Only about a third of visitors to Alaska get to see North America’s tallest mountain.  The thing is so tall, it actually creates its own weather.  So it can be a picture-perfect day (which, for all the state’s beauty, doesn’t happen often here), and there will likely still be clouds hovering around the peak.  We were within view of the mountain for the better part of five days, and didn’t see it until the tail end of the last day, when a thick fog blew over and the sky opened up.  Our tour bus pulled over to allow us to take some photographs.  Alaskans like to say that it’s the mountain with “the tallest vertical rise” in the world, noting that the mountain starts from a much lower base than the taller peaks in the Himalayas and the Andes.  It’s certainly a beautiful and dramatic thing to behold.  Probably the biggest object of any kind I’ll ever see.

Here’s a fun history lesson:  For centuries, the native Tanaina Indians have been calling the mountain “Denali,” which translates into “the high one.”  That’s also what most Alaskans call it–including the state government.   But due to the politics of geography, silly regional pride, a dash of cultural imperialism, and–believe it or not–monetary policy, the federal government and most of the rest of America still officially calls the thing Mt. McKinley.

That’s because for reasons that aren’t all that clear, the federal government allowed a gold prospector named William Dickey to name the mountain in 1896.  Dickey wasn’t the first human to see the mountain, or the first white person, or even the first American.  He missed the first achievement by thousands of years, the second by hundreds of years, and the third by decades.  He apparently was merely the first person to come to Washington to request an official name (and write about his Alaskan experience in East Coast newspapers).  Fortuitous timing took care of the rest.

So why “McKinley?”  At the time, William McKinley wasn’t even president, he was merely a candidate.  McKinley had never stepped foot in Alaska, and never did.  During his stint prospecting for gold, Dickey had gotten into heated arguments with silver prospectors over what precious metal should back U.S. currency.  The election of 1896 pitted McKinley, who backed the gold standard, against the loathesome William Jennings Bryan, who backed silver.  When Dickey returned to the East Coast, he advocated to name the mountain “McKinley,” entirely to spite his fellow prospectors.  Once McKinley was elected, the name stuck.  When McKinley was later assassinated, the name was assured for decades.

Beginning in about the 1970s, Alaska went about trying to change the name back to the more aesthetically pleasing and culturally and historically appropriate Denali.  In 1975, the state’s legislature asked the federal government to change the mountain’s name to Denali, offering in compromise to preserve the surrounding park’s name for McKinley.  That offer was blocked by Ohio Rep. Ralph Regula, who represented (and still represents) McKinley’s old district, which also includes McKinley’s hometown of Canton.  Regula laughably testified at the time that changing the name would be an “insult to the memory” of McKinley, one of America’s crappier presidents.  While individual states don’t name landmarks, they do have the power to name the parks within their borders, so after Regula’s stand, Alaska changed the name of the park to Denali.  But the mountain would have to remain McKinley.

The naming of landmarks is the province of the federal Board of Geographic Names.  The board is amenable to changint the mountain’s name, but that agency is trumped by the legislative process–Congress can overrule or change any name the board assigns.  So as long as there’s a bill in Congress pertaining to a landmark’s name, the Board of Geographic Names won’t get involved, even if there’s never an actual vote on the bill..  So in each Congress since the 1970s, the ancient Rep. Regula pulls a parliamentary meneuver, and introduces a bill to preserve McKinley’s name on the mountain.

About a decade ago, an aid to Regula gave historian James Loewen the dubious explanation that Regula’s aim with the legislaiton is merely to save the country the money it would cost to change the name on maps.  The good congressman also fears that changing McKinley to Denali would open the floodgates to native people clamoring for other changes of landmarks inappropriately named after white politicians  (God forbid!).

Regula’s bill has never been voted on–it never gets out of committee.  But merely introducing it is enough to ensure that America’s tallest mountain continues to bear the name of a forgettable, war-mongering, tariff-loving president from Ohio who never got within a thousand miles of the magnificent thing.  It’s also an annual slap in the face to the indigenous Alaskans who, let’s face it, have endured more than their fair share of kicking around over the years.

So I was reading the Anchorage Daily News this morning in the tiny Russian village of Ninilchik, and came across this story, first reported in the Fairbanks newspaper:

Former Republican presidential contender Ron Paul has endorsed Don Young in his bid to win an 18th term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Paul, the 72-year-old congressman from Texas whose maverick presidential bid drew wide support in Alaska, sent out a letter to his supporters here urging them to vote for Young.

“Don and I have served together in Congress for many years, and I consider him a friend,” Paul wrote in the letter. “Don has been an outspoken voice against environmental extremists over the years and has strongly opposed the types of federal regulatory overreach advocated in the name of environmentalism.”

Paul and Young are a bit of an odd couple. Paul is a fiscal conservative; Young believes in earmarking federal dollars for Alaska wherever possible. Paul opposes the Iraq war; Young supports it.

It’s a puzzling endorsement. Young has no respect for taxpayers, is being investigated for corruption, and pretty much embodies everything that’s wrong with Washington. His opponent isn’t exactly libertarianism personified, but he is at least in support of earmark reform, and has been endorsed by the Club for Growth (a fact Young is using against him). Young, on the other hand, openly boasts about wasting taxpayer money on Alaskan boondoggles. If Paul and Young are friends, that’s fine. But Young’s an abomination, and deserves to be fired. If I’d given money to Paul’s presidential campaign or to his Liberty PAC, I’d be rethinking my donation right about now.

Had to take a break from my vacation to register my disappointment in Obama’s selection of Biden.

I understand the rationale–Obama wants an attack dog to go after McCain while he appears to be above the fray. Biden also adds some foreign policy and Beltway heft to the ticket. The Beltway CW says this pick was safe, but not particularly bold. I think that’s about right.

But from a policy perspective, it’s a disaster. Biden has sponsored more damaging drug war legislation than any Democrat in Congress. Hate the way federal prosecutors use RICO laws to take aim at drug offenders? Thank Biden. How about the abomination that is federal asset forfeiture laws? Thank Biden. Think federal prosecutors have too much power in drug cases? Thank Biden. Think the title of a “Drug Czar” is sanctimonious and silly? Thank Biden, who helped create the position (and still considers it an accomplishment worth boasting about). Tired of the ridiculous steroids hearings in Congress? Thank Biden, who led the effort to make steroids a Schedule 3 drug, and has been among the blowhardiest of the blowhards when it comes to sports and performance enhancing drugs. Biden voted in favor of using international development aid for drug control (think plan Columbia, plan Afghanistan, and other meddling anti-drug efforts that have only fostered loathing of America, backlash, and unintended consequences). Oh, and he was also the chief sponsor of 2004′s horrendous RAVE Act.

Biden does appear to have eased up a bit in the last couple years, including taking a fairly strong position against federal raids on medical marijuana clinics (though he still opposes making marijuana available for medicinal purposes). But that’s little consolation for all the damage he’s done over the years.

Biden’s record on other criminal justice and civil liberties issues is just as bad. Opponents of the federalization of crime might note that the 1994 crime bill he sponsored created several new federal capital offenses. Biden also wants to expand federal penalties for hate crimes. He supports a federal smoking ban. His position on the federal drinking age is, and I quote, “absolutely do not” lower it to 18. He believes “most violent crime is related to drugs” (if he had said “drug prohibition,” he’d be closer to the truth). Biden also has an almost perfect anti-gun voting record. He said last year he favors “universal national service,” either in the Peace Corps or the military. Sounds like conscription to me. He says he’s opposed to the PATRIOT Act, but he voted for both the original bill and its re-authorization in 2005.

Foreign policy? Biden voted for the war on Iraq. Yes, he’s opposed to it now (and I like the partition plan he pushed in the primaries). But he didn’t vote correctly when it counted most. Biden also voted to send troops into Darfur. He wants to enlarge NATO. He voted in favor of the air strikes in Kosovo. He voted to strengthen the trade embargo against Cuba. His seems to be a meddling, interventionist, Clinton-esque foreign policy. His first instinct seems to be that the U.S. military’s objective include some vague notion of “doing good in the world.” Never mind the disastrous consequences that notion has reaped over the years.

I obviously disagree with Biden on a host of economic and regulatory issues, too (though he does seem to be fairly decent on free trade). But that’s to be expected. My problem with Biden is that he’s not even good on the issues the left is supposed to be good on. He’s an overly ambitious, elitist, tunnel-visioned, Potomac-fevered Beltway dinosaur, with all the trappings. He may well have been the worst possible pick among congressional Democrats when it comes to the drug war and criminal justice.

Your humble Agitator predicted the Biden pick last February. It was a prediction made mostly from cynicism. I wish I had been wrong.

On principle, Obama stumbles badly, here. I guess we’ll have to wait to see how it plays out on the electoral map.

Should we free market types support New York City’s law mandating the prominent posting of calorie counts? No, of course not. Yet the idea has traction. Here, for example, Ezra Klein deigns to give a serious response to Jacob Sullum’s recent column:

His article on the subject basically makes two points: The first is that consumers don’t want this, because if they did, then the market would already have provided it. As Sullum says, “If customers really were clamoring for conspicuous calorie counts, restaurants would provide them voluntarily.” That sentence competes for space with a poll showing 84 percent of Californians support caloric labeling requirements, and the basic reality the article is responding to: Democratically elected legislators who depend on the favor of voters for their jobs are the ones trying to pass a bill. Because they think it popular. The idea that public preferences only have legitimacy if they’re strong enough to be heard atop the clamor of the market is an exceedingly odd one.

Well, ok. But the notion that conducting a poll is a more reliable way to gauge consumer preferences is even odder. Answering a question in a poll is not like ordering lunch in a restaurant. Facing no trade-offs, there’s no reason not to give the publicly virtuous answer. Of course most people will say they support posting caloric information. Faced with the actual trade-offs of less menu space, higher costs for testing new products (more significant for small chains than for large), and the sometimes unpleasant reminder of how dense some food is, they might not actually prefer the one-size-fits-all rule of posting calorie counts prominently on the menu. If 84% of consumers were really demanding it, you would think that at least one restaurant chain would have filled this demand. The fact that none has done so voluntarily suggests that the mandate is excessive. (And what of the rights of business owners? They don’t merit concern, apparently.)

(more…)

Victoria to ban smoking in cars with kids, at playgrounds

Porn shop survives 11 years of harassment

Why wine makers use sulfites and why some are cutting back

FDA green lights irradation for greens

A former Olympian’s rambling take on sex in the Village; 360 degree photo of the stadium

Strange pizza prank sends postcards to “stupid competitor”

– Jacob Grier

When the U.S. first prohibited drugs in the early 20th Century, it was such a non-event that the media barely mentioned it. The victory of the temperance crowd is covered in this excerpt, which follows after this one…

Probably the biggest concession Hamilton Wright, the U.S. Opium Commissioner, agreed to, however, was exempting from his proposed legislation products with a small amount of narcotic in them—then Big Pharma’s and the patent-medicine companies’ big earner. This leniency was attacked by members of Congress who wanted tighter legislation, but one of the bill’s backers explained on the floor that this was as good a situation as they could hope for, given the power of the pharmaceutical lobby. “Unfortunately I am forced to believe that if we should attempt in this way to attack all the proprietary medicines which contain opium, the bill would have a rocky road to travel, and would be consigned to oblivion,” said Rep. James Mann of Illinois. “That may not be a very good excuse, but, after all, it is practical.” (more…)

Ezra Klein points out one of the biggest advantages of growing income inequality:

I’ve argued often on this blog that given how much income is concentrated in the hands of the rich, you can cut taxes for the majority of the country, raise taxes on a small slice of wealthy Americans, and raise revenue, even as the average American’s tax bill goes down. As Leonhardt argues, the relentless march of wealth accumulation — the rich getting much richer, year by year — made this truer in 2008 then it was in 2007, truer in 2007 then in 2006, and a helluva lot truer in 2006 then it was in 1993.

He’s exactly right. To put this slightly differently: the explosion of wealth at the top of the income distribution has made the overall pie larger, allowing more revenue to be raised for a given tax rate. Indeed, one way to view the Bush tax cuts is as an investment in future tax revenues. By cutting taxes in 2001 and allowing the wealthy to amass larger fortunes, he put his successor in a position where relatively modest tax increases can generate more revenue than they would have if tax rates had stayed at their higher 2000 level over the last 8 years (to say nothing of the astronomical pre-Reagan levels).

It seems to me that this is a pretty good argument against hand-wringing about growing inequality. Liberals especially should be concerned about the long-run growth of government revenues, and a good way for the government to have larger revenues is for there to be more rich people to tax. If it’s true that tax cuts allow the rich to get astronomically wealthy, that’s an argument in favor of tax cuts, even if you don’t care at all about the wellbeing of rich people.

–Tim Lee

Ladies’ Home Journal stirs the pot in this excerpt, which follows after this one. 

Pharmacies became a target of the female-dominated temperance movement because regulating their wares was a way to secure some of that elusive legal protection for women and children. In 1892, Ladies’ Home Journal editor Edward Bok barred patent-medicine advertising from the publication. Over the next several years, he published numerous pieces revealing the true ingredients of many patent medicines and explicitly called the WCTU to action. In 1904, Bok declared that Doctor Pierce’s Favorite Prescription, a favorite patent preparation of pregnant women, contained not only alcohol and opium, but also the potentially deadly plant extract digitalis—too late, it tuned out: Pierce had changed his formula since the magazine secured its sample. After losing a $200,000 lawsuit, the Journal hired lawyer-cum-journalist Mark Sullivan to help continue Bok’s crusade in a more law-savvy, less financially dangerous manner. (more…)

Steve Chapman argues (surpsrisingly) against the lowering the drinking age; Cato’s Brandon Arnold has a note on drunk driving statistics

China’s wine purchasing and production both increasing

Man sues San Francisco, demands environmental impact statement before bike lanes are built

What can social science tell us about UFOs?

Grant McCracken calls for more feeds about ourselves

Jacob Sullum again debunks the case for mandatory calorie counts

A few years ago it was common to hear lamentations about Starbucks moving in and crushing the neighborhood independent shops. An article in yesterday’s Seattle Times points out that perception is catching up to reality with a more balanced take on Starbucks’ influence:

Collectively, independent and small-chain coffeehouses have the largest share of coffee and doughnut sales in the U.S., with 34 percent of the market in 2006, according to a new report from the Chicago research firm Mintel. Starbucks has the next largest share at 29 percent.

“When you talk to all the detractors whose critique is that Starbucks ruined the culture of coffeehouses, you’d get the impression there were all these coffeehouses and then Starbucks came in and destroyed them,” said Kim Fellner, a longtime national labor and community organizer whose book “Wrestling with Starbucks: Conscience, Capital, Cappuccino” came out last month.

While there are some examples of Starbucks putting independents out of business, she said, “you find far more where people who look at Starbucks and say, ‘They’re being successful. I could be, too.’ ”

The popularity of Starbucks has helped spread coffeehouse culture beyond university communities and Italian neighborhoods, Fellner said.

Starbucks has fallen on hard times lately and lost its focus on coffee quality a long time ago, but the company deserves great credit for raising the bar for American coffee culture and bringing espresso drinks and single origin beans to a mass audience. Many of today’s indie shop customers got their first taste of decent cappuccino at a Starbucks.

I had a similar take on the company in a post titled “A libertarian goes to Starbucks.” For a more in-depth assessment, Taylor Clark’s Starbucked is a fun, informative history.

[Via Pasteboard.]

– Jacob Grier

Matt Yglesias suggests that Tax-Increment Financing (TIF) is a good mechanism for encouraging the development of abandoned property. I disagree. TIF is mostly a mechanism for transferring taxpayer dollars to politically-connected private developers, and it is intimately connected to the problems of eminent domain abuse.

TIF is one of those ideas that looks reasonable when you first encounter it (and, indeed, seemed reasonable when California invented it in the 1950s) but gets worse and worse the more you learn about it. The theory behind TIF is that local governments take out bonds that are paid back out of the increased tax revenue generated by a new development financed by those bonds. So, for example, if Wal-Mart wants to build a new store on land that was previously a low-revenue residential neighborhood, the city government might issue bonds worth several million dollars, give them to Wal-Mart to help build its store, and then repay the bonds out of the increased revenue generated by the Wal-Mart.

There are two problems with this approach. One is that the concept of “new tax revenue” isn’t as simple as it seems. It’s true in a trivial sense that the city government is now getting tax revenue from that particular site that it wasn’t getting before. But the reality is that Wal-Mart almost certainly would have built its store somewhere, and so some tax jurisdiction in the general area is losing revenue it would received but for the TIF.

Second, the way the TIF process is set up in Missouri (and Missouri is far from unique) creates a kind of revenue death spiral, where municipalities compete to give large companies ever-larger TIF packages (and eminent domain) to lure them to the state. The result is that large, politically connected developers wind up paying much less in taxes than they would in a world without the ability for such favoritism. Indeed, a lot of large retailers have become expert at playing this kind of game, staying only as long as required by their TIF agreement before picking up stakes and moving to another municipality, where they can get another round of taxpayer handouts.

Presumably, TIF proponents would say that this is an abuse of the TIF concept, and it is. But I’ve seen no plausible proposals to fix the process. The reality is that when you give local governments broad discretion to play favorites, they’re going to adopt policies that favor those with the most political influence. Those tend not to be struggling entrepreneurs that are trying to put down roots in a marginal neighborhood. Rather, they tend to be big companies that bulldoze marginal neighborhoods, kick out the poor people that live in them, and replace their homes with overpriced condos the previous residents can’t afford.

Which brings me to my final point: it’s also important to understand that in most states, TIF is inextricably intertwined with eminent domain. Here in Missouri, the preliminary steps for approving a TIF district—commissioning a study to determine that the area is “blighted” (and the firms that do these studies always conclude that the area is blighted)—are identical to the steps for approving the use of eminent domain. TIF and eminent domain are frequently offered as a package to potential developers.

Indeed, I don’t know about the U Street neighborhood specifically, but I do know that in many areas, the threat of eminent domain is one of the major impediments to organic growth of urban neighborhoods. Entrepreneurs who are foolish enough to try to start a new business in a marginal neighborhood without the city’s explicit blessing are sitting ducks for future confiscation of their businesses after the neighborhood begins to prosper. This creates a huge disincentive to develop abandoned property, and creates the illusion that only active city “redevelopment” can revitalize neighborhoods. In reality, the threat of “redevelopment” is one of the major drags on organic urban revitalization.

–Tim Lee

Earlier this week we took a flightseeing tour around Mt. McKinley. Pretty amazing. Click the photos to get the full-screen experience.

We’re in Seward now, a great, laid-back little hippie town right on the banks of Resurrection Bay and Kenai Fjords National Park. We’re doing an all-day boat tour tomorrow. Earlier this morning, we had breakfast in Girdwood, and took a tram up to the top of Mt. Olympus. Watched a couple of Australian guys paraglide, which was very cool. Maybe next time.

We also went to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, which I’ll now be adding to my list of worthy philanthropies. They nurture injured and orphaned wildlife, with an eye toward releasing them back to the wild. But while they’re there, you can have some incredible close-up encounters. Pics to come.

The temperance movement marches on — as does the book. This excerpt picks up where this one left off. Thanks again for the helpful comments you’ve been providing so far. The book is improved thanks to them…

In the early 1800s, the state of medical technology offered the suffering few options for pain relief. Essentially, all a doctor could do was use drugs to help a patient get high. Even the most temperate-minded were reluctant to decry an evil of such obvious necessity. But when relief that didn’t come with inebriation became available, attitudes began to change—or, more accurately, attitudes and interests that had been kept in check by the undeveloped state of medicine were finally unleashed.

Aspirin, X-ray machines, and other commonplace elements of today’s medical arsenal wouldn’t be around until the very end of the 19th century. The lack of an effective product, however, never stopped a good American businessman from trying to make a buck. Indeed, a person of that time with a headache, an infection, or any other malady had a bewildering array of supposed remedies to choose from. The commercialization of pain relief had allowed drug control to slip from the hands of the medical profession.

(more…)

Andrew Sullivan makes a very important point about Bush, McCain and the subject of torture. Two points, actually. The first is that Bush doesn’t think McCain was tortured:

The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration’s definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

(more…)

“If I don’t want to pray, I don’t go to church,” Ellison said. “If you don’t want to smoke, don’t come in here.” West Virginia bar owners defy county smoking ban

Rocket scientists say interstellar travel is impractical. I’m not going to put my lot in with rocket scientists

Bumbling TSA inspector grounds nine jets

Member of Denver mayor’s Marijuana Policy Review Panel advises no busts during DNC convention (when, coincidentally, I’ll be in the city)

Jackson and Del Toro will collaborate on Hobbit scripts

Domenico DeMarco on the art of making pizza

– Jacob Grier

It’s a little on the old side, but Scott McClellan’s accusation that the White House has been feeding talking points to Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity is interesting, if not surprising:

Rachel Maddow’s take here strikes me as completely backwards. She says she’s not made at Fox News because “they pledge allegiance to nobody other than the bank at which they cash their paychecks every week.” But she says she’s mad at the government because “it’s supposed to be illegal in America to propagandize the American people. It is supposed to be illegal for our government to covertly choose some sort of press organ that is represented to the American people as if it is a press organ and is feeding us stuff that is actually propaganda from our government.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about here. Certainly it would be objectionable if the government secretly owned and operated Fox News, but I don’t see how sending talking points to Sean Hannity or anyone else is illegal or even unethical. The Bush administration wants to get its perspective out there, and it of course does everything it can to feed sympathetic reporters with information that will help them make the White House’s case. Sending Sean Hannity talking points is awfully low on the list of unethical Bush White House activities.

Rather, the blame here lies with the “journalists” who betray the trust their viewers place in them by parroting the government’s talking points without disclosing that that’s where they came from. As far as I know, that’s not illegal, but it certainly ought to be embarrassing, and anyone who actually cares about getting “fair and balanced” news should avoid watching the programs of journalists who behave that way.

–Tim Lee

If I were the Obama campaign, I’d be getting pretty worried about recent polling trends. The latest tally now shows him with a razor-thin 275-250 lead in the electoral college. It has Obama winning Indiana, which seems flatly impossible given that Indiana has gone Republican for decades and went for Bush by 21 percent in 2004. Similarly, the map has Virginia a dead heat, but it too has been consistently Republican in recent decades. Northern Virginia is growing, but not that fast. Put Indiana and Virginia in the Republican column and you get a 274-264 win.

Matt Yglesias likes to mock the idea that “only” winning by a thin margin is bad news for Obama, but I think there’s more to the concept than he gives credit for. Obama is a black guy with a funny name and a polarizing pastor. John McCain is a white war hero. There’s plenty of raw material for the Republican smear machine to work with. Political campaigns are not fought with policy briefs and debating points. They’re fought with character assasination and appeals to tribal loyalty. The white war hero has a large, immediate advantage in that kind of competition.

Now, Obama’s an extremely talented politician and a likeable guy, and he may very well find ways to neutralize these kinds of attacks. But I wouldn’t bet on it. His blowout victory in his 2004 Senate race and his relatively genteel race with Hillary Clinton certainly haven’t given him any practice.

So if Obama is barely holding his own now, at a time when McCain is running an incredibly unfocused campaign and before the really vicious smears have come out, he’s going to be in trouble once the McCain campaign gets its act together and the 527s start doing their work. We should remember that at this point in the race John Kerry was predicted to win by an even wider 301-213 margin, without improbable victories in Virginia and Indiana. We know how that one turned out.

–Tim Lee

David Zetland has a great post in defense of bottled water. Many people consider bottled water to be silly when compared with drinking water from the tap, but Zetland points out that a more apt comparison might be to drinking pop:

It is beyond question that we have a very serious obesity problem in the U.S., and we have accompanying health problems. I would love to see every one of those 12 oz soft drinks replaced by bottled water. And remember that many of those soft drinks are also packaged in plastic bottles.

My take is that every can of pop replaced by a bottle of water is a very, very good thing. You can’t get fat drinking water and you can’t get diabetes from drinking water, so we won’t have to pay for the health care costs from those problems. When those very real benefits are weighed against the costs listed at the beginning of this rant, I think bottle water wins by a wide margin.

This is consistent with my own experience. When I’m on a trip and I go into a convenience store looking for something to drink, I’m usually tempted to buy pop, but I’ll often opt for water instead because it’s healthier. If there were no bottled water in the store, I’d buy the pop. I’m sure lots of other people are the same way.

I guess the anti-bottled-water zealots would tell me I ought to carry a water bottle around and refill it in gas station restrooms. But the water wouldn’t be as cold that way, and gas station restrooms are disgusting. In the real world, bottled water is far more likely to substitute for less healthy bottled drinks, not tap water.

Hat tip: Joe

–Tim Lee

Brian Wesbury on inflationary dangers

Jerry Taylor and John White debate energy policy in this week’s L.A. Times Dust-Up

Dick Heller gets his gun permit

Australian mayor in trouble for inviting “ugly duckling” women to his masculine mining town

“The Waiter” on the differences between writing a blog and writing a book

New images from Watchmen

Jason Kuznicki finds a very cool retro pipe

Dog cloner case continues to get weirder

– Jacob Grier

I have a story in today’s Politico about Dr. Irshad Shaikh, a Pakistani immigrant caught up in the anthrax investigation. He’s now in Darfur, having been driven from the U.S., but finally won his citizenship after a seven year battle.

A movement of university heads is afoot.

“Ohio State President Gordon Gee is among 100 college presidents calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18. The presidents contend current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus.”

Fine with me, but can we keep the 18 year olds out of my local bar, at least? I’ll go to hell for saying that, but the culture of drinking is so backwards in this country that it takes people until the age of about 22 or so until they can do it with an ounce of grace and sit there and enjoy it instead of sucking Bud Light through a funnel and puking it back up. I did plenty of both those things, so I’m not judging, I’m just saying that until our nation can have an adult relationship with drinking I’d rather the kids stay out of my bar. I guess I could just choose a bar not popular with the kids, though — say, one that doesn’t offer $3 pitchers and dollar cans. Not that there’s anything wrong with $3 pitchers.

– Ryan

This’ll be interesting: In July, Prince George’s County police stormed a mayor’s home, handcuffed his mother-in-law and shot his two black labs after police themselves had delivered a package of marijuana to him that they now concede was intended for someone else. They took mad heat for it nationally; the FBI is involved; editorial boards are outraged.

The story began, though, on page one of the Post’s Metro section (with apologies if a local paper reported it even earlier) and it grew from there. Today’s Metro section holds a story on the front that has the potential to be even worse. The victim this time, however, is Latino and he — rather than his pets — was shot and killed after being beaten, according to two witnesses.

Police have alternately said that the victim reached either for the officer’s baton or for his gun. The cop was off duty, moonlighting as a security guard when he shot Manuel de Jesus Espina.

A difference (beyond race and class) in the two cases is that, in the mayor’s case, all the facts were stipulated by both sides. Here, it starts out as the cop’s word against the witnesses. Given the PG County cops’ record over the last few months — they also apparently strangled a suspect while in jail in July — that’s a dispute that can be won by the witnesses. It’ll be worth watching this story to see if it sinks into the muck at the bottom of the pond.

– Ryan

On Saturday morning we took the train from Talkeetna to Denali National Park. We got our flightseeing tour in on Saturday night just before sunset. It was amazing. We circled around Mt. McKinley just as the sun was easing back behind the Alaskan range.

Sunday, we took the park bus all the way through the park, which is a bit larger than the state of Massachusetts. We saw just about every type of wildlife in the park, including bears (black and grizzly), moose, caribou, Dahl sheep, and on the way back, a rare gray wolf. Photos of all of that to come. This morning we took a whitewater rafting trip down the Nenana river. That too was incredible. It’s been a pretty wonderful vacation so far. It’s just constant sensory overload up here. Also, today someone used the phrase “frosty August morning.” They have those here.

The photos below are from our first couple of days in Anchorage, Talkeetna, and from the two legs we did on the Alaskan Railroad. Tomorrow we catch a bus back to Anchorage, where we’ll rent a car and drive to Girdwood, then on to Seward and Homer.

Oh, and my new camera rocks. Thanks, Agitator readers. Clock on the inset if you’d like the full-screen slide show.

December 5 of this year will mark the 75th anniversary of the 21st Amendment’s ratification and the end of national Prohibition. To celebrate, Old Forester is crafting a limited edition Repeal Bourbon for release this winter:

“Repeal Bourbon is bottled from a special selection of Old Forester barrels that exhibited a more robust character that is similar to the Old Forester that was bottled during Prohibition,” added Chris Morris, Master Distiller for Old Forester. “The flavor, presented at Prohibition’s required 100 proof, is a full, deep, charred oak character that will appeal to bourbon-lovers everywhere.”

The tip comes from Jeffrey Morgenthaler, who in addition to writing one of the best cocktail blogs on the internet has been running a campaign to make Repeal Day a widely celebrated holiday. Read more about it at RepealDay.org and remember to raise a glass on December 5.

Bureaucrash celebrated last year with a party in Arlington, across the river from DC in protest of the city’s smoking ban. Inside the city things got a little rough…

– Jacob Grier

This is extremely unusual. You may remember Maher Arar, the Canadian man who was arrested on a stopover at JFK airport and sent to Syria where he was tortured for nearly a year. With the help of the Center for Constitutional Rights, he sued the U.S. government. The district court dismissed the case based on the state secrets privilege, saying that it could harm national security to even hear the case. A 2nd Circuit appeals court upheld that dismissal in a 2-1 decision.

Now here comes the unexpected part: the 2nd circuit has announced that it will reconsider the case en banc, which means all the judges on the appeals court will hear it and vote on it. What makes this truly surprising is that Arar’s attorney didn’t ask for it; the court granted the rehearing sua sponte, on its own. That is extraordinarily rare. It suggests that there were a number of judges on the circuit who agitated for the rehearing because they believe it was wrongly decided.

“We are very encouraged,” said CCR attorney Maria LaHood. “For the court to take such extraordinary action on its own indicates the importance the judges place on the case and means that Maher may finally see justice in this country. As the dissenting judge noted, the majority’s opinion gave federal officials the license to ‘violate constitutional rights with virtual impunity.’ Now the court has the opportunity to uphold the law and hold accountable the U.S. officials who sent Maher to be tortured.”

This could be a huge turning point in the law on such things. The state secrets privilege has for far too long been a means of covering up clearly illegal and barbaric actions by the government.

–Ed Brayton