Happy Independence Day, although I prefer immanent to vicarious independence.
There’s Independence and There’s Independence
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It’s Beginning to Make Sense
So now, if Trump says he's going to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, he'll be accused of turning tail before the Russians. I wonder if there's a connection,
Regarding the Latest in Russophobia
I might believe the latest Russia story (about bounties for American scalps in Afghanistan) when I see a headline like this: Russian Fiscal Conservatives Blast Putin for Paying for What He's Already Getting for Free
Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga.
This week the U.S. Supreme Court, in Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga., ruled 6-4 that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans workplace discrimination on the basis of various categories (race, religion, color, sex, etc.), by implication also covers discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (i.e., homosexual and transgender persons). The case was really two cases, one involving the county government, the other a private company. The ruling has brought the usual conservative gnashing of teeth about unelected justices' making law rather than doing their proper job, interpreting...
When “Defund the Police” Will Turn Serious
Defunding the police is only a small part of only one side of the equation. All anti-vice laws must be erased, and the people, individually and in voluntary combination, must be freed -- including freed from taxation -- to see to their own security, their own education, their own health care, their own this, their own that, and their own the other. When that stuff enters the discussion, it will have gotten serious.
About Those Shutdowns
When the only tool in your toolkit is a blunt instrument, every problem looks like one that can be addressed only with a blunt instrument.
TGIF: Replace Your Divots
I am not, nor have I ever been, a golfer. I did golf once, just before the turn of the century, and I disliked it. Nevertheless, I live by a cardinal principle in golfer etiquette: Replace your divots. A divot, of course, is a chunk of turf that is dislodged by a golf shot, leaving a hole on the course. Golfer etiquette requires that you should put the divot back in the hole if that's possible. This is a common-sense act of consideration for other golfers because a ball in a hole is hard to hit. We can readily see that Replace your divots is simply an application of the principle Be...
Cuomo’s Wager
Pascal's Wager is a familiar idea. It goes something like this: regardless of what you may think about the existence of God, rational cost-benefit analysis says you should sign on. After all, if you do and you're wrong, what have you lost? But if you don't and you're wrong, uh oh -- you're in big trouble, buster. (I'm not saying this makes sense, by the way.) Something similar has gone on with the coronavirus pandemic and the draconian economic policies embraced by many governors in the United States, best exemplified New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. They have...
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