Read it. I've thought for quite some time that people who don't pay a tax ought not to be able to decide how the money is spent; her "negative income tax" would solve the problem without curtailing democracy. So when you vote for smaller government, you get more money in your pocket — regardless of your income.

Colby Cosh writes on the outdated, industrialized model of education in the Western world. My high school history teacher made some similar points about a decade ago; our public schools are designed (from the ground up) more for indoctrination than for education, two subtly different things.

I'm not sure what the answer is, and I'm certainly not sold on the idea that home schooling is the right approach for everyone, but surely sticking kids in a vaguely prison-like facility for 6-8 hours a day where the rules assume they are going to be making trouble isn't entirely healthy.

Quoth Colby Cosh:

...how exactly is the U.S. going to adopt a single-payer national health care system "like Canada's"? The United States is missing an essential component of the Canadian system--namely, a large neighbour to the south with a working economy and a market-based health system.

The funny thing about all of this is that if health care was actually overpriced in America, as some politicians allege, it would get cheaper due to market forces because people would defer surgery, leading to doctors geting hit in the pocketbook and lowering their prices. (The presence of an insurance oligopoly doesn't affect this basic equation; doctors don't get paid if people don't use them.)

Adam Cohen, by way of The Volokh Conspiracy and Radley Balko, has a bone to pick with Ken Starr:

Mr. Starr was particularly exercised about liberals' being result-oriented, abandoning their principles to reach the outcomes they favor. But he would have made a more compelling case if he had not proceeded to abandon his — and the Federalist Society's — own oft-repeated commitment to judicial restraint to praise the Supreme Court for striking down the Gun-Free School Zones Act and the Violence Against Women Act in a burst of conservative activism.

I think Cohen is confusing "judicial restraint" with something very different: an interest in taking the constitution at its word. Both of these decisions dealt with the ever-increasing scope of Congress' powers the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 3) that basically gave the federal government a blank check to do anything it wanted, so long as some (often tangential) connection with "interstate commerce" could be made.

The original purpose of this line of reasoning was to justify laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1963 that extended non-discrimination requirements into public accomodations to stamp-out segregation. However laudible the goal, the court's reasoning in upholding these statutes opened the door for virtually any federal law to be justifiable.

In retrospect, the courts could have more narrowly tailored the rulings under the 14th Amendment's "privileges or immunities" and equal protection clauses, along with existing common law, to avoid this outcome; however, the Warren Court often seemed more worried about the policies it could set from the bench than the precedents its decisions would set elsewhere in the law. The end result: the Gun-Free School Zones Act and the Violence Against Women Act, neither of which did anything but federalize crimes that are already illegal in every state of the union.

Libertarians (big-L and small-L) are often accused of wanting a "weaker" federal government. Certainly we support a reduced role for the federal government, and in particular a Congress that stays within its enumerated powers. A limited federal government would allow more freedom for citizens and, at the same time, be able to concentrate on problems that the states cannot solve on their own. The rush to federalize every conceivable crime, from smoking pot to murder, accomplishes neither of those goals.

Radley Balko passes on word that Jim Jeffords, who defected to the Democrats (er, became an "Independent") last year, wants back in with the GOP.

It's certainly nice to see principles are alive and well in the Senate.

Via Chip Taylor: Brian Doherty tells the GOP, it's your policies, stupid!.

Chip has an update, with quotes from an article from the Weekly Standard.

Not that it matters much in Mississippi, where we haven't had a competitive election since, oh, Reconstruction.

Radley Balko gives John J. Miller a bit of a Fisking. My feeling on the Republicans: it's not just "what have you done for me lately," it's "what have you done for me since 1994?" The notion, expressed in some of the responses, that Republicans deserve libertarians' votes because at least they're not as bad as the Democrats doesn't hold a lot of water for me.

At least, that's what John J. Miller claims in today's New York Times. John, who doesn't seem to be a libertarian in either sense, thinks that's bad for libertarians, mainly because we won't get the Bush tax cut permanently (me, I'd prefer a cleaned up tax code to yet another layer of gobbledygook; between all the capital gains rates and normal income rates, we're now up to about a dozen real tax brackets). Glenn Reynolds makes the reasonable point that libertarians are sensibly reacting to Republicans' policies that they disagree with, even if they are "closer" to being Republican.

I don't necessarily disagree with the "Libertarians are closer to Republicans" thesis; a former Libertarian presidential candidate, Ron Paul, is now a Republican House member from Texas, and Republicans' national rhetoric is somewhat more "libertarian" than Democrats'. At a more practical level, it's harder to advance a socially-conservative agenda in Washington than a fiscally-liberal one, so voting Republican is probably less of a risk to freedom than voting for Democrats — particularly since most Dems run for the hills when it comes to actually sticking up for fundamental freedoms or ending the War on Drugs, lest they appear "too liberal." Then again, a fellow libertarian (and political scientist to boot) tends to vote Democratic (but that's only because he thinks South Carolina's Republicans are fascists).

It seems to me that Democrats and Republicans have two realistic choices to deal with their third party problems: they can either try to get stricter ballot-access laws (which could be hard — the most stringent are being thrown out by the courts fairly regularly, even with the bogus "state interest in promoting a two-party system" argument that seems to pop up from time to time; my recollection is that our Founding Fathers would think our system already has two parties too many), or they can promote some sort of ballot reform like approval voting or Condorcet vote counting that would preserve their duopoly in the short-to-medium term but still let voters blow off steam by voting Green or Libertarian.

On the other hand, such reform could conceivably lead to the full-scale disintegration of the Democrats into various client-group parties (probably a rump comprised of union voters plus a few racial-interest parties concentrated in gerrymandered districts, with the rest defecting to the Greens) and the loss of the socially-agnostic wing of the Republicans to the Libertarians.

More likely it would end up in a situation where Republicans and Democrats would have the bulk of the seats but third parties would be coalition power-brokers; the big question is whether there would be permanent parliamentary-style coalitions in Congress or a more ad-hoc arrangement with no "majority" like we know it today, just floating coalitions assembled by the White House to get its preferred legislation passed.

A bit of retrospective on the socialist worker's paradise that was Bulgaria under Communism. (Seen at Instapundit.)

Sounds like drinking with some of my professors... :-)

Rachel Lucas has discovered a memory hole at Michael Moore's website.

I have to say I used to enjoy Michael's work, but I think he's lost his critical edge over the years; you might say he peaked early. Not to mention his tireless efforts to make every American tithe to the AFL-CIO for the privilege of having a job. Still, Roger & Me was a great film, and "TV Nation" was entertaining enough, paving the way for "The Daily Show"'s similar (but more equal-opportunity) mix.

Incidentally, I guess I should find some lefty bloggers to quote lest anyone think I'm some sort of conservative. :-)

Seen on Instapundit: the logo for the Information Awareness Program. Does the government really want all the New World Order/Trilateral Commission loonies to feel justified at night?

On the other hand, it might make a cool logo for Area 52.

In what has to be the most thankless political win since Iain Duncan-Smith was elected leader of Britain's Conservative Party last year, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was elected House Minority Leader by the Democrats.

Frankly, the Democrats missed the boat in not selecting Harold Ford, Jr., who not only is more clueful than the rest of his family combined (not that that would be hard), but also could have prompted the party to modernize its agenda; being the Party of Welfare State Clients (and little else) isn't exactly a vote-winner in 2002.

The Economist agrees (at least on Pelosi).