Author: Eric Scheie

Are there levels of privacy? It’s like, I have been writing this blog for over eight years, which is a long time by most people’s standards, right? I am not going to stop writing it — if for no other reason than it is a daily exercise. But is this blog relevant to things I…

While the latest poll news is being viewed mainly in the context of Herman Cain rising while Mitt Romney is falling, what worries me the most is the meteoric rise (I mean that in the sense of rising from nothing) of New Gingrich: The man is poised to set himself up as the reasonable candidate.…

The debate over whether homosexuality is a choice (as if such a thing would be relevant to fundamental questions involving freedom) never seems to end. Herman Cain was recently asked about choice by Joy Behar: I mean, don’t think anybody in this world wants to be gay considering all the vilification that is brought upon…

Being petrified would seem to have its advantages. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QsKcNWdd9s&feature=related Of course, if you really were a rock, you’d have no say over how you were painted. Here in Ann Arbor they have one that gets painted constantly. No idea what it looks like today. This one’s not bad either.

Earlier I got an email from M. Simon, who said this: I keep telling my friends on the Right that when they have run through the dopers (or warring on them is no longer useful) all that apparatus used to go after the dopers will be used on them (we are already seeing the beginnings…

Probably because I am so accustomed to reading about dress codes under Sharia Law, yesterday I was annoyed to read that police in New York are telling women not to wear shorts or short skirts. At the same time, I recognize that police have no authority to tell people what to wear, as long as…

I feel guilty. Driving around yesterday, I stumbled upon a massive liquidation sale here in Ann Arbor. It consists of the contents of the corporate HQ of Borders Books, and I bought a bunch of office supplies and computer stuff (including the computer I am writing this post on, and a real workhorse of a…

Bigotry these days is getting, like, really really complicated. But my goal is to simplify, and yes, I think I can. Today I marveled over Janeane Garofalo’s very serious claim that “Racist Republicans Support Herman Cain,” because it reminded me of my superciliously convoluted explanation of why Cain can’t win: He can’t win. That’s because the…

Glenn Reynolds linked a very thoughtful post by Pat Nolan at NRO about the Gibson Guitar raid, and I am in 100% agreement on the central point about federal overcriminalization. America has become overcriminalized. The Gibson raids highlight how America’s criminal-justice system has become a Rube Goldberg contraption of laws and sentencing policies that have…

Yesterday, North Carolina’s Democrat Governor, one Bev Perdue, made the following joke (at least, she says it was a joke): “You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things. I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress…

A front page article in today’s Wall Street Journal caused economist David Henderson to ask a disturbing question. “Is the United States a Police State?“ Such a question must be especially disturbing for an economist to feel compelled to ask. Here’s what Henderson says: I’m organizing a session on this at the Association for Private…

I’ve been biting off more than I could chew today, so I haven’t had time for a single post until just now, when I find myself all worn out with nothing to say. However, the other day I posted a YourTube video about biting off more than you can chew: Nearly half of the country…

Floridians are not alone in thinking that Herman Cain won the debate. Erick Erickson also thinks so, and so does Ed Morrissey, who says that by citing his own battle with colon and liver cancer, Cain delivered the most devastating (and best) argument against ObamaCare and government encroachment in health care. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TnP1xnx6d8&feature=player_embedded Who wouldn’t expect an…

“They’re telling you how to live and what to do, and they’re doing it right here in America.” So complains a smoker who has been told she can no longer smoke in her own home, in a piece titled “Should Smoking at Home Be Illegal?” I wrote a post on this not-especially-new subject the other…

I hate it when I like what someone I don’t like says something I like, but Newt Gingrich did so today: Republican presidential candidate New Gingrich said Friday that “it’s silly” to characterize the GOP race as a two-person affair, arguing that the contest remains “still a very, very wide open race.” “There have been no votes taken…

A couple of commenters have complained that I devote too much time to the war on drugs. Maybe so. I am the first to admit that anything gets boring after a while. I often wonder which is more boring: to hear something I disagree with repeated endlessly or to hear something I agree with repeated…

Can we get along?  

I spent all morning trying to get online with my regular (main) computer, to no avail. No connection, and when I went to the command prompt, I was able to ping no sites at all. Even a loopback (127.0.0.1) yielded an annoying error code (which seems to have frustrated many a techie): IP Driver Error…

If you are annoyed by being told what to do, you probably wouldn’t want to live in what the Public Policy people call “high density housing.” Environmentalists want people to live in high-density, high-rise housing, and they want them crammed into buses and street cars. This is of course to save the environment from what…

I like Bryan Caplan, whose stuff I have read along with Arnold Kling’s at Econlib. But probably because I’m not an economist, I simply don’t read him enough to have a “favorite Bryan Caplan syllogism” as Megan McArdle does. Nevertheless, McArdle’s favorite Bryan Caplan syllogism is already my favorite: 1.  Something must be done 2.  This…