to comment on the foolish remarks and doings of our elected officials that they can’t cover it all. But recently, Sen. Debbie (I can feel global warming when I fly) Stabenow uttered a “pretty obvious logical fallacy” that needed to be pointed out. Said the senator, who is chairman of the […]
Solyndra-like boondoggles receive majority, bipartisan support; but let’s give a cheer for Conyers and Dingell
You’d think that after all the controversy over money poured down the rathole known as Solyndra, members of the U.S. House of Representatives would ax the program that wasted taxpayer dollars. But you’d be wrong. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) sponsored an amendment to shut down the Department of Energy program that funded Solyndra. It failed,receiving only 136 votes. Republicans are […]
Minnesota Legislative Leadership Defends Voter ID in Court
During this biennium, the Minnesota Legislature proposed a new constitutional amendment: Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to require that all voters present an approved form of photographic identification prior to voting; all voters be subject to identical eligibility verification standards regardless of the time of their registration; and the state provide at no charge an approved photographic identification to eligible voters? If voters approve, […]
Who watches the watchman? You do!
Government regulations and laws can be bad in at least three ways. First, they can simply be bad on their face. Obamacare, for example, requires people to buy something (health insurance) simply because they are alive. Call it a tax on breathing. Second, they might have been created questionable legislative practices. A law that both set the state budget for funding of public schools and […]
It’s not polite to ignore the feds
There’s a saying, attributed at various times to Lenin or Trotsky (same difference!): “You may not like war, but war likes you.” I can’t authenticate the source of it, so at the risk of taking it out of context, I take away this lesson: you may have to deal with some unpleasant facts of life, whether or not you want to, or are ready for […]