Weakened reading guide...

1. This story in The Economist shows that I may have been right on the money when I said that the famous Freakonomics claim - that abortion reduces crime - may have been entirely due to faulty methodology. Not only did the researchers have computer code errors (!), but they used total numbers of homicides instead of homicide rates as their benchmarks of crime...and of course post-Roe generations will have comparatively low homicide numbers, because there are fewer of them. Um..."duh".
Of course, the flawed nature of the abortion-crime thesis is apparent to anyone who was born, as I was, in 1980. 1980 was years after Roe, and when I was in high school, my abortion-culled generation was called the most criminal in history.

2. This other story in The Economist details Bush's very sensible immigration plan. Bush is, on balance, probably the worst president in post-WW2 history, but I like to give credit where credit is due. After all, immigration still represents America's most unique competitive advantage.

3. The occasionally brilliant but usually hackish National Review has this very true article about the failure of the "war on drugs", but also runs this totally ridiculous article supporting "Intelligent Design." The latter article is a piece of trash, but it's trash that is much easier to write than to refute (kind of like the kid saying "Yes it is!" will typically outlast the kid saying "No it isn't" because the latter has more syllables), so I won't get into it here. Suffice it to say that A) National Review publishes articles supporting bad policies when they aren't in the news, then publishes articles opposing those same policies when they get in the news, thus keeping up an undercurrent of support for bad policies while not appearing to endorse them, and that B) Intelligent Design is basically a way to make people who don't know anything about science feel like it's OK not to know anything about science.

4. And finally, in this excellent piece, TNR's Jason Zengerle expounds on the difference between the anthemic protest music of Bob Dylan and the whiny half-hearted tripe of Conor Oberst. Mr. Oberst, whose first name I insist on pronouncing "COH-norr", is one of my personally least favorite figures of the modern alternative music scene, the reasons being 1. His music sucks, and 2. Everyone loves him (except me and Jason Zengerle). The man can't write lyrics to save his hairdo, and his music bores one to tears. And to death. It bores you so much you cry until you die of dehydration. Then you go get a Bob Dylan album and feel much revived.