Author Archive | Jim Lindgren

In the post immediately below, I describe some of the arguments in Arthur Brooks’s, Who Really Cares: America’s Charity Divide; Who Gives, Who Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. There were, however, some things that troubled me. Although the liberal v. conservative split is the hook for the book, the data are not nearly as stark […]

Sacha Baron Cohen comes out of character to defend “Borat” from its critics.

Massachusetts v. EPA is easily the most important environmental case before the Supreme Court in several years. The primary issues are whether the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate vehicular emissions of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and, if so, whether it properly denied petitions asking the agency to do just […]

Live’s Ed Kowalczyk believes “Dance With You” off of the band’s “The Distance to Here” album is possibly most beautiful song he’s ever written, and he may be right. In any event, it is a favorite of Redheadlaw7 (now Mrs. Non-Volokh). In honor of her, here’s a taste: The stillness in your eyes Convinces me […]

Rick Hasen explores this question on the Election Law blog.

How to teach evolution and whether to teach “Intelligent Design” were big issues in the race between incumbent Deborah Owens Fink and challenger Tom Sawyer for the 7th District seat on the Ohio Board of Education. Fink argued there was no scientific consensus in support of the theory of evolution, and thought state education standards […]

The GOP has dominated Ohio politics for years. Going into last night, there were no statewide elected Democrats other than one member of the state Supreme Court (for which party affiliation is not noted on the ballot). No longer. The Democrats won all but one of the non-judicial statewide races. Given that most of these […]

Today’s NYT has a very informative and balanced story on the scientific debate over the relationship between carbon dioxide levels and global termperatures during the Phanerozoic era (roughly 550 million years ago to the present). One thing William Broad does particularly well in the story (and he was given ample space by his editors in […]

Last week, SCOTUSBlog posted two assessments of the oral argument in Environmental Defense v. Duke Power Corp., a case concerning when power plant modifications or repairs trigger federal “New Source Review” regulations that require new and modified stationary sources to adopt state-of-the-art pollution control equipment. Paul Guterman of Akin Gump observed that the argument “meandered” […]

Ohio political blogs are buzzing about a series of posts (1, 2, 3) on the Buckeye State Blog suggesting an effort to infiltrate Republican get-out-the-vote efforts. (See also here.) This may well be a hoax or put-on designed to send right-leaning blogs into a tizz. (If so, it worked.) Nonetheless, if this were real, would […]

In a post on proposals to raise the minimum wage, Kevin Drum comments: “it’s worth noting that virtually all the evidence on the anti-minimum wage side is either anecdotal or theoretical. The evidence on the pro-minimum wage side is concrete and statistical.” Yet the very story he cites as the basis for this proposition reports […]

The WSJ editorializes on the recent indictments of four Acorn voter registration workers in Missouri for submitting fraudulent registrations. We wish this were an aberration, but allegations of fraud have tainted Acorn voter drives across the country. Acorn workers have been convicted in Wisconsin and Colorado, and investigations are still under way in Ohio, Tennessee […]

HBO’s “Hacking Democracy,” a documentary that purports to show that “the top-secret computerized systems counting the votes in America’s public elections are not only fallible, but also vulnerable to undetectable hacking, from local school board contests to the presidential race” premiered last night. I haven’t had the chance to watch it yet, but I hope […]

Following the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit continues to provide a crash course in the current controversies concerning the availability of habeas relief in federal courts. This week, the Sixth Circuit is once again divided — this time 7-7 on a petition for rehearing en banc — over whether a habeas petition […]

The Stern Review is not getting favorable reviews from environmental economists. A sample: John Whitehead of the Environmental Economics blog analyzes the report here, here, and here; Prometheus has posted commentary by Richard Tol here; and Roger Pielke Jr. notes the report cherry-picks data on hurricanes here.