Kevin Drum 🕸

Last night the conversation at dinner somehow turned to the subject of education and the South. No conclusions were reached except for a vague agreement that Southern states didn't spend a lot on education and had generally poor outcomes. But is that true? Naturally I decided to check. My metric is 8th grade reading scores ...continue reading "Raw data: Education outcomes in Southern states"

Over at National Review, Philip Klein takes in the news that payments on the federal debt have gone up thanks to higher interest rates. Along the way he says: Under President Biden, massive spending has fueled not only high deficits but also inflation. Let's take a look! It looks to me like both Biden and ...continue reading "Federal spending is back down to normal"

On Saturday I was up in LA on a variety of errands. My last stop was the Westlake/MacArthur station near MacArthur Park, where I wanted to check out the blaring classical music being played to keep the bums out. Was it really loud enough to count as torture? Two caveats. First, MTA might have turned ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Over the weekend I observed that conservatives have been notably silent about the flaky legal reasoning behind Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's nationwide ban of the abortion pill mifepristone. Today, National Review's Michael New takes a different approach: instead of trying to defend Kacsmaryk's ruling on legal grounds, he claims that mifeprestone is, in fact, more dangerous ...continue reading "Pro-life group shows that mifepristone is safe"

Here's the latest from Texas. During the summer of 2020 an Army sergeant named Daniel Perry was upset about a nearby BLM protest. He wrote to a friend on social media that he might “kill a few people on my way to work. They are rioting outside my apartment complex.” The friend, naturally, asked, “Can ...continue reading "Texas governor says he will pardon murderer"

On this 990th Easter Sunday, let us take to heart Christ's teaching on poverty and wealth. His messages, often veiled in the form of parables, are crystal clear on this subject: Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God....But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received ...continue reading "How much is a dollar worth to you?"

I've seen a flurry of Democratic governors assuring their residents that mifepristone will by God continue to be available in their states. I appreciate the sentiment and applaud their public support. However, there's a wee gotcha here: mifepristone will continue to be available only if its manufacturers continue to ship it, and they will do ...continue reading "Even blue states may be in danger of losing access to mifepristone"

Two Democratic members of the Tennessee legislature, Justin Pearson of Memphis and Justin Jones of Nashville, have been expelled by Republicans who control a supermajority in the state House of Representatives. The given reason was "lack of decorum." So now Memphis and Nashville have two empty seats to fill. Who are they going to pick? ...continue reading "Republicans plotting further revenge on Tennessee reps they expelled"

We have recently run an excellent natural experiment about the rule of law: On Tuesday, Donald Trump was indicted on 34 counts of business fraud. Response was partisan, of course. Republicans unanimously blasted the legal basis for the case as both trivial and wrongheaded. Democrats . . . were split. Some defended the legal reasoning ...continue reading "Who takes the law more seriously? A natural experiment can tell us."

Well, the idiot judge in Texas did it: A federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary ruling invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, an unprecedented order that — if it stands through court challenges — could make it harder for patients to get abortions in states where abortion ...continue reading "Abortion pill banned, then unbanned hours later"

What are they staring at? A bird? A dog? An Amazon delivery driver? My recollection is that I looked out the window and, as usual, saw nothing. But then, I don't have five-dimensional cat eyes, do I?

New York City mayor Eric Adams announced a new contract with the police union yesterday. There hasn't been one for many years, so it was retroactive to 2017. Here's how they did: I estimated inflation of 4% in 2023 and 3% in 2024. Bottom line: in real terms, the NYPD will be making less by ...continue reading "Raw data: NYPD pay under their new contract"

Since today is jobs day, it's worth pointing out that we've reached a milestone. The prime-age labor force participation rate for both men and women has now caught up to its pre-pandemic peak: This is unusual. In the past two recessions (2000 and 2008), the LFPR declined and never caught back up to its past ...continue reading "Prime age labor participation is back to its pre-pandemic peak"

The American economy gained 236,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 146,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate ticked down slightly to 3.5%. Overall this is a decent but not great report: labor participation is up, the number ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Net new jobs in March"

You already know about Clarence Thomas and his lavish vacations. But check out this addition to the story from LA Times reporter David Savage, who wrote about all this stuff 20 years ago: Thomas refused to comment on the article, but it had an impact: Thomas appears to have continued accepting free trips from his ...continue reading "Clarence Thomas has been covering up his vacations for 20 years"

Today I read this story in the Guardian: In 2018, almost 30 cities across New York state received federal money to carry out a specific, urgent task: removing lead service lines that poison drinking water. The city of Troy — which sits across the Hudson River and just north of Albany — was among them, ...continue reading "What’s going on with the water in Troy?"

In 1968 Lyndon Johnson nominated Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, but the nomination failed because Republicans, along with some Southern Democrats, filibustered it. The Southerners didn't like the fact that Fortas was Jewish. Republicans, however, pointed to Fortas's receipt of $15,000 in private funds to give nine speeches at a ...continue reading "Republicans don’t care about Clarence Thomas’s lavish vacations"

This week Republicans have: Loudly defended Donald Trump against charges of lawbreaking that he's obviously guilty of.¹ One of them even boasted that he would prevent extradition of Trump to New York, something that's clearly unconstitutional. Expelled a Democrat from the Tennessee legislature for bad behavior, with two more to come. Arrested the teenage son ...continue reading "The Republican week in review"

This is the Basilica of Sacré Coeur, overlooking Paris from 400 feet above the city on the hill of Montmarte. It amuses me that it was built as something of a middle finger from rich Catholics as payback for the imprisonment of the pope following the Franco-Prussian war. As it happens, the pope wasn't really ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Lindsey Graham, who once proposed a national 20-week limit on abortions, has now proposed a 15-week limit. However, this would only be a ceiling. The law would still allow states to pass more restrictive abortion laws, and this makes it obviously of no interest to liberals. But what if it were just a straight nationwide ...continue reading "How popular would a nationwide 15-week rule for abortion be?"