Make my day. Veto the stem-cell bill, and let Tom DeLay’s robots sustain your veto. I can’t imagine an issue I’d rather build a campaign around.
The House has passed the stem-cell bill, and Arlen Specter says he has a veto-proof majority for it in the Senate. The President threatens to veto it, and Tom DeLay says he has the votes in the House to sustain a veto.
Perfect. Just what we need. Take an issue where public sentiment is clearly with the Democrats, and set it up so the radical conservatives of the Texas Republican Party are standing between sick people and miracle cures. Exectly the right issue for the 2006/2008 elections: science and health v. fanaticism.
Liberalism lost public favor mostly because it came to appear to many voters that electing liberals meant having the government get in the way of stuff they wanted to do. I’m delighted to see the right making the same dumb mistake.
Meanwhile, the research goes forward abroad, and here in California.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
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