Who are We?

Lawyers, Guns and Money, known as “LGM,” is a progressive politics, academia, and culture blog. The blog was founded in May 2004 by David Watkins, Scott Lemieux, and Robert Farley, three political science graduate students at the University of Washington. Originally hosted at Blogger under the address lefarkins.blogspot.com, the site has grown steadily in readership and in contributors since its founding. LGM moved to WordPress in 2010.

Legally, Lawyers, Guns and Money is a limited liability corporation owned by Scott Lemieux and Robert Farley. It is officially headquartered in Fayette County, Kentucky, at 857 Malabu Drive #6201, Lexington, KY 40502.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Are you lawyers?
A: Not all of us, although this is a common misperception. Paul Campos is, in fact, a law professor.

Q: Do you have any guns?
A: Not sure. Doubt that it’s very many if any, though.

Q: Do you have any money?
A: Not so that you’d notice.

Q: Where’d the name come from?
A: It’s a Warren Zevon song. We’re social scientists, and we’ve devoted our careers, such that they are, to the study of the noted topics, more or less.

Q: Which of you is which?
A: Back in the day, Scott was Lawyers, Rob was Guns, and DJW was Money. More or less.

Q: How do you guys know each other?
A: Rob, Scott, and DJW were graduate students in political science at the University of Washington. Loomis and Farley met at the University of Oregon in 1992. Dave Brockington and Chris Koski were colleagues of the Original Trio at the University of Washington. Charli Carpenter and Dan Nexon were internet famous and knew Farley through academic connections. Paul Campos, Dave Noon and the late Scott Erik Kaufman was the same level of internet famous as the blog at the time of their joining. Bean and Katie Surrence were acquaintances of Lemieux. Vacuum Slayer did the artwork for the blog and then joined as a regular contributor. Melissa Byrnes and Simon Balto knew Loomis through academic connections. Shakezula, and Abigail Nussbaum were longtime contributors to the LGM comment community and also bloggers in their own right. Steve Attewell came to the blog through Scott Erik Kaufman. Elizabeth Nelson passed an intensely competitive screening process in order to win her spot on the blog.

Q: What’s a “lefarkins”?
A: A term for the original three bloggers coined by other political science graduate students.

Q: What’s with the “All Internet Traditions” bit?
A: A while ago, some troll who didn’t know what “Shorter” meant declared that he was “aware of all internet traditions.” It kind of became an internet tradition of its own.

Q: How long has LGM been running?
A: Since May 31, 2004

Q: Do you take requests?
A: Sure, we take them…

Q: Why do you hate Mickey Kaus so much?
A: That’s like asking the square root of a million; no one will ever know.

Q: What’s your blogroll policy?
A: Haha “blogroll.”

Q: What’s your comments policy?
A: Arbitrary random drunkenness. This is our home; we can remove anyone we want at any time for any reason. There is an appeals process, but even a successful appeal leaves you forever Marked By Loomis. Does that count as a policy?

Q: Do you worry about losing your jobs because of the blogging?
A: That’s such an old question and there are so many different ways to go about trying to answer it…

Q: Um… are there other questions I should ask?
A: Probably.