Kevin Drum 🕸

Over at National Review, Matthew Wilson clucks over Taraji P. Henson's claim that the Supreme Court has criminalized homelessness: In fact, the Supreme Court did not make it a “crime to be homeless.” In Johnson, the Court held that it is not a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment for ...continue reading "Yes, the Supreme Court now allows cities to make homelessness illegal"

This is the famous statue of Athena outside of Parlament¹ in Vienna. As you may remember, Athena has always been my favorite of the Greeks gods. She could kick butt when she needed to, but had the wisdom to know when not to. As for her unfortunate participation in the Trojan War, we'll just let ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

I overslept and then had to hop into my car for my first radiation treatment. So I'm a little late to the news. On the bright side, I'm now 1/28th of the way to a healthy prostate. And now the news. The big news, obviously, is that the Supreme Court finally roused itself to rule ...continue reading "Supreme Court rules that it needs more time before ruling on Trump’s immunity"

For some time, I've been watching videos of Joe Biden to see for myself if he was showing signs of cognitive decline. Time after time, the answer was no. He had obvious physical limitations, but mentally he had no problems. What's more, all indications suggested he was carrying out the duties of the presidency just ...continue reading "Joe Biden needs to resign the presidency"

Donald Trump also flitted from subject to subject during Thursday's debate, but his primary sin was his ceaseless stream of lies. Here are a baker's dozen of them. 1. Tariffs: Not going to drive [prices] higher. It’s just going to cause countries that have been ripping us off for years, like China and many others, ...continue reading "Thirteen lies"

Here are ten short excerpts from answers Joe Biden gave during last Thursday's debate. Reading them on the screen allows you to judge his performance solely by its content without getting distracted by his hoarseness or his facial expressions or any other bits of theater criticism. We're not electing someone to star in Hamlet, after ...continue reading "Ten excerpts"

This ad from Donald Trump ran during Thursday's debate. That is, even before Joe Biden's terrible performance:  I don't personally have a strong opinion about Kamala Harris. But that doesn't matter. It's hard to overstate just how long and how intensely Fox News and others have been demonizing her. By now even moderate Republicans ...continue reading "President Harris?"

California recently passed a bill requiring high school students to take a class in financial literacy in order to graduate. I was curious about just what this entailed, so I took a look at the bill. There are a dozen basic curriculum requirements: Fundamentals of banking for personal use, including, but not limited to, savings ...continue reading "California now requires financial literacy in high school"

I've seen a surprising amount of confusion over what it means that the Supreme Court has killed "Chevron deference." But it's not complicated. In the Chevron case 40 years ago, the Court didn't say that federal agencies could just make up their own rules—or that judges couldn't overrule them. Judges can and do overrule agencies ...continue reading "Chevron was not a complicated decision"

It's commonplace these days to note with alarm the growing influence of extremist right wing parties in Europe. I think this is generally overblown, but it's worth noting that, to the extent it's true, it's largely because these parties have made themselves over as less extreme. In France, for example, Marine Le Pen took over ...continue reading "Is France’s extreme right still all that extreme?"

This is from the Wall Street Journal this morning: I'm not picking on the Journal here. They're just one of many. My question is: Why does Elon Musk's every utterance seem to get news play? In the case of Donald Trump it's understandable. He was president of the United States and might be again. But ...continue reading "Why do we care what Elon Musk thinks of Star Wars?"

According to a new study, here's our best estimate of the number of premature deaths caused each year by a variety of chemicals: But wait! I left the two biggest killers off because they wrecked the y-axis. Here's the full chart: Lead kills more people than every other chemical combined. And drawing from other sources, ...continue reading "Raw data: Killer chemicals"

There's been so much going on today that I forgot all about the May inflation report. This is PCE inflation, the measure preferred by the Fed: As usual, don't put too much stock in a single month's number. That said, this is superlative news. The headline rate is negative, and the core rate, which the ...continue reading "PCE inflation plummeted in May"

I would sure like to be a fly on the wall of the Supreme Court chambers right about now. The Court's term typically ends in June, but they still haven't released their ruling on Donald Trump's immunity claim. What can they possibly be waiting for? Was there some kind of last-minute change of heart that ...continue reading "The Supreme Court is toying with us"

This is hardly the biggest of Donald Trump's whoppers last night, but I've grown weary of his ceaseless claims that he successfully bullied NATO countries to spend more on defense. What really happened is that in 2014—under President Obama—NATO members recommitted themselves to spending 2% of GDP on defense. This was spurred by Russia's invasion ...continue reading "Joe Biden has been far more successful with NATO than Donald Trump"

Here are Charlie and Hilbert hanging out in the living room on a hot day. Charlie knows that Hilbert is down there, but I'm not sure Hilbert knew Charlie was up above.

This is just nuts: Compare this President Biden to the one on stage at the debate last night. pic.twitter.com/lRWHlVL5HG — Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) June 28, 2024 What the hell happened last night? Putting aside Biden's seeming cognitive issues, his voice was barely audible or understandable during the debate. I had to turn up the TV ...continue reading "Biden is suddenly OK this morning?"

The last 24 hours have been a big ol' slop bucket of bad news, so here's a little bit of positive news: The number of homeless people in the city of Los Angeles went down only slightly, but a lot more of them are now being sheltered. The number living on the street declined 10% ...continue reading "Living on the street drops 10% in Los Angeles"

Would you like my opinion on the other big court case of the day (so far)? Actually, you already have it. I wrote about it six months ago. A quick recap: the Sarbanes-Oxley bill makes it a crime to destroy evidence needed in an "official proceeding." It also says that anyone who "otherwise obstructs, influences, ...continue reading "Supreme Court spends pages and pages deciding what “otherwise” means"

The famous—or infamous—Chevron case isn't complicated. In a nutshell, it says that when Congress writes a vague law a federal agency should be allowed to interpret it in any reasonable way. Not any way. If an agency is flatly wrong, then a court can overturn it. But if there are multiple plausible ways of interpreting ...continue reading "Supreme Court decides courts are the very best at everything"