John Lott the Debunker

I've heard a lot of people criticize Freakanomics and its claim that abortion reduces crime because the children who would have grown up to be criminals were aborted 18 years ago. Most of the criticisms I've heard center around attacking utilitarian logic and that we shouldn't kill one fetus to save several murder victims.

John Lott's Freedomnomics has the first criticism I've seen that focuses on real statistical data. He begins with an interesting finding:
Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.
For children born between 1969 and 1973, by the time they reached the ages of 18-25, the rate of murder was normal.
For children born between 1974 and 1978, by the time those children reached 18-25, their rate of murder was dramatically higher.

Lott's explanation is that legalizing abortion has led to more children being born out of wedlock, since it caused increased promiscuity among young people. The number of children born into single parent homes increased, and those children started committing lots of crimes.

I'm not sure how convincing this long logical chain is, but that's mainly because I don't know if abortion actually caused lots of children to be born out of wedlock. This sounds correct, but he's the first person I've encountered to make this claim.

Anyone have thoughts on whether or not there is a causal connection between making abortions more accessible and having more single parent families? The economic explanation presented is that abortions reduce the "cost" of sex since both parties no longer have to worry about raising a child, and that this has therefore led to an explosion in irresponsible sex and actually more teen pregnancy.

How to stop a lien

I recommend Richard Epstein's Supreme Neglect for anyone interested in property rights and looking for fascinating examples of how far the government will go to avoid a takings claim.

My favorite case he describes is Armstrong v. United States. Essentially, the U.S. had purchased boats to use for the Navy. But there were actually still liens on the boats, the U.S. hadn't fully purchased them yet. So what does the U.S. do? Sails the boats out of the state, thereby ending the lien. Really, the government just set sail for international waters.

Most of the cases are the same as the one's we covered in Property, except Epstein explains the correct result the Court should have reached. I was most interested in the sections where he expands the application of takings to rent control, intellectual property, and of course, all taxes.

The Milton Friedman Institute

The University of Chicago announced plans to open the Milton Friedman Institute in honor of their most famous Nobel Prize winning faculty member. And then I read this in the Chicago Tribune
More than 100 professors signed a letter criticizing the naming of the institute after Milton Friedman.

And here I was, reflecting on Jonah Goldberg's book, wondering if liberals really were all that fascist. I apologize for doubting you Goldberg.


My favorite part of the faculty letter was that they claim Friedman's work and research has been to everyone's detriment...worldwide. Apparently Keynes is still believed to be a wonderful economist who helped people around the world. I'm sure he appreciates their thoughts while he's burning in hell.

Nice Fascism

I just finished Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, and it is fantastic. His main goal is to demonstrate how the left has more in common with fascist groups like the Nazis and Mussolini's black shirts. I'm glad someone is finally debunking the myth that the Nazis were part of the right when in fact Nazi stands for "National Socialist." I also learned quite a bit about progressive goals. According to Goldberg,

Margaret Sanger, one of the founders of Planned Parenthood, tried to distribute contraceptives to African Americans so that their population would fall and eventually die out.

Holmes decision in Buck v. Bell supporting eugenics was actually cheered by the left, it was Catholics on the right who were his biggest critics at the time.

Minimum wage was designed to keep good jobs for whites so immigrants and blacks would not "take away" those jobs by working for lower wages.

I've heard most of these arguments before, but usually they're only hinted at or implied. Goldberg is the first person I've read who comes out in the open to declare that the left is racist, fascist, and oppressive.

Open carry

The LA Times reports on a new trend among gun owners: not concealing their weapons but instead openly carrying them out in public.

We of course have the usual assortment of complaints:
1. It is harder for the police to tell who legitimately and who doesn't have a weapon.
2. The world has changed, it's not the Wild West.
3. "What are you, paranoid? There's no need for a gun at a retail store." (see the comments)

Anyone interested in the legality of opening carrying weapons in their state should check out OpenCarry.org (mentioned in the article). Seems like an interesting group.

We've got to do something

This music video from Forgetting Sarah Marshall really summarizes my feelings about U2, Green Day, and every other pretentious band that feels like lecturing me in their songs. Stick to writing songs instead of bitching about politics.

Scalia and Garner

I just finished Making Your Case by Scalia and Garner. There's nothing particularly new that wasn't taught in our legal writing classes, but it's the huge collection of anecdotes and examples that really make this book interesting.

For example, in explaining the importance of framing the issue. Scalia presents two ways of framing Eisenstadt v. Baird

1) It is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted government intrusion
2) We must decide whether the state is constitutionally obligated to allow the sale of goods that facilitate fornication and adultery by making those practices less costly.

Fantastic. I need to buy my own copy to use as a reference book.

Inefficient Breach

My view of Richard Posner has changed dramatically after reading his book, Not a Suicide Pact, which is about how we should interpret the Constitution to combat terrorism.
I'd never read anything by Posner about Constitutional law, and in the past I've generally agreed with his decisions that courts should try to achieve the most efficient outcome.

I don't think achieving the most efficient outcome is the proper goal of interpreting the Constitution though. It's a text designed to protect people, even if the outcome turns out to be the more efficient one. Yet Posner's argument centers on balancing liberty and security from terrorists. His goal is to find the margin at which a small sacrifice in liberty will create an equal increase in security. After addressing the ability of each branch to calculate the costs and benefits, he ends up deciding that judges are best able to make such calculations.

Some particularly disturbing lines:
"So much of the constitutional text is vague or obsolete that a great deal of judicial patchwork is required for the Constitution to remain serviceable more than tw centuries after it was written."

"Ex Parte Milligan was decided in 1866. The idea that a case almost a century and half old should guide us in dealing with al-Qaeda is ridiculous."

"Far more dangerous is the resistance of business, in the name of property rights and free markets...Property rights can block national security measures as mischievously as rights of liberty and privacy can."


But even assuming that an efficient outcome of security and liberty is a proper goal, the Constitution intentionally makes sure that it's not political actors who are doing these calculations. Politicians tend to gain more power and can justify more taxes the greater the perceived national security. Hence, the Constitution makes sure liberties are taken out of the political process because we shouldn't trust elected officials to strike the right balance.

I've now realized that Posner is no originalist, and that even though he may often come to the same conclusions as actual originalists, it's not because he feels bound by the text in any meaningful sense. Long live formalism.

But can you legislate from the bench?

Wired has an article on Sandra Day O'Connor's work on a new online, interactive civic education game called Our Courts. The article notes an early exercise on students' First Amendment rights, including Tinker v. Des Moines and the "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" case.

George Will on Colbert

A sad but true line from Colbert:
"My guest tonight is one of the intellectual giants of conservatism. He doesn't have as much competition as he used to."

I've never seen Will speak before, but I was very impressed. He's probably the closest I've seen to Buckley both in his persona and his old school conservative views.

"The government's job is to deliver the mail, defend the shores, and get out of the way."

I think he's mostly right, but where did he get the idea that the government should be delivering the mail? Thankfully it's only a small tinge of statism.

Too bad Lexis stopped giving points away, otherwise I'd get his book for free. But I think I'll still buy it.

Barry Goldwater

"A government that has the power to give you everything you want also has the power to take away everything you have."
-Barry Goldwater

I used to think that Ron Paul was the only politician who invoked Barry Goldwater these days, but I recently finished Reclaiming Conservatism by Mickey Edwards. Edwards is a former Congressman who served for 16 years and was one of the founders of the Heritage Foundation. I was very surprised to hear a Heritage Foundation leader viciously criticize neo-cons for supporting bigger government and an aggressive foreign policy.

It's also a fantastic read for anyone interested in the recent history of the conservative movement. I'm also becoming more sympathetic to the term "paleocon" even though it makes me think of small government dinosaur fossils.

Possible Speaker?

A recent post from Eugene Volokh's blog:

[Eugene Volokh, June 3, 2008 at 5:12pm]

Talks to a Few Federalist Society Student Chapters Next Spring:

I won't be teaching most of next Spring, and my boys will be a little older and (I hope) less of a handful for my wife to mind; so I'm hoping that I could do a bit more talking to Federalist Society student groups, something that I enjoy but that I have unfortunately not been able to do for the last few years.

My hope, though, is that I could avoid taking two-day-long trips across country just to give one talk. So if you are in a city with several law schools, would like to invite me to talk to your Federalist Society, and can coordinate things with a few other chapters so that I can do three or four talks in two or three days, please e-mail me at volokh at law dot ucla dot edu.

What we waste time on in education

More grade inflation. A number of schools have decided to change grade Fs from zero to 50. As a math major in college, this comment did it for me:

"It's a classic mathematical dilemma: that the students have a six times greater chance of getting an F," says Douglas Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center.

I don't want to explain what's wrong with that.

One consequence is because 60% is all that's needed to be considered proficient, students can now do absolutely nothing but squeak by on a single exam and pass.

Government math

The New York Times reports on the number of state and local governments promising benefits to public workers based on nonsense for the most part.

Things like having consultants hired by the workers themselves to do the analysis.

One great example: when Fort Worth's pension fund ended up with a $410 million deficit, they found that an actuary had calculated that the city could put less money into and give more away. All they needed was a 10.23% annual growth rate!

There is one possible solution: getting the regulator, the Internal Revenue Service, to stop the fox from guarding the henhouses.

Update on knife control in England

The Sun reports on the new shock advertising campaign featuring bloody images of real-knife wounds. More than 400 search-and-stop operations during a two-week blitz. The images, clips and radio advertisements feel strangely familiar.

Environmentalists decide to scare the children

The state-sponsored Australian Broadcasting Corporation's "Planet Slayer" site has an interesting way to inform children about their environmental impact. Children are invited to take a quiz and informs them "what age you should die at so you don’t use more than your fair share of Earth’s resources!"

Australian Senator Mitch Fifield asked the Herald-Sun, "Do you think it's appropriate that the ABC ... depict people who are average Australians as massive overweight ugly pigs, oozing slime from their mouths, and then to have these pigs blow up in a mass of blood and guts?"

Of course, as PlanetSlayer's "creative director" tells the New York Post, "you can't buy publicity like that."

Luckily for me, I only should have died at age 9.6, so I'm doing better than most. Take the quiz yourself.