Update, 8:39 PM — I’ve been told the title of the magazine is Marie Claire — sorry, I’m just not a subscriber. My apologizes to all the august readers of that fine publication. Don’t let my small mistake keep you from enjoying articles on “150 Hairstyles Even You Can Master,” “I Married a Terrorist,” or…

An affinity scam is when a confidence man relies on a common religious, ethnic, or social background to lull unsuspecting marks into a false sense of security. Rather than scrutinize an otherwise dubious proposition, the victim trusts the confidence man on the basis of a common background. Page C1 of the Wall Street Journal has…

Here are numbers 10-18 of my list of Techniques of Municipal Distraction, suitable for self-interested politicians and bureaucrats in towns across America. (Numbers 1-9 are available in an earlier post.) These are among the most common tactics for a local CYA effort: 10. When Policy is Questioned, Defend on Integrity. If someone questions your actions,…

Imagine that you’re a bureaucrat or long-term politician in a municipality with budget problems, failed police leadership, restrictive enforcement, or other embarrassments. Yours could be one of countless towns in America. What to do? The easiest path, and the one that you’ll likely take, it is commit to techniques of distraction rather than acknowledge, let…

Over at Philosecurity.org, security analyst Sherri Davidoff recounts what it’s like to try to fly from Boston’s Logan Airport without a wallet and ID. Her story reveals that TSA security is worrisome, as it asks the wrong information of a passenger without identification, assuring no security while unnecessarily intruding into other matters of personal privacy.…

There is a serious, principled case against Sen. Obama: that he will regulate too much, spend too much, tax too much, and compromise too much on security-state legislation and foreign adventures once in office. When libertarians debate Obama’s supporters on these points, libertarians can carry the day. No one, however, can beat him through crackpot…

One way to predict the outcome of the presidential race is through a market. The University of Iowa operates an electronic futures market where investors can purchase futures in a presidential candidate. The market fluctuates as the value of those contracts rise or fall with a candidate’s prospects. Here’s a description of the market: “The…

Good morning, Whitewater Whitewater has only one public meeting scheduled today: a 6:30 p.m. meeting of the library board. The National Weather Service, predicts a high of 76 degrees and patchy fog. The Farmers’ Almanac calls for fair skies. Today is a proud day in Wisconsin history, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society: on this…

David Boaz offers fitting remarks in tribute to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn waged a lifelong struggle against Soviet communism, a tyranny that killed tens of millions, oppressed hundreds of millions, and destroyed lives across every continent it touched. Solzhenitsyn did not embrace the conventional libertarian vision as we have, but shouldered a noble burden, rare and…

The Whitewater School Board meeting for Monday night was technically perfect – an agenda of more than a dozen items, dispatched in little over forty minutes. I know that summer days are long and hot, but I cannot avoid observing that there was a perfunctory quality to it all. We can list any number of…

I contended in Part 1 that conventionality takes hold quickly in s public body, in the absence of choice and the competition that it creates. That’s why I have contended before that ideology matters little, after a while: politics devolves from principled ideology into self-interested incumbency. Liberal, conservative, moderate – long-term incumbents all start to…

I posted previously on Andrew Coulson’s observation that public education costs more nationally than ever, but produces a result no better than decades ago. How did the world’s richest nation, with so many sharp people, wind up in this predicament? We abandoned the opportunities for choice in education. Choice produces competition between objects from which…

The Janesville Gazette has a troubling story on the decline in payrolls, by 3.1% over the last year, in Janesville. Smaller Whitewater (less than one quarter the size of Janesville) will feel the influence of economic hardship in its larger neighbor. The link to the Gazette story is at http://www.gazettextra.com/weblogs/latest-news/2008/jul/30/janesville-area-among-nations-worst-job-losses/

Over at the fine group blog the Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin posts in reply to an article in Dissent that contends Hayek is no longer relevant. Hayek remains relevant, as Somin notes, not only for a critique of socialism, but for his critique of the anti-growth, anti-change right, too. The excellent post may be found…