In 2008, the Passenger Investment and Improvement Act was passed and signed into law. An unfortunate feature of this law was a provision to sunset Amtrak subsidies for shorter routes (those under 750 miles from endpoint to endpoint), requiring the states (most of which already cover a part of the subsidy) to cover the costs […]
Category: djw
Ross Douthat is doubling down on the notion that intentionally choosing to have less children constitutes “decadence”: But the modern path has many possible endpoints, and it seems like an abdicat
If you haven’t yet seen it, Corey Robin, Chris Bertram, and Alex Gourevich have a magnificent, epic post at CT on freedom and the workplace in the context of an ongoing conversation with the bl
John Corvino: Early in our collaboration Maggie Gallagher e-mailed me with the following challenge, “What’s your definition of marriage? If you’re going to use a word, you need a definition of the word.” I doubt that. After all, most English speakers can competently use the word “yellow,” but ask the average person to define the term […]
I have a weird sort of idea that I should somehow avoid letting my snark:serious post ratio exceed 1:1, so I’ve been feeling mildly guilty about this little indulgence with nothing to balance it
David Boaz of the CATO institute published an article last week about the relationship of the libertarian vision of freedom with the (American) past. I presume he meant it to serve as a corrective to
I haven’t glanced at CNN for months, but at the gym today I clicked over to CNN to see what they were saying about Stevens and the upcoming Supreme Court vacancy. I like to think I’m quite aware that CNN is breathtakingly vacuous and has no discernable redeeming value or purpose, but even I was unprepared […]
One curious line of reasoning used by many who defend appalling exercises like Confederate History month is to attempt to muddy the waters by observing that Lincoln, the Republicans, or “the Nor
When this blog was launched nearly six long years ago, it was a Seattle-based blog, as all three ‘founders’ were graduate students in the political science department at the University of
Like any good traitorous socialist lefty, I am supposed to treat European culture and politics as decidedly superior to the American alternative. And I often do! But on the subject of libel laws, it seems quite clear to me that Americans have a much more sensible approach than, at a minimum, the English and the […]
Glenn Greenwald has a nice catch here, on Matt Welch’s egregious hackery. Calling a document traditionally labeled a report a report ‘lying’ is pretty rich, but the larger issue is,
In the thread to the post below, Scott P. suggests denying felons the right to vote is consistent with social contract theory. I think that’s probably true for some but not all versions of socia