Category: constitution

I’ve been re-reading parts of James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom (thanks Sis!), often billed as the best one-volume history of the Civil War era. While it goes into quite a bit more detail about orders of battle and such than I feel the need for — there’s too much about the war and less than…

Just a reminder for all those red-state debt-ceiling hawks out there. Here’s where the debt came from: How do you think state budgets would look if all those in-the-red red states had to pay back all the federal money they’ve gotten from the prosperous blue states? Start this at the three-minute point: Related posts: “Its…

Most people don’t know this fascinating and appalling little bit of legal history. I first learned about it back in 2003, from my friend and colleague Ted Nace’s Gangs of America. Accounts of it are all over the web, but I’ll try to give you the short story here. In casual discussions from the bench prior…

Reading the many web comments on my flat tax proposal, I find that many didn’t actually read it (I do go on…), or understand it. So here’s the short version. Not so short, as it turns out, but I hope easier to grasp quickly. Unlike the many commenters who failed to do so, please at…

My regular readers will know that I’m fascinated by systems with “emergent properties” — systems where a few simple rules that individuals operate by result in complex and surprisingly organized behavior by the group — group properties that don’t seem to have any obvious direct relationship to the simple rules. Birds flocking is a great…