I don’t really like it when people attribute to me views I don’t hold, so I’ll say in response to Paul Campos that I know perfectly well that if the public adopted healthier lifestyles this would do little to reduce health care costs. Indeed, as he says,depending on exactly what happens healthier lifestyles might lead to higher health care costs.

I don’t think the case for taxing public health hazards at all rests on any such claim. Instead, as I’ve been saying, the case for such taxes rests on the claim that raising revenue through some source or other is going to be necessary when the recession ends. As you can see, Obama administration’s budget (demarcated with the dotted lines) leaves revenue as a percent of GDP far too low to pay for the government services we need:

That dotted line already assumes you’re repealing Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. You could—and we probably should—raise taxes even further on the rich. But I don’t think there’s a realistic way to get all the way to where we need to go purely through that mechanism. So the isse becomes that if you’re going to have broad-based sources of revenue, it makes sense to obtain a decent chunk of that revenue through taxes that, at the margin, encourage healthier behavior rather than through taxes that, at the margin, discourage economic activity.

There’s been some hand-wringing for a while ever since Jacob Zuma consolidated his position as next leader of the African National Congress. Zuma has a variety of unsavory characteristics, including serious charges of corruption and even rape, and poses some risk that South Africa will slide off its promising path of democracy and relative prosperity.

At the same time, though South African politics isn’t something I follow closely, I had a vague sense that it might in some ways be a good thing. Zuma’s ascension led to some of his rivals in the ANC leaving to form their own political party, the Congress of the People (COPE), which raised the prospect of giving South Africa a credible, black-led opposition party. That would, it seems to me, be a very healthy development since the ANC’s structural supermajority, no matter how well-deserved, presents a constant temptation to abuse of power and so forth. But when the elections results came in, COPE proved to be a huge bust. Eusebius McKaiser and Sasha Polakow-Suransky have an interesting article in The New Republic laying out some of the reasons why.

Julian Sanchez:

You know that Simpsons episode where the doctor explains that Mr. Burns is simultaneously suffering from almost every disease known to man, but remains healthy because they’re in a precarious equilibrium, like a horde of obese men simultaneously trying to squeeze through the “door” of his immune system? And in honor of that image, they dub the condition “Three Stooges Syndrome”? This is often how I feel reading Michael Goldfarb, because when someone is confused in so many different ways over the span of two short paragraphs, it’s easy to get paralyzed.

One thing that the specifics of Goldfarb’s argument inspires is the question of whether or not there are any limits that the pro-torture right would apply to putatively useful conduct undertaken by putative “good guys” in order to combat putative “bad guys.” In the case of John Yoo, we know that the answer is “no.” According to Yoo, it’s not possible for it to be a war crime for an American president to order that we threaten to crush someone’s kid’s testicles because, by definition, international law cannot bind a US president’s decision-making with regard to national security.

I think it’s obvious that an Obama judicial appointment is going to be a great fundraising opportunity for conservative groups even though the votes clearly aren’t there for a real Jüdgerdämmerung. But this would be fun:

Early front-runners for the bogeyman nod have cropped up: Darling mentioned Yale University Law School Dean Harold Koh, whom he called “very extreme.” Sekulow specifically called out 2nd Circuit Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, an early favorite for the nod, as “to the left of David Souter.”

“This is not my ideal situation,” said Kay Daly, president of the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary. “Obama could conceivably put a justice onto the bench that literally would make Souter look like [Associate Justice Antonin] Scalia.”

If Obama knows someone who can literally make Souter look like Scalia, then I think Republicans better be careful before opposing the person in question. Maybe he or she can also turn Mitch McConnell into a toad or turn lead into gold. Watch out! Meanwhile, David Souter was appointed by George H.W. Bush so would it really be so crazy if Obama appointed someone who’s somewhat to Souter’s left? But ideology aside, I want the magician-justice!