Deregulator: Alive since '85!

Why on Earth would a nationally syndicated columnist give a rat's, you know, about the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Island? Because he was getting some serious green to write about it. Longtime Copley News columnist and (until Thursday) Cato Institute fellow Doug Bandow admits that he took as much as $2,000 a pop to write columns that shed a favorable light on the clients of D.C. influence peddler Jack Abramoff. (Hat tip: The Corner .) Bandow conceded the obligatory "error in judgment," Cato immediately cut ties with him, and Copley started purging those columns from its archives. Reactions from syndicated columnists Cal Thomas and Connie Schultz are here . Meantime, another libertarian thinktanker, Peter Ferrara of the heretofore obscure Institute for Policy Innovation, copped to the same charge ... but he won't apologize; indeed, his employer tells Business Week Online that punditry for hire is common, and there's no reason to be ashamed about it. Wonderfu...

Dear Santa If Dave Barry can dust off the cobwebs long enough to compile a 2005 Holiday Gift Guide , could you please ask him to put together a year in review, too? And if not, could you get someone else funny and insightful, like, say, James Lileks , to pinch hit? Thanks, Santa. (Hat tip: Instapundit .) P.S. I'm still hoping that Dave comes through. UPDATE: He did . Joe Biden may never recover; the Republic is safe.

Schwarzenegger's statement ... denying clemency to Williams is here . (Hat tip: The Corner .)

Room to breathe TechCentralStation has changed to TCSDaily: Technology, Commerce, Society , with a spiffy new home page and the formal acknowledgment that the site has expanded far beyond talks of telecom. TCS has been on my blogroll since the founding of the online Deregulator, and it's great to see the site grow and evolve. Congrats. In one of the newest entries, lawprof and wine geek Stephen Bainbridge gives a thumbs-up to wineries that are capping their premium vintages with screwtops. Something I learned: California wineries that won't take the twist to screwcaps are replacing natural corks with synthetic ones. Even so, fake corks don't preserve wine well. If you plan to cellar a pricey bottle that's sealed with a bogus cork, beware: your wine could spoil within a couple of years. We belong to the wine club at Bonny Doon Vineyard , home to some of the more unusual wines to emerge from Central California. (When you're looking for Bonny Doon on the shelves, jus...

Ban Bonds I'm stunned that Bud Selig said he would review the allegations in Game of Shadows , the forthcoming expose of Barry Bonds' allegedly voracious appetite for performance-enhancing chemicals. Look, MLB had planned to cash in big time on Bonds' pursuit of Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron. If Selig is not just blowing smoke, The Round Mound of Dinger Renown might be in trouble. Wow. As several sportswriters have noted, the book is so meticulously detailed that Bonds cannot credibly stonewall. Doing so would be a tacit admission of guilt. His only options are admitting it's true or suing the authors to the hilt. I'm guessing Selig hopes this matter is moot before April. Either a) the feds indict Bonds for lying to a grand jury or tax evasion -- then Bud could suspend him until the legal battles are over -- or b) Bonds' body has been so devastated by his rapacious substance abuse that he can I just feel bad. I don't want to throw things in his face when he is...

Can't we all just get along? Let's see, here. "Community leaders" in L.A. urge peace if Schwarzenegger refuses to grant clemency to Tookie Williams. So Los Angeles may again go up in flames if the state fails to legally execute a man who not only killed four people -- and has neither expressed remorse nor taken responsibility for his actions -- but also founded a homicidal gang which has terrorized hundreds of thousands of innocents? Some community you got, folks. SOP ought to be you don't negotiate with or lend succor to terrorists -- no matter how many useful idiots Hollywood lines up in their support. Get me outta here.

Free the grapes From the 1880s until the 1960s, the Inland Empire -- the Southern California area spanning roughly from East L.A. to the deserts surrounding Palm Springs -- was the backbone of the California wine industry. The emergence of Napa, and the demand for housing in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, nudged land owners to plow the vineyards and plop down subdivisions. But a sliver of winemaking areas remain in SoCal, and the two dozen or so vintners in the Temecula region near San Diego County want to use the force of law to protect their little slice of heaven from competition. The Riverside County supervisors today will vote on a set of new restrictions that would block outsiders from building new wineries in Temecula unless they abide by rules that might well make their operations unprofitable. The big impediments: Wineries with tasting rooms would have to grow 75 percent of their grapes in Riverside County; and tight limits would be imposed on the number of "comm...

Shake off the Winter blues I'll be a thousand miles away, but if you're a blues lover and are on or near the West Coast in January, you've got to check out Mark Hummel's Blues Harmonica Blowout . The Bay Area harp man has put together these January tours annually since 1991, and he's brought in the old lions and the young turks. We caught the show in Riverside this year, which featured Superharp himself, the legendary James Cotton (from the Muddy Waters bands of the 1950s and '60s), along with Charlie Musselwhite and Fabulous T-Bird founder Kim Wilson. Hummel's rockin' band The Blues Survivors backs up all the players, and it's three-plus hours of fun. This year, Hummel's pushing the envelope. Along with Jerry Portnoy, another Muddy Waters alum, the tour features Lee Oskar of War and Magic Dick of the J. Geils Band. (Wilson will join in a few gigs, and don't be surprised if Hummel's longtime buddy Huey Lewis doesn't pop up at a show ...

Rocky Mountain news I'm delighted to end the radio silence with a special announcement: In January, I will join the Commentary section of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver as an editorial writer. (The Opinion section's link has just joined my blogroll.) The gap between real jobs has been nerve-wracking, but the wait was justified. I'm eager to move to higher ground and get started. Thanks to all the friends and well-wishers who have buoyed my spirits in recent weeks. From all accounts, Denver is one of America's most liveable large cities, and the News is a gutsy competitor in a terrifc newspaper market. Don't know when I'll write anything with a byline, but that's OK. I'm just ready to get back to work.

The Grey Lady* shows her true colors The LA Times announces another opinion page shakeup. The major sackings: lefty columnist Robert Scheer and Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative cartoonist Michael Ramirez. (Nuts and bolts of the deal are here .) Scheer and Ramirez are both syndicated, so they'll be OK. Can't say the same for the Times's readers. This post by the LA Weekly's Marc Cooper nails it: The Times has decided to sanitize its op-ed pages and lose two major local voices. (Cooper's a lefty, and can't stand Ramirez's politics, but he did offer a SoCal-based vision that nationally synidicated toonists -- who don't live here -- will not replicate.) For metropolitan dailies to continue to survive (if not flourish) in the changing media market, they have to offer unique local commentary from recognizable voices. Saving a few thousand (or maybe even $100k) by using freelancers rather than staff writers is no way to build readership. *of the West Spea...

Huh? On KNBC-TV Channel 4 just now, the insufferable Sherry Bebitch Jeffe said the special election also signaled a rejection of ... George W. Bush. This was the only way voters could express their displeasure with the war, energy prices, yada, yada, yada. I don't buy this for a second. The debate here was framed long before gas prices started soaring, back when MSM reportage on Iraq wasn't as negative as it is now. Besides, Schwarzenegger has consciously distanced himself from Bush this year, snubbing the president when he came to California for a fundraiser late last month. This election was intensely local, driven by state issues and not national concerns. If Jeffe is right, though, California voters are dumber than I thought. UPDATE: Howard Kurtz agrees, more or less. What journalists often fail to appreciate is that state and local races turn on state and local issues and personalities. There may be voters who would back Jerry Kilgore because Bush visited the state, but...

It is better to look good than it is to feel good Use the cliche you prefer about style trumping substance in California. Pundits may spin the defeat of all the reform proposals as a personal rejection of Arnold Schwarzenegger. But the state's structural problems persist, and in my view, Schwarzenegger has a freer hand to be even more recalcitrant with the Legislature. (Arnold sent signals along those lines in the closing days of the campaign when he hinted that he would not endorse a tax increase, even if the initiatives failed.) Prop 76 would have loosened the straitjacket of spending formulas that denies policymakers fiscal flexibility. Since that's kaput, Arnold can deny any new legislative spending schemes and say, "hey, my hands are tied." UPDATE: At NRO, Arnie Steinberg offers a fairly positive take on the results and sees Schwarzenegger returning to his former, wheeler-dealer persona. (It's worth a read.) If the gov can make headway with the Dems, great....

Conflict of Visions Tomorrow's special election might not be "Judgment Day," as plugged by Schwarzenegger on Sunday. (The guy just can't help himself.) But it is a big deal. And it's fascinating to see how the combatants have spun this vote. The governor and his allies have pitched this election as a matter of reform -- the only way to fix the wretched processes that leave the state constantly in debt and the Capitol in hock to special interests. The other side has made it a referendum on Arnold -- a beauty contest, if you will -- even though it's conceivable that Schwarzenegger will be busy making "Trues Lie 2" in 2007 rather than agonizing over the budget deficit. This battle over process (Arnold) vs. results (his opponents) is the theme of Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions -- the book that may have most influenced my politcal thinking over the past two decades. I've previously written about Sowell's arguments here . Arnold's ...

No stealth here Give President Bush props for one thing: Senators won't have to consult a psychic to determine what Judge Samuel Alito thinks about the Constitution. As Ann Althouse notes in The New York Times, Bush could have followed the Miers selection with another candidate whose resume had (shall we say) a few holes. (Hat tip: Instapundit .) Instead, this confirmation process should be a real treat -- a nominee with 15 years' appellate-court experience and additional time as a litigator in the Justice Department and the office of the Solicitor General. Meantime, Julian Sanchez deconstructs the left's initial talking points against Alito. Note: Sanchez is a libertarian, Alito a conservative; Sanchez concedes that Alito has a more expansive view of the role of the state. That said, the judge reads and applies the law carefully and consistently. Or as my old D.C. acquaintance Jonathan Adler writes on OpinionJournal , Alito is "pro-law." This should be welcome...

Up next ... Harriet Miers should not have been subjected to this. But she showed class and dignity (and a good deal more sense than her boss) by withdrawing. Now, the Bush administration has to show it learned from the debacle. While the president reportedly loves to surprise people, being overly clever here by picking another stealth nominee (or a White House insider who's a cipher to the outside world) would neither mollify his supporters -- nor promote an independent judiciary, which will have an impact on Americans long past 2009. It's just plain sad to see Chuck Schumer and other Democrats blame the Miers withdrawal on the vast right wing conspiracy, or to see Dianne Feinstein (who's sadly becoming more of a party hack as the years drift by) play the sexism card. Miers had few champions, because she clearly was not qualified for the job. It's not her fault; she specialized in the administrative side of law, not the theoretical. Still, it's gonna be fun to watc...

Read all about it In this Reason Online piece, former Tar Heel Jesse Walker notes the migration of zines to public library stacks -- and plugs this humble blog, which began as a zine several millennia ago. The brief history is here . Deregulator was my second stab at publishing. The first, titled The Free Citizen, was a spiffier, tabloid-style rag produced by a handful of libertarians (including me) in the Research Triangle Park circa 1985. We laid it out on a Mac Plus -- which cost several grand back in those days, and featured a whopping 128k of RAM. Since the OS chewed up 99k of the RAM, you had to save everything to a floppy. We spat Microsoft Word copy from a laser printer, used paste-up sheets and photocopies and rubber glue; desktop publishing software was not available to mere mortals in those days. Production costs were microscopic; the newsprint to run 10,000 copies of a 16-page tab ran less than 100 bucks, I think. The plates and ink probably cost more than the paper. And ...

Better Justice My friend and former boss Virginia Postrel formally joins a handful of prominent Bush backers and urges the president to pull the Miers appointment. The group, Americans for Better Justice , is asking people to e-mail and call senators to up the pressure on Bush. It has also produced an ad, set to run on Fox News starting Wednesday, to get out its message. Virginia explains her reasons for enlisting in this diverse group here . Money quote: Unlike some social conservatives, my concerns are not results-oriented. As a matter of policy, I am perfectly happy to have abortion legal, with some restrictions, and actively support gay marriage. If there were any evidence (other than my friend Hugh Hewitt's imaginings) that Harriet Miers shared Richard Epstein's views on affirmative action, I'd give her a pass on that. (Now there' a line of questioning for the Judiciary Committee: Would you agree with Richard Epstein on affirmative action? Does she even know who he...

A tricky mentor George Bush is getting semi-friendly advice about the Miers nomination from National Review , the Wall Street Journal and Charles Krauthammer , among others (in other words, DUMP HER!) -- and has chosen to hunker down, notwithstanding the dilemmas this stance poses to his political base. For one thing, if she indeed goes to Capitol Hill and is confirmed, it'll be tough for a future nominee's supporters to successfully argue (as did adherents of several Bush appointees, including John Roberts) that there should be no religious test for court nominees. Look, the only bloody reason the Bushies are giving religious cons to back Miers is that she's one of them. If that's not a religious test ... Meantime, the conservative crackup has caused some historian types (check The Corner and No Left Turns , for starters) to question whether Bush is really a conservative, much less of a Reaganesque variety. Maybe we've got the role models wrong. Think of a putati...

Busted! Dan Weintraub also links to this affidavit from the California Teachers Association, which is trying to get a $40 million line of credit to pay for its politicking. The union has not only exhausted the increase in dues it imposed on union members in June to fight Schwarzenegger's ballot drives, but also pre-spent (if you will) all the extra dues it expects to collect through 2008. Foes of the dues hike are trying to get a judge to block the line of credit. Weintraub also notes that the governor's folks believe the unions have raised and spent $100 million in the anti-Arnold campaign. If you don't live in California, you haven't been bombarded by the ads featuring those public-spirited teachers and firefighters Arnold has picked on with his mean-spirited campaign. Lucky you. But now that the gov has come back with his own ads that cast the battle as one of "government unions in Sacramento" vs. "the people of California," the initiatives' ...

How a strip-club scandal helps Arnold The ever-insightful Dan Weintraub handicaps the race for mayor of San Diego. (Free reg'n may be required.) He also blogs about why voter intensity in California's second-largest city could give Schwarzenegger's reform agenda a boost. When the Democratic candidate, maverick surfer Donna Frye, is threatening to force the government into bankruptcy unless public employees take benefit cuts, you know this gorgeous city's administration has jumped the tracks. But wait. There's more. The San Diego debacles go beyond creative public financing and overly generous employee benefits. Interest in Frye's earlier write-in candidacy got traction from a scandal involving two council members and the Galardi brothers, who owned strip clubs there and in Vegas. And the Galardis' dirty money -- they bribed public officials in both cities in the hopes of getting laws governing their strip clubs relaxed -- ended a handful of political car...

Free-range technocracy In a fascinating Reason colloquy, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey says Milton Friedman wasn't thinking expansively enough 35 years ago when he penned "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits." Mackey argues that from now on, successful companies will have to acknowledge the "humanitarian" dimension of capitalism, incorporating charitable contributions (presumably directed to the local community) as part of the business model. Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers counters that Mackey's little more than a Marxist decked out in libertarian pleather. Sure, companies can be good corporate citizens and help charitable projects. But they must keep shareholder value their top priority, or more-efficient competitors will drive them out of business. Friedman plays peacemaker, noting that in a diverse marketplace, it's possible for corporations to succeed by selling their conscience, if you like -- so long as they als...

How atypical am I? I didn't opine on the Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court because: a) by all accounts, he's a very bright, qualified man who knows his way around a courtroom and has confronted constitutional controversies for a quarter-century; and b) Bush didn't ask me who I'd put on the court. (For the record, the 9th Circuit's Alex Kozinski would be a Brian McCann shot over the wall. But Kozinski's too honest about his views of the law to ever be confirmed to another federal bench.) From what I've seen and heard, though, the Miers pick is entirely different, because, well, it alienates people like me. I tend to vote Republican for one reason: The alternatives are unpalatable. The Libertarian Party is a joke; it lost me forever after 9/11 when its leading lights expressed sympathy with the view that Osama, et al, had legitimate grievances for U.S. foreign policy. To the extent the Democrats hold any discernible views, they seem to be based on a mo...

Miered in Congress Want some local knowledge about the Harriet Miers nomination? Virginia Postrel, who hails from Dallas (and notes that much of her family income is provided by SMU), has cogent thoughts here and here . For starters. By all means, go to the main site here and keep scrolling. Virginia's point on "Miers-Briggs Jurisprudence" strikes particularly close to home. Over my many lifetimes I've worked for extreme "S" types, who may lack either the interest or inclination to look beyond their own experiences and think the world is simply an extension of what they know. They can make wretched bosses -- if they're in a position where setting long-term goals is important. Meantime, Peggy Noonan nails this point: I find myself lately not passionately supporting or opposing any particular nominee. But I'd give a great deal to see Supreme Court justices term-limited. They should be picked not for life but for a specific term of specific length, a...

'Constituency conservatism' So what went wrong with the Republicans? Without question, it's easier to plot an electoral victory than it is to maintain control once you've won. And wielding power often means spending programs that target the people who elected you. (Someone -- Dave Barry? -- once called it "bribing people with their own money.") Beyond that, though, two factors have locked the GOP into what appears to be political invulnerability: legislative gerrymandering and the emergence of (borrowing from Mickey Kaus again) "constituency conservatism." The absence of competition in legislative races, caused by partisan rigging of member districts, protects incumbents from serious challenges. This is a bipartisan scandal that transcends regional politics. Even in deep-blue California, none of the 153 state or federal legislative seats changed parties in the 2004 election. But if federal legislators who once win office (or certainly who win their ...

Calling Lord Acton An engaging debate between Matt Ygelesias and Mickey Kaus about unions, prevailing wages, Katrina reconstruction and what this all means for the Democratic Party. Yglesias says up front he knows nothing about the Davis-Bacon Act (which mandates that workers on government contracts get union wages), and it shows. That said, it's refreshing to see this debate unfold among Democratic public intellectuals, even if it's unlikely to reach the cerebral cortexes of, say, Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi. Since the 2000 election, Bush-religious right-conservative-Republican hatred has poisoned the national Democratic Party, relegating constructive discussions about policy issues, even in the abstract, to the dustbin of history. (As Mickey points out, even the "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council has become a sorry mouthpiece for the party's reflexive left.) The problem with this policy vacuum is that the Republican Party has, by default, emerged as t...

Terminal planning At TechCentralStation, Frederick Turner offers a fascinating explanation of why the Iraqi resistance is getting more lethal, even though the casualties increasingly wind up being Muslims. (Hint: Michael Moore's suggestion that Zarqawi resembles, say, Patrick Henry fares none too well.) Meantime, Nick Schulz locates the architect of HillaryCare, taking up residence at the Clinton Global Initiative. That's bad news for the developing world, not just Western taxpayers. Check 'em out.

He'll be back A two-fer this week: Schwarzenegger launched his last push for the special election on Monday, and then said he'll run for a full term on Friday. Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters suggests how a chief executive with bottom-feeding approval ratings could still prevail: First, the gay-marriage bill shows that Californians do not get the representation they want at the Legislature, regardless of the merits or demerits of the bill itself. They voted against gay marriage five years ago, only to have their representatives try to pass it again and again and finally succeeding this year. Only the Governator's veto kept it from trumping the will of 60% of California's electorate, which has a significant Democratic majority. Arnold made himself the people's representative, restraining an imperial Legislature that has far too easy of a time maintaining a Democratic deathgrip on state politics. (Note: Schwarzenegger hasn't vetoed the bill, just said he wo...

Happy birthday to the King BB King, that is, who turned 80 today. (He shares a birthday with Katie Snell, 7-year-old daughter of our good friends Mike and Lisa ). Riley King may be a beloved cultural icon, but he's also a wonderful musician; Clapton and Stevie Ray both considered him on of the greatest guitarists. By all accounts, he's also a lovely man with a big heart who can still play. Many happy returns. We keep losing BB's contemporaries and colleagues -- pioneers who can never be replaced. Over the past few months, Johnnie Johnson (Chuck Berry's longtime piano collaborator and the first sideman selected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) passed on at 80. Last week, Clarence " Gatemouth " Brown left us at 81. It was fascinating how both these legends transcended categories. Johnson, a jazzman by training, recorded two pretty solid albums with country outlaws The Kentucky Headhunters, and even toured with them. Gatemouth appeared on "Hee Haw" ...

Calling Lyle Lanley It's a tale of juice, boondoggles, the Mormon Mafia: The intrepid Steve Sebelius and George Knapp unravel the mystery of the Las Vegas Monorail in this week's City Life. Alternative weeklies offer what may be the last outlet for this dead-tree-based form of long-form, feature writing on local issues -- and it's a type of storytelling TV cannot match. Check it out here . And for some fun blogging from the left side of the aisle, be sure to read Steve's two blogs, Under a Naked Bulb and Various Things and Stuff . They're both on my blogroll.

Newt the seer Horrific tales of child abuse, much like the one unfolding in Wakeman, Ohio , come to light far too often, with foster parents treating their young wards as a cash crop, or livestock. All of which makes Newt Gingrich look like a humanitarian. Remember 11 years ago, when he suggested that a revival of orphanages might offer a more compassionate means to provide a healthy upbringing for some children who were abandoned or abused by their parents? Gingrich was widely ridiculed by the left at the time, claiming that this was a mean-spirited Republican plan to dump poor children into warehouses. But those warehouses exist now; they're run by adults who have state approval to keep abandoned children, apparently, without having to worry about being watched by the government. To be sure, the vast majority of foster parents are loving, caring people. And we should value their commitment to provide some security to children who can rely on no one else. But the current system al...

Terminated? On Monday, Gov. Schwarzenegger formally launched what’s left of his November campaign to reform California government. It’s a reminder that the real summer blockbuster in the Golden State was Arnold’s unexpected political meltdown. And if Props 75 (paycheck protection) and 77 (redistricting) fail, not only will Schwarzenegger likely become a lame duck; California may well become ungovernable. A year after pulling in unprecedentedly stellar approval ratings, his favorables have plummeted toward the Gray (Davis) Zone. (If it’s any solace to Arnold, at least Californians continue to despise the Legislature.) See the latest Public Policy Institute of California survey here . To be sure, some of Arnold’s wounds are/were self-inflicted, perhaps a sign of political naivete. Letting corporate-bankrolled nonprofits underwrite the costs of his Sacramento offices? Dumb – and a betrayal of his vow to govern transparently, not influenced by special interests. Allowing third parties (Al...

Goat Boy returns I don't mean to diminish the unmitigated evil al-Qaida encapsulates, but did anyone else find the the latest Jihadist bluster -- a 9/11/05 video message purportedly from former Riversider Adam Gadahn -- cartoonish? Gadahn, privately referred to as "goat boy" by some of the locals since he grew up on a goat farm, hardly appeared threatening to me. Looked like he belonged in one of the Die Hard movies.

I'm back ... Though it's not entirely my idea. My previous gig at The Press-Enterprise didn't work out. That's all I'll say for now, but I may choose to share more over a virtual beer if you drop me an e-mail. Meantime, I'm actively seeking steady pay at a new work place. I have several irons in the fire (or maybe it's a few irons in separate fires), and am freelancing to stay sharp. Plus, blogging again. Thanks for tuning in. Speaking of freelancing My first effort, post P-E, was for Las Vegas City Life ; a follow-up with the folks in New London, Conn., to see what indignities the local government would dump on hapless property owners once the Supreme Court refused to defend their rights. (Thanks to City Life's editor, my buddy and former Review-Journal colleague Steve Sebelius, for getting me back on the horse so quickly.)