Saturday, January 30, 2010

From Lyle Deniston in SCOTUS blog:

The final briefs seeking to shape the Supreme Court’s coming decision on the reach of the Second Amendment’s protection of gun rights suggested Friday that states might be free to violate other parts of the Bill of Rights, if too narrow a view is taken of the constitutional liberties that state and local governments must respect. If gun rights are singled out as the only constitutional rights unshielded from states, counties, and cities, then no other rights are safe, according to the new briefs.

Like or loathe guns (and I do not do guns myself), I think the pro-gun briefs are right. The biggest mistake about Constitutional questions is a tendency of all sides to believe that all the document really says is: "Do good things. Do not do bad things."

Monday, January 18, 2010

Employment, wage gaps and creative thinking

While creative thinking is often a welcome trait, for most actual jobs the return it offers to employers is far below that of other traits, including leaden, uncomplaining stoicism. An educational system that stresses it as the goal will tend to produce higher returns for a few, and lower for everyone else. And the expectation gap will be even greater than this implies.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Not the only one

with an allergy to collective nouns in a policy discussion.