Kevin Drum 🕸

I missed this story a few days ago: The FBI violated people’s constitutional rights when it opened and “inventoried” the contents of hundreds of safe-deposit boxes during a raid on a Beverly Hills vault in 2021, a federal appellate court ruled Tuesday. ....As part of its case against the vault, prosecutors had alleged that some ...continue reading "Court actually rules against FBI in egregious civil asset forfeiture case"

Labor productivity was up 3.2% in the final quarter of 2023. That's nice. But for some reason I was curious about long-term averages over the past few decades. Here they are: The last five years have seen the highest productivity growth of the past 50 years with the exception of the dotcom boom. But why? ...continue reading "The pandemic produced a permanent change in productivity"

Disney has lost a round in its fight with Ron DeSantis: In a legal victory for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a federal judge in Tallahassee dismissed on Wednesday a lawsuit filed by the Walt Disney Co. over the state’s dismantling of the entertainment giant’s special taxing district. ....Judge Allen Winsor of the U.S. District Court ...continue reading "In shocker, Trump judge supports DeSantis in Disney feud"

Bum bum bum bum.... (Nah, it's just a dolphin.)

This morning, the illustrious Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing in which they got to chew out the heads of all the leading social media companies. I'm sure it was very cathartic. Here is Sen. Tom Cotton questioning the CEO of TikTok: 90/ Cotton: Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party ...continue reading "Congress got to yell at social media CEOs today"

Pew Research has released its latest numbers on social media use, but as usual they leave out NextDoor, one of the most fascinating social media platforms out there. I have updated Pew's chart to include them: The 33% number for NextDoor is based on their own claims, not survey data, so take it with a ...continue reading "Is NextDoor as popular as TikTok?"

Here's the latest from James Comer, lunatic chairman of the House Oversight Committee: Biden family associate Eric Schwerin told Congress that he interacted with VP Joe Biden often and provided him free services. Once again, Joe Biden’s claim that there was an "absolute wall" between his official government duties and his family’s business dealings is ...continue reading "Biden financial advisor says Biden never did anything wrong"

The Employment Cost Index represents the cost of employing an average person, and in some ways it's one of the most accurate measures of individual earnings. In Q4, after adjusting for inflation, it was up 0.9% from the previous quarter on an annualized basis: The biggest winner last quarter was transportation. The smallest increase was ...continue reading "Wages continue their upward climb in Q4"

Here's a quick recap of what's going on lately with border security: Republicans are opposing an immigration plan that tightens up the border considerably without much in return for Democrats. The House is moving ahead with an impeachment vote against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for literally no particular reason and with no chance of success. ...continue reading "Let’s review the border crisis"

COLLUSION! CORRUPTION! DEEP STATE COVERUP! Nathan Wade, the guy who's prosecuting Donald Trump in Georgia, has settled his divorce. That means he won't have to testify tomorrow about his (rumored) affair with Fani Willis, the Atlanta DA who's in overall charge of the Trump prosecution. Now, it's never been clear to me why it matters ...continue reading "Fani Willis’s (alleged) affair guy won’t have to testify"

The number of women with BAs who are working full time has nearly caught up with the number of men: Women with advanced degrees overtook men in the workforce in 2017. However, among those with only a high school diploma, men outnumber women by more than 60%.

Silverton, Colorado, in a panorama shot.

Oh ffs: Transgender Floridians can no longer change the listed gender on their driver licenses. ...."Permitting an individual to alter his or her license to reflect an internal sense of gender role or identity, which is neither immutable nor objectively verifiable, undermines the purpose of an identification record and can frustrate the state’s ability to ...continue reading "Florida bans trans identities on driver licenses"

Atrios says this about Joe Biden's efforts to pass immigration legislation: If you concede the issues that the other side have made their own are important, you have conceded that the other side is, in fact, correct, and that what they say is important is, in fact, important. Immigration is especially fraught as there is ...continue reading "Can we ever satisfy conservatives?"

Immigration hawks say that Joe Biden has cut back on deportations. Biden partisans say he's been tougher on deportation than anyone in recent history. Who's right? Both! Here are the stats: In his first three years, Trump deported 408,000 migrants. Biden deported only 385,000. But—in FY23 Biden deported 236,000 migrants, the highest total ever and ...continue reading "Raw data: Deportations under Trump and Biden"

Charles Littlejohn was sentenced today to five years in prison for stealing the tax returns of Donald Trump and thousands of other rich people. But Trump himself has been silent about this. Why isn't he crowing? That's easy. Littlejohn didn't work for the IRS. He was a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor. He was caught by ...continue reading "Trump has no comment about prison sentence of guy who stole his tax returns"

Hiring in December was up and quits were down. Hiring outnumbered total separations by 256,000: This is positive news since the general trend has been downward for the past two years.

Well, this is weird: I endured a lot yesterday. But having my body and outfit photoshopped by a media outlet was not on my bingo card. Note the enlarged boobs and outfit to be made more revealing. Can’t imagine this happening to a male MP. What gives? pic.twitter.com/NhnkDRMidc — Georgie Purcell (@georgievpurcell) January 29, 2024 ...continue reading "The AI ate my homework"

A few days ago I came across this tweet from Matt Yglesias during a stretch of bad weather that was tying up air travel: This has been followed by a bunch of edgelord conservative types complaining that DEI initiatives are making it unsafe to fly. Is this just an offshoot of the recent right-wing kvetching ...continue reading "Here’s the story of DEI in our nation’s skies"

Today's picture is a twin of Friday's. But in this one, the alstroemeria is in focus while the cat, if you look carefully, is just a blur.