Archive for June, 2011

The New York State legislature has just legalized gay marriage in New York. For the libertarian reasons I’ve outlined here and here, I don’t think this is the optimal way to address the issue of marriage inequality; it takes a set of special government preferences (for heterosexual married couples) and extends those benefits to...
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It is absolutely breathtaking to watch a vigorous, bi-partisan debate on the floor of the House over the war powers of the President. Agree or disagree with the war in Libya, the War Powers Act, the global war on terrorism, or the contemporary reading of the Constitutional war powers of the President, this is...
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One of my biggest pet peeves in political discourse is the constant charge of hypocrisy, both explicit and implicit.  They take many forms, most of which you are probably familiar with, and all of which can be grouped into two categories.
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After the jump: the number of staffers working in the Speaker’s Office, 1982-2010.
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I was just walking down South Capitol Street, and I saw a guy wearing a #37 Strasburg jersey. An Expos jersey.
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In my previous post, I suggested that one way of putting the breaks our tendency toward global empire would be to institutional dis-incentivize both the President and Congress from deploying and using the military except when absolutely necessary.
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So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how to adjust the Constitution to de-incentivize the 20th and 21st century American tendency toward global military empire. And I came up with three broad goals: 1) Create institutional incentives that dissuade the President from deploying troops without congressional consent; 2) Create institutional incentives that...
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