Kevin Drum 🕸

Special Counsel Robert Hur has cleared President Biden of willfully keeping classified documents in his home after he left the vice presidency. As usual with these things, however, he also wrote a "damning" doorstop report to go along with it. Don't they all? The whole case turns primarily on the word "willfully." Hur seems to ...continue reading "Special counsel clears President Biden in documents case"

Tyler Cowen points today to a 2021 study that investigates whether liberals or conservatives are more likely to believe viral misinformation. The researchers removed their own bias by using a third-party service to track the 20 most viral news stories (ten true and ten false) on a biweekly basis. At the same time they surveyed ...continue reading "The truth has a liberal bias"

Pelicans hanging out at sunset on the jetty at Dana Point.

The only thing wrong with this Wall Street Journal headline is that it doesn't say "Investors Are Almost Always Wrong," full stop. My keen observation about investors is that they think (a) whatever is happening now will keep happening, and (b) high things will come down and low things will go up. Of course, they're ...continue reading "Investors have no idea what they’re doing"

The February schedule for BLS releases includes something called "Occupational Requirements in the United States," and I've been waiting to find out just what this is. Today the 2023 edition was released and it turns out to be about.......occupational requirements. But not just education or experience. Are you OK with heights? Is the job outdoors? ...continue reading "Does your job require people skills?"

The LA Times reports that California's Central Valley residents are excited that they'll soon have access to high speed rail. For example, here's Domaris Cid, a student at Fresno City College: “It kind of sucks how I would have to move out of the valley to ... have an education that I want,” said Cid, ...continue reading "California’s train to nowhere is such a dumb waste of money"

Apropos of nothing in particular, here's a summary of how many people were deported in 2023 following a hearing in immigration court: Nicaraguans are packed off nearly two-thirds of the time. Cubans are nearly never sent away. Overall, about a third of immigrants who get hearings are deported. The balance of hearing outcomes fall mainly ...continue reading "Raw data: About one-third of illegal immigrants are deported"

Here's a great story about cybersecurity company Fortinet Inc.: A widely reported story that 3 million electric toothbrushes were hacked with malware to conduct distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks is likely a hypothetical scenario instead of an actual attack. ....Fortinet, who was attributed as the source of the article, has not published any information ...continue reading "You are safe from your toothbrush . . . for now"

A CBO report published today says that economic growth over the next decade is likely to be higher than previous projections. Why? Mostly because of the surge in immigration over the past couple of years. So hooray for immigration? Not really. I suspect CBO's estimates of net immigration are too high, but even if they're ...continue reading "Does immigration really boost GDP?"

A friend of mine told me today that 60 Minutes ran an episode on Sunday about a gap in the border wall near Jacumba Hot Springs. Here's what it looked like: The implicit question from the 60 Minutes piece is, why can't the government fill this four-foot gap "between the 30-foot steel border fence and ...continue reading "What’s up with that gap in the border fence?"

This is Bovard Hall on the USC campus at dusk. It is also Bovard Auditorium and the Bovard Administration Building. Take your pick.

Pew Research released some survey results today about voting. The partisan divides were mostly unsurprising, but there were a couple that were unexpected: It looks like liberals have lost the battle on voter ID: even 69% of Democrats think it's a good idea. At the same time, conservatives have lost the battle on felon voting. ...continue reading "Even Republicans think it’s fair to let felons vote"

Greg Ip says today that tariffs haven't reduced "trade links" with China much. But year-end trade figures were released today, and if you look at imports of goods from China it sure looks like they had an impact: Ip says this is a bit of a mirage because imports from places like Mexico and Vietnam ...continue reading "Imports from China are down . . . sort of"

Los Angeles County spends a lot of money on litigation: This is a 212% increase from the year before. Most of it goes to settlements and judgments, and there were three gigantic ones last year:

You may have seen reports that Republicans have failed in their attempt to impeach Homeland secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. But it's not really true. Three Republicans defected to make the vote 215-215. Rep. Blake Brooks then switched his vote to No to make it 214-216, but this was purely a procedural move that allows impeachment to ...continue reading "House votes against Mayorkas impeachment — for now"

Over at National Review, Kayla Bartsch says shoplifting is rampant: The Left says retail crime is going down. The truth? Theft has become so pervasive — and ordinary — that retailers have simply stopped reporting it. The well-documented surge in shoplifting in the U.S. has.... Let's just stop right here. Bartsch specifically links "well-documented" to ...continue reading "Is shoplifting up or down?"

This is a very sociable horse that I met in Colorado. All the other horses ignored me, but this one cantered right up and let me stroke her face. I felt kind of guilty that I didn't have an apple or something to give her.

You probably don't watch much Fox News, do you? If that's the case, you're behind the times. Your impression of Fox News has been formed by folks like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Bill O'Reilly, and so forth. Conservative, sometimes crazy, but basically just political outrage artists. That's not the Fox News of today. Hannity is ...continue reading "Yes, Fox News has gotten even worse"

I wrote this about artificial intelligence in 2017: Even if Moore’s law slows down or stops, the total power of everything put together—more use of custom microchips, more parallelism, more sophisticated software, and even the possibility of entirely new ways of doing computing—will almost certainly keep growing for many more years. ....We’ve finally built computers ...continue reading "AI is almost here"

In an unsurprising turn of events, the DC Circuit Court has ruled that Donald Trump doesn't have legal immunity for anything he happens to have done while president. Trump's lawyers continue to assert that this means "every future president who leaves office will be immediately indicted by the opposing party," but the court put quick ...continue reading "Court says it’s OK to prosecute Trump"