If the Justice Department decided to start a full criminal invesigation of the Plame affair on Friday, as John Ashcroft told the New York Times, then why did it take until Tuesday to get a letter with specific demands to the White House? [*] Why wasn’t that letter ready at the same time as the formal notification, which went out Monday evening?
Note also that the investigation is going to be handled by the inspections division, which reports directly to Mueller, rather than the Washington Field Office. Anything that brings the action closer to the political appointees should be considerered bad news until proven benign.
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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