Winter’s Haven

In response to the latest vague warnings from the Department of Homeland Security, Radley Balko of Reason patiently explains how the DHS is — quite literally — terrorizing the American public. The article is quite good; go read it.
I’m not posting this because I have anything insightful to add. I’m posting it because I [...]

I’m going to explain what “Equality Under the Law” means. This post is motivated by a thread at Friendly Atheist. Here is the question, posed to FA and readers by a theist, which started things:
[most people believe] that everyone is equal, and deserves equal treatment under the law.
But how do you prove this? In [...]

In the comments to my previous post on consequentialist libertarianism, Joe Otten wrote:
I think I view attempts to do good through government with a healthy skepticism, and that libertarians generally view it with unhealthy outright hostility.
It is hard to see how something like state education has had perverse consequences. We would probably still be semi-feudal [...]

A recent post on Daylight Atheism explains why Ebonmuse is not a libertarian. But I think he bungled it . Aside from Ebonmuse’s support for military draft, I see no objections to calling him a libertarian. My bio page says I’m a “consequentialist libertarian”, and I think it’s time for me to explain [...]

Nigel Johnson-Hill has a farmer friend who received a £3000 payment from the UK government for not raising pigs. Nigel decided that he wanted to enter the business, and he wrote a hilarious letter to the Secretary of State to request information:
In your opinion what is the best kind of farm not to rear [...]

I don’t make a habit of getting excited about intellectual property law, but this proposal to resolve patent disputes via Starcraft matches is hilarious. It’s even more hilarious once you catch your breath and realize that it might not actually be such a bad idea.

The New York Times compiled an enormous list of earmarks which Congress has handed out to religious organizations. This is completely unconstitutional, and it’s an outrage that the IRS is picking our pockets to fund religious groups.

Contrary to what I stated in the previous post, it is completely incorrect that DDT bans have prevented its use for vector control in third-world countries. Bug Girl, an entomologist, thoroughly debunks that claim. The agricultural use of DDT has been banned in many places (partly because more widespread use of insecticides causes insects develop [...]

Marc Andreessen points out a most enlightening interview in Der Spiegel of a Kenyan economist on the topic of development aid.
One might look at this as just a very bad case of unintended consequences, but I’d like to suggest that there is a deeper moral here: we need to stop assuming that altruistically motivated actions [...]

As reported by the New York Times, a federal appeals court handed down a ruling which flatly rejects the Bush administration’s assumed right to designate people as “enemy combatants” and imprison them on that basis. It’s about time.
I’m very happy that the courts have finally condemned this flagrant violation of the rule of law. I [...]