Just What You Always Wanted!

ME! In your inbox!

Okay, so maybe this isn't the gift of your dreams, but at least I got your attention.

Last week I started publishing a newsletter, Taken Liberties. It'll be weekly(-ish) so it's not going to be a daily thing because, first of all, I'm not that productive. Second, it would be like putting my entire twitter feed in your inbox, thus sort of defeating the whole purpose of starting something new.

I wanted to compile something that's a little more personal than a blog. Whatever this blog's identity is (or was?), it wasn't particularly expressive of most of my personality. Opinions? Yes. Anger? Most definitely. But posts tended to either be rants or off-the-cuff observations, rather than a more reflective comments on what's been on my mind. My sometimes-churlish bouts of self-seriousness that peppered this blog will be absent from this new venture.

I enjoyed writing here and it certainly helped me grow as a writer, but blogs aren't what they used to be. I'm not killing TBS, so no need to delete this from your GoogleReader substitute RSS feed, but I will be spending more effort on maintaining the newsletter than I have been keeping up with this.

Anyway, if you like my writing, please sign up for the newsletter here.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Come See Me at Cato on Thursday

As I've written recently, the advent of small, high quality cameras that can be put on dashboards, worn by police officers, or carried in your pocket as part of your phone is changing the very nature of police encounters and police accountability.

I know it's late notice--it was for me too!--but I'll be on a panel discussing cameras, technology, and policing this Thursday at Cato.

If you can't attend the event in person, you can watch it livestream here or catch it when it's later posted on the Cato Events archives page.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

This is Your Government on Drugs

My latest piece on the ONDCP is up at Washington Post's PostEverything. A snippet:

For decades, the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and its allies have used government resources to marginalize, stigmatize, and demonize drug users.

There were the nonsensical ads like “this is your brain on drugs” and inexplicable demonstrations like torching cars and valued possessions. The ONDCP, Partnership for a Drug-Free America, the Ad Council, and Above the Influence portrayed small time dealers as snakes and users as rats.

They also showed drug use as a gateway to prostitution and, in the wake of 9/11, explicitly linked casual drug users to supporting terrorism and cop killing. The United States has spent millions stigmatizing drug use, sale and abuse — all before one even begins to calculate the costs to arrest, try, and incarcerate offenders for the past 40 years. This, of course, comes in addition to the stigma that comes with incarceration and criminal records.

The Obama administration says it wants to de-stigmatize drug addiction. But no matter how hard it tries, it’s virtually impossible to de-stigmatize behavior that is still a crime.

Read the whole thing here.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Video of February AFF Panel

For anyone interested, here is video of the AFF panel on poverty I spoke at in late February.



If you just want to see me, my clip is here:



I need to get better about not reading off script, but otherwise I'm rather happy with how my first public event turned out.


bellum medicamenti delenda est

Housekeeping: Another Bad Apple

It is no secret that a lot of what I do and what I'm interested in is closely related to work that Radley Balko has done for years. Indeed, it's almost creepy in a Single Bi-racial Male sort of way how much we have in common:

Roughly same age
Hoosiers by birth and alma mater
Ex-Conservatives
Wrote conservative/libertarian columns for our college paper (STOP GOOGLING!)
Worked at Cato and Reason
Big fans of bourbon
Concentrate on Criminal Justice/Civil liberties issues

I'm writing a paper about police corruption and the drug war and it is roughly based on the style of his Overkill paper--which if you haven't read, you should. If he'll allow, I'm taking one more idea: the "Another Isolated Incident" post of police wrongdoing. I'll call it "Another Bad Apple" as I'll try to keep up with the rather numerous incidents of police malfeasance as they relate to the drug war.

All this kinda makes me feel like Mr. McDowell in 'Coming to America' when he's trying to explain he's not ripping off McDonald's trademark: "They have the 'golden arches,' we have the 'golden arcs'!" Riiiight.

Anyway, while most of the stuff above is entirely coincidental, he set a pretty great example so I don't feel too bad for doing a lot of what he did in my professional life. I will never be the incredible journalist he is--nor do I have even the slightest inkling to move to Memphis. (Nothing personal, Memphis) Oh, and I'm a cat person. (Nothing personal, dogs.)

If you don't already, make sure you follow Radley at the Huffington Post.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Just for Fun Friday: The Stand-Up Economist

I feel bad about only posting stuff like this without real content, but it isn't that I haven't been writing. I just haven't been happy enough with the final product to post it comfortably.

Anyway, a video for your enjoyment:

New Digs

I accepted an invitation to start blogging over at the Examiner Blogs "Opinion Zone." I'll still be blogging other pieces here--but I can't cross-post my Examiner Blog posts right away. I'll be tweeting my posts when they go up and/or giving you a link here to keep you from adding extra RSS feeds to your GReader.

My first post on Thursday's medical cannabis raids in Washington State went up tonight.


bellum medicamenti delenda est

Housekeeping Note

I'm a little bored with my layout, so if you're not reading this in Google Reader or some other RSS aggregator, you may notice a few changes in the next few days or weeks. Indeed, I'll probably get around to moving to WordPress sooner or later, but in the meantime, I'll be futzing around with the layout. Hope it's not too disconcerting for you.

And for no reason whatsoever, a little Ray Charles.

Quote(s) of the Day

First, Megan McArdle on Julian Assange:

Julian Assange seems to have fallen prey to what I call Supply-Sider's Disease, a little-known, yet surprising widespread psychiatric disorder in which people become convinced that things they very much want to do from strong moral convictions, must therefore have no downside.

The whole post is worth a read and the last graf screams truth.

Second, an excerpted Thomas Mallon, courtesy of Hitch:

Washington novels, such as they are, tend to be found on racks at National Airport, the raised gold letters of their titles promising a bomb on Air Force One or a terrorist kidnapping of the First Lady. There’s a reason for all the goofiness. A serious novelist must take his characters seriously, regard them as three-dimensional creatures with inner lives and authentic moral crises; and that’s just what, out of a certain democratic pride, Americans refuse to do with their politicians.

Hitchens' City Journal article on the search for the great DC novel is simply excellent top to bottom.

Sorry blogging has been light non-existent recently -- been buried in research.

Have a good weekend!

Where I've Been

I am acutely aware of my recent blogging drought. It isn't for lack of desire or material, believe me. Rather, I have been making a concerted effort to focus my research and, consequently, my writing on a narrower range of topics. (I was also on vacation.) This will never be a simple, one or two topic blog, but my writing has been inconsistent and, at times, too reactionary. The insta-comment is inherent to the nature of blogging, but I've noticed that my reaction and desire to get a comment out right away has compromised my analysis, even in the short term. Part of this process of focus has also forced me to reevaluate my writing style and the aims of this blog.

As far as I know, I have two primary audiences that read this blog with any regularity. The first was my primary intended audience when I started this blog back in 2007: the everyday "real" American that is too busy being a productive member of society to pay attention to much of what goes on in Washington and, probably, someone who doesn't have a sophisticated or fully flushed-out political ideology. (Perhaps a preconceived and probably right-leaning political allegiance, but without the ability to distinguish Burke from Rousseau.)

The second audience is a small number of colleagues and counterparts in the DC area: wonks, for lack of a better term.

Most of what I have written on this blog is of little interest to wonks: they know it already. My analysis, whether one agrees with it or not, tends to be simple-to-digest and more concerned with principle than  nuanced policy argument. As I try to make my transition into the established DC wonkatariat, I need to address issues that make them think, instead of making them simply nod or roll their eyes.

Thus, going forward, the intent of this blog is to integrate more nuanced policy arguments into my writing without getting too far into wonkspeak and talking beyond the people from whom this blog--and my original column at the IDS that shared its name--was originally intended. I know that, at times, I will fail one audience in favor of the other, but I hope to minimize those failures and develop my own voice that bridges the large divide between the place I come from and the place I am today.

Comments always welcome.

JPB

NB: I don't necessarily at all stand behind some of what I wrote when I was at the IDS. The transition from life-long Republican to small "L" libertarian was a process that was in its infant stages the year I was at the paper.