Brad DeLong demolishes [*] one of the more dishonest arguments being made about the Plame affair : that the number of “senior administration officials” is so large that finding the two guilty parties would require a miracle. And he points to Josh Marshall’s demolition of another [*]: Robert Novak’s sudden claim not to know that a “CIA operative” means someone undercover.
Brad also — in the course of criticizing Arnold Kling’s criticism of Paul Krugman — does a nice job [*] on the argument that it’s wrong to call a liar a liar. And Krugman himself reflects on the strange meaning of “civility” in the dictionaries of the right [*]: roughly, it seems to mean “Be polite while we slander you.”
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
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