Glenn Reynolds believes it was “simplistic” of me to cast “as a simple freedom of the press issue” the decision to shut down the Iraq bureau of the al-Arabiya news agency after they aired a tape purportedly from Saddam Hussein in which (surprise, surprise) he calls for attacks on Americans and their allies. Now, my […]

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As the “Conservative Crack Up” progresses, a post by Jonah Goldberg revisits the custodial battle over Friedrich Hayek in the context of the gay marriage debate. First, some nitpicky observations. Jonah writes: Yes he rejected the label “conservative,” but he just as explicitly rejected the label “libertarian.” The conservatives he disagreed with were of the […]

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Glen has an interesting post examining the most recent Matrix flick in light of Robert Nozick’s famous “experience machine” argument. While I do think Nozick’s argument is a powerful intuition pump (I use the phrase in a non-pejorative sense) exposing one problem with utilitarianism, I have never held that there’s anything necessarily irrational about hooking […]

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I’ve got a web piece called Smokonomics elaborating on a post below. If you live in D.C., sign up to speak at the December 3 public hearing to oppose the proposed smoking ban.

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Congratulate Radley Balko on his new gig as a policy analyst studying nanny state initiatives for the Cato Institute. Keep an eye out for his mug to appear here

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Gene notes a heartening sight from Friday evening’s pub-crawl. A bartender at Velvet Lounge who was visibly pregnant had posted a sign above the bar which read: “I am pregnant. Please don’t smoke near the bar.” People seemed generally accomodating, staying on the other side of the room if they were smoking. This woman, who […]

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I figured it might be worth cross-posting some comments I made on this thread, where one poster argues that it’s dishonest or irrelevant to bring up anecdotal claims of plummeting business at specific bars due to smoking bans, because aggregate analyses in California and New York show no net economic impact. First, I can think […]

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Matt makes the case that utilitarians have to count other regarding preferences, such as the squeamishness of some heteros about open discussion of homosexuality, in assessing public policy. In a stripped down sense, this claim is clearly right: these kinds of preferences can’t be per se left out of a utilitarian calculus at the highest […]

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I’m slated to be on DC’s news channel 8 this afternoon at 4pm debating the proposed DC smoking ban. Update: Well, that was fun; I don’t think I made too tremendous an ass of myself. If anyone caught it, notes are always appeciated.

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So, my inclination is to regard the attempt by folks like Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett to get atheists rebranded as “brights” as kind of silly. Nevertheless, I cracked a smile at Dennett’s response to Dinesh D’Souza’s equally ridiculous Wall Street Journal op-ed on the phenomenon. Folks on the right have a gift for making […]

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