Author Archive | Jacob Levy

Speaking of Hit & Run, I notice a Badnarik for President blogad running there. (Right now it’s the 3rd blogad down, in the right-hand column.) The headline text is “A PLAN FOR PEACE.” Superimposed on the image of Badnarik are the words “The Peace Candidate.” And right below the image we get the words “Priority […]

Sports-writer extraordinaire Aaron Schatz has a new article up at TNR (registration required) about Kobe, Shaq, and class. Liberty & Power bloggers David Beito and Charles Nickolls have an article at Reason that should (but of course won’t) put the enduring infatuation of some libertarians with the Old South to rest once and for all. […]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: one of my greatest blogospheric joys has been the chance to get introduced to the witty, insightful, and stylish writing of John Holbo. Over at “John and Belle Have a Blog” he’s got an epic post about epics, myths, and comic books that’s very funny and […]

Noam Scheiber is clearly right that it’s a bad sign for Bush that he’s still struggling to shore up and rally the conservative base (posts here and here). I think his characterization of the political tactics and stakes are all just right. But there’s something odd in his diagnosis of how relations between Bush and […]

Dan Drezner and Bruce Bartlett and Matthew Yglesias all enthuse about the idea of a Presidential challenger naming a shadow cabinet. Matt identifies some disadvantages: The first is simply that the vetting and decision-making process would distract key campaign staff at a moment when they have the non-trivial task of running a presidential campaign. The […]

Via Brian Doherty, Liberty Magazine’s R.W. Bradford provides a detailed, morbidly fascinating, and ultimately depressing account of the Libertarian Party presidential nominating convention… and reassures me in my decision to look elsewhere than the LP for a presidential candidate this year.

Ted Nugent. Yes, really.

France will have a referendum on the proposed EU constitution in the second half of 2005. (Story is in French.) Other bits and pieces from the President’s Bastille Day interview: Chirac reaffirmed his commitment to the 35-hour workweek but expressed support for liberalizing the law to increase the freedom of workers “who want to work […]

I’m struck by one thing on the list of who voted how on cloture on the FMA. The Republicans voting against cloture were Campbell, Chafee, Collins, McCain, Snowe, and Sununu. Campbell’s an odd duck. McCain is a funny combination of highly principled and incredibly self-important, devoted to his public standing as a contrarian, Republican who […]

My New Republic column is online (link should work for non-subscribers as well as subscribers).

Will Baude and Phoebe Maltz (multiple posts each; follow the links) have an exchange going on a topic Dan Drezner also recently mentioned: the stunning lack of commerce in Hyde Park, Chicago. The neighborhood has neither the amenities of a real college town nor those of a collegiate neighborhood in a big city (Phoebe compares […]

This Steven Landsburg piece in Slate has prompted blogospheric commentary (Brad DeLong, Tyler Cowen, John Quiggin, others) about the core empirical/ policy claim: that minimum wage increases (at least of the scale that we’ve seen in the U.S. in the past couple decades) have at most a small negative impact on employment. I have a […]

I’d forgotten about this entirely. Way back in July of 2001, my former professor Robert P. George made the first public argument I know of for the Federal Marriage Amendment. He doesn’t claim to have originated it; Pro-marriage activists are inclined to back an amendment that would read: “Marriage in the United States shall consist […]

Over at Liberty and Power, Steven Horwitz writes that I’m a “conscientious abstainer,” and that if I were to vote, I would still vote Libertarian. However, if I was coerced into voting and could only vote for one of the two major party candidates, I think at this point I would, in fact, vote for […]

Senator Sam Brownback goes even farther than Stanley Kurtz, offering as a reason for supporting the Federal Marriage Amendment that The experience of Europe also shows that the decline of the institution of marriage goes hand in hand with a decline in married fertility, and a corresponding decline in population. Because of the birth dearth […]