For a while, I’d just hoped that keeping the kitchen clean and food tightly sealed away would encourage the mouse to move on, but this stratagem backfired: It grew increasingly bold, even venturing tentatively toward the living room occasionally. Finally we broke down and got a trap and… the mouse vanished. Trap unsprung, bait untaken, […]

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Just back from a much-needed vacation, a quick pass at some stuff around the web relevant to the last few posts from before I left. First, my post on the Cato/Koch fight stressed my substantive concerns about how it appears, on the basis of what I regard as pretty compelling circumstantial evidence, the Kochs intend […]

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I’m a strong believer in free speech: With a few narrow and well-defined exceptions, I think people have a moral and legal right to voice their opinions, however misguided their views and however offensive their mode of expression. I also think (to pick an example from the headlines) that it’s grotesque, sexist, and idiotic to […]

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As you may have already heard, the Brothers Koch have mounted a campaign to take control of the Cato Institute, where I hang my hat. Now, I have a pretty fantastic day job, which basically consists of reading, writing, and speaking about whatever I find interesting in any given week. And I don’t generally subscribe […]

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Proof, if proof were needed, that whatever higher power might be steering our fates must be possessed of a perverse sense of humor: I have spent the better part of five years writing about the ways sophisticated electronic surveillance tools, in the hands of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, might pose a threat to privacy […]

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I’m going to have to side with (my friend) Ezra Klein against (our mutual friend) Conor Friedersdorf on the question of whether D.C. is somehow toxic for journalists and thinkers. Here’s the nub of his concern: But inside the world of many ideological magazines, think tanks, foundations, and other intellectual movement operations, a different dynamic […]

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A little happy-hour jawboning about politics and comic books sounds like a pretty great way to spend a Tuesday after work.  This admittedly makes me a huge dork, but fortunately, D.C. is full of huge dorks. So I hope those of you in the area will join me tomorrow at the Laughing Man Tavern from […]

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I’ve said something similar before myself, but this from Conor Friedersdorf jibes with my own experience: There is this idea among movement conservatives—especially the rank-and-file—that Washington DC journalism is populated by a lot of disingenuous, careerist sell outs. These elites write to enrich themselves, to inflate their sense of self-importance, and to garner social capital, […]

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The federal government’s first Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, used to be the District of Columbia’s top geek. He caught the Obama administration’s eye by, among other things, finding innovative ways to put public data online, and especially to make it more easily accessible through the use of third-party apps. A prime illustration of the […]

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It’s that time again.

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