Just asking

Why hasn’t the Texas Rangers stadium deal, in which George W. Bush made tens of millions of dollars at taxpayer expense by taking private property for private use, been mentioned in the course of the debate about

How is it that the entire debate about the Kelo eminent-domain decision has run its course without anyone mentioning that the President of the United States made most of his huge fortune by arranging for exactly that sort of taking of private property for private use?

Imagine a Democratic President in the same situation, and imagine what Fox and Rush and Drudge would have made out of it. That’s why it’s fair to say that the country has, in effect, no liberal media in the sense that it has conservative media.

Update A reader offers a correction:

Not “conservative media;” “right wing partisan media.” Drudge et al. are not “conservative” in any sense that is recognizeable in the sense of a political philosophy like that of Burke or Bob Taft (for example).

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