Well, this is just sad. Tooth Fairy payouts are down. Presumably number of proffered teeth remains roughly constant. A recent survey found that the national going rate has seen a 40-cent decline this year: From $3 to $2.60. What’s worse? A full 10% of kids are reaching under their pillows … and coming up empty. […]
Archive | August, 2011
Corporate Lobbying as a Principal-Agent Problem
Do corporate lobbyists effectively represent the interests of their clients? I’m not so sure, for reasons I explain in this column on NRO.
Unfair to Justice Breyer?
A prominent constitutional law professor recently suggested to me that I was grossly unfair to Justice Breyer in the following paragraph at the end of Chapter 7 of Rehabilitating Lochner: Nevertheless, and despite the flood of serious revisionist scholarship, Lochner is still primarily used as a symbol of one’s jurisprudential opponents’ perceived faults. Justice Antonin […]
Natelson on the 14th Amendment and the debt ceiling
In this iVoices.org podcast, Rob Natelson explains why unilateral presidential creation of new debt is: 1. Utterly contrary to the Constitution’s structure of limiting executive power. 2. Directly contrary to the text of the 14th Amendment. President Obama, to his credit, declaimed any unilateral power to raise the debt ceiling. But many people–some of whom […]
Interesting Self-Defense Case
The case is People v. Richardson, decided by the Michigan Supreme Court Friday. The big dispute is not about the law, but about whether the instructions were clear enough; but many cases indeed turn on that very question. If you’re interested in self-defense cases as they are actually litigated — especially in situations where the […]
Peaceful Politics = Terrorism?
Politico reports: Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit. Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting. “We have negotiated […]
A threepeat for the Emmy Awards!
The annual “time machine” episode of Colorado Inside-Out garners a threepeat, winning the best documentary award for the third year in a row, from the Heartland Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. This year’s win is also a Triple Crown, with Emmy awards for best sound, and best program. Watch the […]
Dan Markel on Prison Vouchers
Dan Markel, an important criminal law scholar, has comments on PrawfsBlawg on my Prison Vouchers article.
Monday Bear Blogging
The NYT reports on an apparent increase in human-bear encounters in the western U.S. Bears — dangerous and unpredictable always — are prowling broader areas of the West in closer contact with people than ever. In some places, drought is driving the animals out of their wilder haunts and into human settlements. Longer-term climate change, […]
Learning How to Fish
Overfishing is one of the world’s more serious environmental problems, but it does not have to be that way. In 1974, less than ten percent of the world’s fisheries were depleted or overexploited, according to the FAO. By 1998, over 30 percent of fisheries were overexploited and depleted. At the same time, the percentage of […]