Ben Adler

BOLDLY GOING WHERE NO CANDIDATE HAS GONE BEFORE. A little late on this, but I hadn’t seen it mentioned on TAPPED and I think it’s important. Gov. Bill Richardson has put out the most aggressive climate change policy of any presidential candidates so far. Stepping into the void left by Tom Vilsack dropping out (at […]

AWESOME RIGHT-WING COMPARISON OF THE DAY. For those of you not fortunate enough to have been watching CNN late yesterday afternoon, Think Progress has the video of J.C. Watts equating Rudy Giuliani’s position on abortion with someone who opposed slavery personally, but supported others’ rights to own slaves. Yes, you read that correctly. And when […]

DENSITY ADDENDUM: Matt provides a useful addition to my post on congestion pricing. He notes, “It’s absolutely impossible to discuss transportation or planning issues in the Greater Washington area without pointing out that it would be a really, really good idea to facilitate higher-density construction in the District.” Absolutely. While increasing density would not necessarily […]

CONGESTION PRICING COMES TO D.C.: After New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg released a forward-thinking proposal to counter global warming that included congestion pricing for Manhattan below 86th Street, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty raised the possibility of doing the same for Washington, but has not actually endorsed it. Marc Fisher, in his washingtonpost.com blog, argues vociferously […]

HONESTY IN ADMISSIONS: Though I admire Alan Wolfe, I have to disagree with his most recent post on Open University. Wolfe argues that Marilee Jones, the admissions director at MIT who was recently exposed for having lied on her resume about having attained a college degree when she first applied for a job there, should […]

WHAT EDWARDS SHOULD HAVE SAID: I agree with Ezra that Edwards could have responded more aggressively to Giuliani’s comments. But rather than personalizing it as Ezra suggests (“we’re not going to take counsel on health care and poverty from someone who hasn’t even seen fit to include them on his issues page?”) I’d make a […]

NY ROCKS PART DEUX: Apropos of my other recent New York pride post, Gov. Eliot Spitzer is proposing a major liberalization of New York’s outdated abortion laws. The New York Times reports: Mr. Spitzer�s bill, the Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act, would update current law, which, for example, does not include a provision allowing […]

A FOOLISH CONSISTENCY: Philip Klein of the American Spectator criticizes my post on the New York City aluminum bat ban thusly: If liberals say that government can regulate “risky behavior” that imposes medical costs on taxpayers, using the same logic, proponents of sodomy laws could argue in favor of banning homosexual sex because it puts […]

BAN THE BATS. In the new issue of City Journal, the neoconservative urban policy magazine associated with the Manhattan Institute, Paul Beston argues against a new law in New York City banning the use of metal bats in high school baseball. Dismissing it as “nannying,” Beston links the law to other recent policies in New […]

NY STATE OF MIND. My home city and state have made me proud these last few days. Two days ago, The New York Times reported that “nearly two-thirds of the members of the City Council are co-sponsoring a measure to shed a little light on the shadowy process by which co-op boards decide which apartment […]