I know regular Agitator readers have expressed concern that the blog has become less blog-like over the last few months. I'll try to remedy that. It's been a nutty news week. Not just all the obvious stuff, but even the second-tier stories are crazy. A few items for your reading:
-- Pennsylvania and Indiana are facing challenges to their anachronistic liquor laws. And in Pennsylvania, the CDC is stepping up.
-- Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is pushing mandatory minimums for gun crimes. Never mind that they don't work.
-- In Nanny State news, the NTSB wants to lower the legal BAC level for DUI offenses to .05. It's an absurd idea that even MADD doesn't support. At least not yet. Meanwhile, the FDA is mulling over a minimum drinking age for coffee, and remember all that scare talk about salt? Yeah. Never mind.
-- Given all the craziness in Washington this week, I think this five-year-old piece I wrote about political press flacks holds up pretty well.
-- Here's a smart piece by Glenn Reynolds on runaway IP law.
-- The Departments of Education and Justice plan to impose some astonishingly censorious speech codes on colleges and universities that accept federal funding. Which is nearly all of them.
-- How to leak information to the press without getting caught.
-- Harvey Silverglate looks at why the FBI doesn't record its interrogations. The answer ought to scare the hell out of you.
-- Finally, from Slate, "What’s Hitting Us in the Groin?"