FlaBlog brings me this happy reminder about “Jeb Bush's and the Dept. of Education's refusal to enforce minimal standards for receiving state school voucher money. A draft proposal calls for voluntary rules and if you don't comply, no biggie, you still get state money.”
The voucher program has already had a series of scandals where people started “schools” that only existed on paper, so this is especially evil.
Oh boy are we in trouble.
Count Crisis? Elections official warns of glitches that may scramble vote auditing. See also Ed Felton's summary of the key points. I'm pleased to report that UM Law's own Marnie Mahoney is deeply involved in the effort to try to solve the problem with the iVotronic machines. But from the sound of the news stories, local officials are working hard to pretend there's no problem.
A proof by example that economics need not always be the dismal science: The Idea Shop.
Here's the 2-page outline of the talk I gave today at the seminar on ID cards and human rights.
Secret prisons. Harsh interrogations. Heard this one before?
Harsh C.I.A. Methods Cited in Top Qaeda Interrogations: The Central Intelligence Agency has used coercive interrogation methods against a select group of high-level leaders and operatives of Al Qaeda that have produced growing concerns inside the agency about abuses, according to current and former counterterrorism officials.
At least one agency employee has been disciplined for threatening a detainee with a gun during questioning, they said.
In the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a high-level detainee who is believed to have helped plan the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, C.I.A. interrogators used graduated levels of force, including a technique known as “water boarding,” in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.
How many detention faciilities does the CIA run? How many prisoners? How long are they held? Are they released?
And those are the easy questions. The tough ones are about how often the CIA launders its torture through foreign intelligence agencies.
I'm off to Cambridge (MA) today. Tomorrow I speak at one event and probably listen in on another. I had thought to try to look up old friends, or newer friends, but it turns out that today is shot for socializing because I have to be on an 8pm conference call this evening, which pretty much messes up any chance of serious dinner plans.
But if anyone reading this knows me already and is interested in a late evening post-conference call beer in the general vicinity of Harvard Yard / Harvard Law School this evening, please drop me an email, ideally with a phone number. I land in Boston around 3, should make it to the hotel by 4, and they swear they have high speed internet in every room so I should get the message. (They better, as it turns out I have a lot of work to do before that 8pm call.)
Suggestions as to where to grab a quick, decent, solitary pre-call bite in that area also gratefully welcomed. Although I get up there ever few years, I really don't know my way around Cambridge (MA) at all. Cambridge (UK), that's another story.
Jotwell Blenderlaw