Kevin Drum 🕸

The Supreme Court heard arguments today about President Biden's student loan forgiveness program. Most of the news reports suggest that a majority of the court was skeptical that Biden had the authority to enact this program via executive action. The Supreme Court currently has before it a number of cases that could demonstrate its rank ...continue reading "Supreme Court seems likely to rule against student loan forgiveness"

William McGurn says the danger of East Palestine's chemical spill has been exaggerated. The EPA and private scientists have declared the air and water safe, but a lot of residents don't believe them: Today’s fear is the price Americans are paying for the public-health authorities’ response to Covid. So many things experts claimed in the ...continue reading "How science works: A very, very brief primer"

I don't have any special reason for posting this, but I happened to be checking out some abortion polling numbers and came across the latest from Gallup: Support for more lenient abortion rules had been rising steadily since 2013 and then skyrocketed after the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision was leaked in early 2022. Only 15% ...continue reading "Abortion support skyrockets in 2023"

A few days ago we got a glimpse at a deposition in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News. It showed that primetime stars like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson knew that conspiracy theories about ballot machines were nonsense, but didn't want to stop talking about it because it might be bad for ratings. ...continue reading "Murdoch admits that Fox News hosts touted voting conspiracy theories"

Over at National Review, Nate Hochman is annoyed at Stanford University: The demographic profile of Stanford University’s class of 2026 is out, with 1,736 matriculated students in the freshman class of one of the world’s most prestigious universities. But as some perceptive critics were quick to notice, one key demographic is disproportionately underrepresented: While whites ...continue reading "Does Stanford under-enroll white students?"

I realize this will seem sort of pitiful to you folks east of the Mississippi, with your frigid weather and routine winter blizzards, but we don't get many blizzards here in Southern California. This weekend we did, and we're all pretty excited about it. So today we have a diptych of Saddleback, a pair of ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

A few weeks ago I reported that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wasn't through with Disney. After eliminating Disney World's special taxing district in an act of revenge, he now planned to reinstate the district but with a board appointed entirely by him. It seemed as if DeSantis was taking further revenge, but not everyone thought ...continue reading "Ron DeSantis reverses epic tax screwup in signing ceremony today"

Yesterday I passed along the news that new intelligence had persuaded the Department of Energy to support the COVID lab-leak theory with "low confidence." That was from the Wall Street Journal. Today the New York Times has the same story but adds this: While the department shared the information with other agencies, none of them ...continue reading "COVID lab-leak followup: Nobody else buys the new DOE intelligence"

The Wall Street Journal reports that rents are falling. And indeed they are. Here's the Zillow ZORI index through January: Rents peaked in August and have been falling ever since. The February numbers will be out shortly and will probably show that rents have almost completely reverted to their pre-pandemic trend. That's good news, but ...continue reading "Raw data: Rents are shrinking, but still have a ways to go"

Here's a little bonus astrophotography post for you. This is the same star trails picture that I put up a few weeks ago, but while I was messing around recently on the NASA site I realized that it probably showed something interesting. And it does: I grayed out the image except for the part I've ...continue reading "Another look at the green comet"

Hum de hum: The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress. ....The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable ...continue reading "Energy Department says COVID was probably a lab leak"

The Wall Street Journal is at it again: Burned Out, More Americans Are Turning to Part-Time Jobs Part-time work is exploding. The number of Americans working part time rose by 1.2 million in December and January compared with the preceding months, according to the Labor Department. Most of that increase—857,000 workers—was driven by people who ...continue reading "No, part-time work is not suddenly booming"

Here is Paul Krugman responding to the latest economic data: While we shouldn't make too much of one month's report, pretty clear that economy is still running too hot, which isn't really a shock given everything else we know. The puzzle — and I'm genuinely puzzled, without strong priors or a political axe to grind ...continue reading "How hot is the American economy?"

This is Hilbert being hauled back into the house after he escaped during a little episode of rainfall. Careful observers will note the mud on his rear foot. Because of this he got a little paw bath before Marian would let him down, which he didn't seem to like very much. However, he did like ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 24 February 2023"

With Jimmy Carter apparently nearing death, a number of conservatives have taken to their word processors to declare that his 1979 "malaise" speech was pretty good after all. But, like David French, they say it was wrong then but right now: Carter was wrong. There wasn’t a crisis of confidence. There was no malaise. There ...continue reading "Forget malaise. It’s baseless fear that engulfs society these days."

Now this is what I'm talking about: Washington DCs DCA airport boarding areas are outfitted with numerous 254 nm UV disinfection systems. pic.twitter.com/fnBC0gPZce — Dustin Poppendieck (@Poppendieck) February 23, 2023 I've written about this before: it's called Far UV, and it's ultraviolet light in a range that's deadly to COVID-19 but harmless to human beings. ...continue reading "Far UV is a promising technology to kill COVID viruses"

There's no good news on inflation this month: As usual, don't pay too much attention to noisy monthly changes. That said, this was a mighty big monthly change, just like the one we saw a few days ago in the CPI numbers. It's so big, in fact, that it makes the trendline for core PCE ...continue reading "Inflation surged back to life in January"

Why is it that we've seen no productivity gains in the construction field? For example, here's the cost per square foot of building a skyscraper in Los Angeles over the past century:¹ Construction costs vary depending on both the type of building and what's being counted. The cost of the Wilshire Grand, for example, includes ...continue reading "Why does it cost so much to erect a skyscraper?"

It's not wildflower season yet, but all the rain around here has expedited things a little bit. Patches of California poppies are starting to show up on the hillsides and the desert is beginning to bloom. This flower is a yellow . . . poppy? Something else? I'm not sure. But great gobs of them ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Over at New York, Eric Levitz takes on a popular explanation for rising teen suicides: the world is objectively more horrible than it used to be and teens are depressed about it. Levitz presents a blizzard of statistics to show that life today isn't objectively worse than life a few decades ago, and everything he ...continue reading "Raw data: The life of modern teens"