Kevin Drum 🕸

Check this out from the latest release of the American Time Use Survey: This is a proud day, America. After years of hard work, we've finally broken the 9-hour sleep barrier. And this an average, so it literally took all of us working together to accomplish this. First rate effort, fellow citizens. And in case ...continue reading "America finally breaks the sleep barrier"

The Supreme Court has decided to leave their two biggest cases for the last day of the term. Apparently they want to drop them Friday morning and then get the hell out of Dodge. I'm not quite sure what that means. But in the category of big-but-not-world-shaking decisions, today they published their opinion in Securities ...continue reading "The Supreme Court hobbled the power of the SEC today. But what about everyone else?"

This is a western green mamba. It's a cute little thing, and quite shy. But don't rile one up. They don't bite often, but when they do you'd better have your affairs in order.

A new study takes a look at prescription refills of contraceptives in the post-Dobbs era. The authors report that fills of emergency contraceptives dropped significantly in states that adopted restriction on abortion, but there was apparently no difference in fills of ordinary oral contraception: What's peculiar here is the secular drop everywhere in oral contraception. ...continue reading "New study says oral contraceptive use has plummeted"

Based on recent Supreme Court rulings, it's not quite right anymore to say that we have a liberal bloc and a conservative bloc. We now have three blocs: Liberal (Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson) Conservative (Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett) Ultra-conservative (Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch) The liberal and ultra-conservative wings are almost always on opposite sides in hot button cases. ...continue reading "The Supreme Court now has three blocs"

Here's the drop in murder rates in the largest US cities. Most of the data is through the end of March. The data from Boston comes from a New York Times story this morning. Homicide is down almost everywhere, and in Boston it's down a phenomenal 78%.

400 terrorist illegal immigrants have been allowed into the US! Sigh. Debate moderators are suckers for breaking news, so I suppose we'll have to waste time on this tomorrow night. The story comes from NBC News, which says this: The migrants are of concern because of "potential" ties to ISIS. What this appears to mean ...continue reading "There are some migrants with “ISIS ties” at large in America"

The median price of a new house fell again last month: The price of a new house is now below its pre-pandemic trendline and heading toward its 2020 level. It may or may not get there, depending on how the economy does, but it'll be close. When the Fed finally gets around to lowering interest ...continue reading "New house price drops again in May"

TIL that there's a distinction between bribes and gratuities. A bribe is something given before the fact: Here's $13,000 if you'll buy our garbage trucks. A gratuity happens after the fact: Thanks for buying our garbage trucks! Here's $13,000. I didn't choose that example lightly. It's the background in Snyder v. United States, a case ...continue reading "Why do conservatives love government corruption?"

Republicans in Congress have passed an appropriations bill that slashes funding for the Department of Justice because they're mad about its prosecution of Donald Trump. Seriously. They've also shoveled in a truckload of other ridiculous culture war proposals that won't pass but can be bragged about on Fox News. Whatevs. But I want to know ...continue reading "Why are Republicans going easy on Alejandro Mayorkas?"

This is a blue fiesta flower happily blooming at one of our local nature preserves. I took this picture of it five years ago and it's been waiting ever since for its moment in the spotlight. It just goes to show that good things come to those who wait.

According to TheRighting, here's the year-over-year change in traffic at the top conservative news sites:

The Dallas Fed reports today that AI has so far had "minimal" effects on employment in Texas firms. Maybe. But first, take a look at their chart: Among firms that use AI, that's a net of 8% of firms saying it's decreased their need for workers. That doesn't seem so minimal to me—especially for a ...continue reading "AI is already widely adopted and eliminating jobs"

The Denver Basic Income Project is a program that gave no-strings money to homeless people in Denver. It ran through most of 2023 and included three randomly chosen groups. Group A got $1,000 per month for 12 months. Group B we don't care about. Group C got $50 per month. Here's how they did on ...continue reading "Here are the bizarre results of giving homeless people cash"

Remember that federal judge who banned the Biden administration from contact with social media? He wrote a humdinger of an opinion claiming the government had pressured Facebook and others to censor right-wing views: Virtually all of the free speech suppressed was “conservative” free speech.... The Plaintiffs have outlined a federal regime of mass censorship.... The ...continue reading "On a technicality, Supreme Court overturns ruling of mass censorship by Biden administration"

The Wall Street Journal has a long piece today about something I've been puzzled over: Has the US actually slowed down its arms shipments to Israel?  But after nearly a thousand words of saying, basically, no, the reporters suddenly toss in this short paragraph: Since May, the State Department has delayed moving forward with a ...continue reading "There’s been no slowdown in arms shipments to Israel"

Rep. Jamaal Bowman lost his primary race tonight to challenger George Latimer. The final tally was a 58%-42% landslide in Latimer's favor. Conventional wisdom says this was mostly due to massive spending by AIPAC, the American-Israel lobbying group. And that surely had a big impact. But it's worth noting a couple of things. First, Bowman ...continue reading "Bowman, Trump both big losers tonight"

Here is per capita spending on food over the past 90 years: The spike during World War II is interesting, as well as the short drop in eating out as soon as the war was over. The pandemic produced an increase in food at home but a bigger decline in food out. Since then, however, ...continue reading "Raw data: Spending on food"

This is a statue of Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna at the turn of the century. "Under his administration," says the Encyclopedia Britannica, "Vienna became an efficient, modern metropolis." Thus the statue. Unfortunately, Lueger was also something of an antisemite—apparently an inspiration for no less than Adolf Hitler. This is why SHAME is now spray ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

The Julian Assange plea deal is a little more interesting than I initially thought. To simplify considerably, there were basically two things Assange was charged with: Obtaining and distributing classified national defense material. Actively helping Chelsea Manning obtain the material. In particular, prosecutors alleged that Assange "agreed to crack a password hash stored on U.S. ...continue reading "What exactly did Julian Assange plead guilty to?"