Entries in Wilkerson (24)

Tuesday
09Mar2010

Gender Wars: No Adequate Antonym for "Feminism"?

It is possible that in the future, a dialogue of equals on equal grounds might occur between feminists and...uh...advocates of masculinity.

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Wednesday
24Feb2010

Statistics In the Courtroom

The Supreme Court decided yesterday that "You have the right to talk to an attorney before answering any of our questions" is sufficient warning when coupled, a few sentences later, with "You can use any of these rights at any time during this interview."

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Wednesday
17Feb2010

Helmets

On my way to school this morning, a motorcyclist—wearing fatigues, combat boots, a blaze orange vest, and…a helmet—pulled out of an apartment complex on a 1300 cc bullet bike.

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Sunday
14Feb2010

Economics and Social Policy: Getting it Backwards

I was listening to a lecture by economist Timothy Taylor. Right at the end of the lecture, he proposed that in much of the world, the US included, has social policy and the economy backward.

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Thursday
28Jan2010

Pain Policy as Public Policy for the Less Fortunate

Physical pain should become a relevant topic outside the realm of bioethics (including medications and pain relief for cancer and other illnesses). Public policy ideas and initiatives are too often measured in terms of dollars because it is so easy to measure welfare in dollars. However, willingness-to-pay tracks ability to pay. Thus, policy--even policy for the less fortunate--often overlooks the most physically painful problems.

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Thursday
14Jan2010

Grad Students Cannot Teach at W&M

William and Mary is in a transitional stage, with questions flying about how it will be both a liberal arts college and a research university at the same time. In the mix, the definition of a graduate student might change...

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Tuesday
12Jan2010

Drug Wars: Teo El Pozolero Detained

The NY Times reports that one of the nastiest men on the planet, Teodoro Eduardo Garcia Simental, was just detained in southern Baja California. He headed a drug cartel in Tijuana and was known to boil his enemies in a caustic solution called pozole (pozole is also a Mexican stew usually made with hominy). But this news might not be as good as it sounds, according to some.

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Friday
08Jan2010

Have Civil Liberties Become Non-Partisan?

Eric Posner argues here that the civil liberties threatened by the Bush administration are still being threatened by the Obama administration--indeed, that very little has changed in this arena. Posner argues that the recent expansion of profiling in airport security is along these lines and just goes to show that politicians of all ideologies are willing to do what is expedient in light of threats...

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Wednesday
06Jan2010

Negotiations behind closed doors, not on C-SPAN as the President promised.

USA Today has an article this morning on the Democrats' avoidance of a conference committee by carrying out intra-party negotiations (to be added to existing bills by amendment) rather than inter-house negotiations on the health care bill...

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Friday
01Jan2010

Immigration Case Load Higher in Federal Courts

Chief Justice John Roberts recently released statistics on the federal court system, and the numbers show it's not a good time to be a poor migrant unable to get papers...

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Tuesday
22Dec2009

Krugman Wants to End the 60-Vote Requirement.

Paul Krugman, something of a revolutionary economic and political commentator, has called for the end of the 60-vote requirement on killing filibusters. He thinks that the Senate moves too slowly because minorities can slow down processes. I disagree with him, and think that there is safety in slowness.

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Tuesday
22Dec2009

Senate Health Care Bill: Unconstitutional

According to Richard Epstein, one of the most renowned legal scholars of our time, the Reid bill is unconstitutional...

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Sunday
20Dec2009

Guns at a Snowball Fight in DC: Police vs. Innocent Fun?

Wednesday
16Dec2009

Some Reasons for New Drug Regulations.

Should we keep illegal drugs illegal and legal drugs legal, or mix things up a bit?

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Sunday
13Dec2009

Immigration on the Southern Border: Racism, Protectionism, or Rule of Law?

Immigration enforcement has turned away from deportation and toward the federal criminal justice system: under federal programs, supported by both Republicans and Democrats in Washington, people seeking a better life through hard work are being imprisoned in a private-public prison partnership that lines the pockets of prison corporations and keeps local governments afloat...

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Tuesday
08Dec2009

American Poverty

My friend and I walked past a soup kitchen in DC the other day, where dozens of people were enjoying a steaming meal on the cold sidewalk. This friend had purchased a new suit coat from Wal-Mart late the previous night because he had forgotten his in Williamsburg and we needed to be dressed up. Needless to say, he didn't find the fit appealing, and as we got the the corner with the soup kitchen in plain sight, he took off the jacket and hung it on a fence across the street...

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Monday
30Nov2009

Why is Miss Clinton's engagement all over the news?

NPR, along with innumerable other news sources, has painstakingly reported that Chelsea Clinton is getting married. For some reason this is all over the news--even the sources that I thought were serious about what they report...

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Friday
27Nov2009

Management by Walking Around

Janet Napolitano helped "screen" passengers at an airport over the holiday. This video shows her with her rubber gloves on, doing the apparently unneeded job of pushing bins toward the a conveyer belt. Management by walking around is probably impossible at an organization the size of DHS. Assuming that's true, what was Napolitano doing? 

Friday
27Nov2009

Lowering the Infant Mortality Rate Among African Americans

The New York Times has an article today that describes how the infant mortality rate among African Americans, although on average more than twice that of white Americans, has dropped precipitously in one Wisconsin county. No great advances in medical care or technology can explain the improvement, so health officials have decided that the cause is lower premature birth rates due to better mental, social, and physical health among mothers...

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Wednesday
25Nov2009

Vengeance

Looking at the few comments on this story about a man executed by electrocution in Virginia last week, it got me pondering about why we love the death penalty so much here...

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