So Ampersand takes aim at Libertarians, pointing out that Libertarians let private homeowners' associations do what they would never permit governments to do. It's worth noting the key difference, though. Homeowners' associations only have control over those who enter them by voluntary choice (I'm not actually sure how this Homeowner's association works, but presumably the poor fellow agreed when he bought the property to abide by them; if not, then I'm apposed to the HA). That said, I'm not wild about the idea of restrictive covenants placed on property.

But Ampersand does more than just indict private contracts entered into by neighbors:

I agree with the libertarians that freedom from government intrusion is a good thing - reproductive freedom, for example, and freedom from goverment censoring boards. But other freedoms matter as well - freedom from the threat of hunger and poverty, for example. Freedom from having a political process dominated entirely by the wealthy and by corporations. Freedom from discrimination. None of these freedoms, however, seem worth protecting to libertarians.

Well, our speech on heroin is done. It was a lot of fun. David Boaz, our chief interrogator asked a lot of difficult questions, as did our fellow Koch Fellows. I think his best question was "So 10% of the citizens of Baltimore are addicted to heroin and you're okay with that?" He also informed us that Power Point was responsible for the destruction of ideas, and that Americans shouldn't use the metric system.

The best answer anybody delivered though, was during another fellow's presentation, on education. After defending vouchers against Federal Constitutional challenge, they were asked "have any of you ever heard of State Constitutions." A long, long, pause seized all of the professors, before my fellow U of C'er Ben Glatstein responded (deadpan). "I've heard of them."

Maureen Dowd says that blogs are boring. But then, she only looked at boring blogs. Dan Drezner covers this.

(Via Ed Cohn) Soon-to-be NYTimes columnist David Brooks has an interview with the Chicago Tribune. It's mostly pretty boring, but I liked the bits on the U of C:

Q. You graduated from the University of Chicago in 1983. Why did you go there? It seems a little radical for a guy like you.

A. Two reasons. First, the admissions officers at other universities decided I'd be going to the University of Chicago. [laughs] I had bad grades in high school. But I had high SAT scores. So I could get into Chicago. Second, my family is quite liberal. When I went to Chicago, I was quite liberal. I considered myself a Socialist.

Q. What do you remember about U. of C.?

A. I had the common core [curriculum], which was the best thing I did at Chicago -- writing 17 papers on Thucydides and living in the 4th Century. The problem with the university then was that there were five men for every woman. Now it's more even. It's primarily a graduate school. Because I was arrogant, I took mostly grad courses in my last two years. I learned a lot about the study of history but not about history.

Matthew Yglesias is presiding over a comments-fight on the merits and demerits of Proposition 54, the racial privacy initiative in California. The best line in the debate clearly goes to Sebastian Holsclaw, who writes: "I believe in racial injustice, yet I don't believe in racial justice. I wonder if that is a rational position?"

Anyway, I think the issue is fascinating, and I don't know where I stand on it. I tentatively think it's a wonderful idea, but I want to know a lot more about how signficant "adverse impact" statistical claims are in racial discrimination cases. At the very least, I think all public universities should be forbidden from collecting racial data, for reasons I've mentioned in this Maroon piece. I think that where racial discrimination is likely to be carried out using these aggregate racial statistics, they ought to be banned. Where racial discrimination is likely to be discovered by them, they should be permitted. This will require judgment calls with respect to each institution, and is pretty hard to write on a proposition. So which way is the better way to go for a per se rule? It's a tough call. In California, I'd say it's probably better to ban them. In Kentucky, I might go the other way.