I’d encourage everyone to read this Ann Althouse post on today’s bogus Daily Caller story about JournoList. Her bottom line: “The Daily Caller’s article is weak. And I’m inclined to think the material in the Journolist archive is pretty mild stuff.”

What’s maddening about this whole issue is that of course it’s impossible to prove a negative. The closest one can come, however, is reasonable inference. The Caller appears to have access to a very large proportion of JournoList emails and they can’t come up with anything that withstands cursory scrutiny. Nor are they willing to simply publish the full text of the pilfered emails they’re writing about, forcing their audience to instead rely on Jonathan Strong’s deliberately misleading writeups.

At some point conservatives need to ask themselves about the larger meaning of this kind of conduct—and Andrew Breitbart’s—for their movement. Beyond the ethics of lying and smear one’s opponents, I would think conservatives would worry about the fact that a large portion of conservative media is dedicated to lying to conservatives. They regard their audience as marks to be misled and exploited, not as customers to be served with useful information.

It will come as no surprise to learn that Las Vegas, Nevada is not a model of sustainable urban planning. After all, this is a giant city in the middle of the desert where nobody should have ever put a city. But it’s always fun to look at the parking regulations of a new place, since this is a form of big government activism that nobody ever talks about even though there’s no cogent argument that it’s necessary to curb any kind of negative externality. Thus we learn in the parking regulations (PDF) that a Clark County apartment building must contain at least 1.25 parking spaces for every one bedroom unit.

There’s also this provision, apparently designed to encourage drunk driving:

Of course once a given metro area is built with utter car-dependence in mind, it makes perfect sense for developers to build future projects that assume utterly car-dependent clients. Consequently, these kind of regulations can come to seem like not such a big deal. But from another view that’s all the more reason to think we can get by without these regulations. In a place like Las Vegas the market almost certainly would provide ample parking. But if some particular group of people happen to think they could get by with less parking, why should the government tell them otherwise? What public purpose is being advanced?

By Ryan McNeely

Last night on Twitter, Tyler Cowen asked why the D.C. Metro was so bad. Matt jumped to Metro’s defense, arguing that while the D.C. system is not up to European standards like Berlin’s U-Bahn and S-Bahn systems, it is the “second best” system in the U.S. after New York City’s subway system.

For comparison, here’s the average weekday ridership per mile of the four largest metro systems in the U.S. (while D.C. has the second highest overall ridership, its “per mile” ridership is diluted because it goes far our into the suburbs):

Now, what makes for a good metro? Well, cost for one. New York and Chicago have a flat-rate fare of $2.25 for a single trip, while it looks like Boston costs a maximum of $2.00 with several discount options. D.C., by comparison, has fares ranging from $1.75 to $4.60 (!), and you somewhat annoyingly need to swipe at the beginning and end of the trip because the fare is based on distance — though I suppose an argument can be made that it’s prudent to charge suburban commuters more than the urbanities. What about service? Well NYC runs 24/7, and Chicago’s busiest lines run 24/7 with some others closing around 1:00am. Boston and D.C. seem very similar, with stations closing between 12:30 and 1:00am on weeknights. Then there’s the matter of fatalities — I only did a cursory search, but I don’t think NYC, Chicago, or Boston has had any fatalities involving passengers in trains since 1990. Meanwhile, eight passengers died in the horrible D.C. Red Line accident last year, and there have been many other close calls (an investigation concluded that a 2004 accident at the Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan stop would have killed at least 79 people if one of the trains involved had not been empty).

So, I think a case can be made using these few metrics that the D.C. metro is actually the worst of the biggest four in the U.S. But, still, I really enjoy it. I find the staff to be generally friendlier than the New York staff, which is difficult given the constant delays (yet another downside of the D.C. metro, but it’s hard to find comparables). I also think the curved vaulted ceilings are beautiful and make the underground feel much less claustrophobic, and the “no food or drink” policy really does contribute to the Metro’s very impressive cleanliness. Overall, the evidence is mixed, but I don’t think the ever-present D.C. Metro haters have conclusively made their case that the system sucks in the domestic context.

With the Pentagon prepping to survey America’s soldiers about how they feel about allowing their gay colleagues to have equal rights, my colleague Igor Volsky took a trip to the National Archives to examine the last time they attempted this charade:

Today [i.e., yesterday], I traveled to the National Archives and recovered some of the surveys the military conducted about the troops’ attitudes towards black people between 1942 and 1946. At the time, the military — along with the overwhelming majority of the country — opposed integrating black servicemembers into the forces and preferred a ’separate but equal’ approach that would have required the military to construct separate recreation spaces and facilities. One month before Truman’s order, a Gallup poll showed that 63% of American adults endorsed the separation of Blacks and Whites in the military; only 26% supported integration.

These surveys show that the same attitude pervaded the military: 3/4 Air Force men favored separate training schools, combat, and ground crews and 85% of white soldiers thought it was a good idea to have separate service clubs in army camps:

Sometimes you’ve got to do the right thing.

By Ryan McNeely

Yesterday, Republican Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) was apparently “livid” on Capitol Hill, speaking with reporters while Democrats met to discuss their next step towards getting an energy bill through the Senate. Voinovich complained that since, in his opinion, there’s virtually no chance of passing such a bill before the November elections, even having the meeting at all was “cynical”:

“Anybody that has been in the Senate for any period of time knows there is no way, no way, that an energy bill is going to get done between now and the election or for that matter between now and the end of this year,” Voinovich told reporters. “This whole thing is very cynical.”

“Give me a break. This is just going through the motions, maybe to satisfy some people in your conference, but don’t kid us about we’re going to come forward with this thing and it’s going to be serious,” Voinovich said. “Anybody that’s being intellectually honest has got to say we do not have the time to do anything meaningful at this time in regards to climate change.”

The first thing to say is that unfortunately Voinovich may be technically correct that there isn’t time to “do anything meaningful” about climate change as the entire Congress gears up for election season. Certainly Senate Democrats could have pursued climate legislation before health care reform and financial regulation, but then one wonders if there would have been time to accomplish those other priorities. But the question is why is there insufficient time to deal with the most important issues facing the country?

The answer is the systematic Republican campaign to object, obstruct, delay, and filibuster every aspect of Senate business. And George Voinovich fully participated in this effort to run out the clock on the 111th Congress. Does George Voinovich believe that tackling climate change is important? If so, he could have declined to join his colleagues in filibustering the unemployment insurance extension over and over and over knowing full well that — eventually — the Democrats would be able replace their deceased caucus member and break the filibuster. Even if Voinovich doesn’t support extending the benefits (something he has voted for in the past), he could have simply declined to filibuster. But instead, Voinovich decided to go “through the motions, maybe to satisfy some people in [his] conference,” and cynically grind the Senate to a halt.