After hearing so much about Lake County on Tuesday night, I want to shine a light on Marion County and my hometown of Indianapolis.  Lake County was supposed to be Obama territory, as it is just minutes from Obama's home on the South Side of Chicago and one in four Lake County residents is black.  Lake delivered a 56%-44% split in Obama's favor.  Meanwhile, Marion County - also where about one in four residents is black, but placed a three-hour drive away from Chicago - gave Obama 67% of its votes.  That's a higher share of votes than Obama received in St. Louis County, higher than in Houston's Harris County, higher than in Philadelphia County, and...way higher than in San Francisco County (52%? seriously?).

If Marion County had split 56%-44% as did Lake County, Clinton would have won Indiana not by two points but by five points.  Anyone think the national conversation this week would have been the same at that margin?  So, yeah...big ups to Indy on this Pole Day morning.

He just said on MSNBC that Hillary Clinton once trailed Barack Obama in Indiana by 15 points.  The RealClearPolitics archive of poll data (1) has no result in which Obama led by more than 5 points, (2) lists several more polls where Clinton led than Obama led, and (3) lists one poll from early April in which Clinton led by 16 points.

None of the MSNBC journalists called McAuliffe on this.

UPDATE (7:12pm): Keith Olbermann just brought it up to Russert, citing RealClearPolitics.

UPDATE (7:24pm): MSNBC analyst Pat Buchanan just claimed that Obama led in Indiana by 7 points two weeks ago. 

UPDATE (10:27pm): Eugene Robinson just joked that Hillary might come on stage, eventually, late at night, if she holds on to a tiny Indiana victory, and claim that her campaign had come from 35 points behind.

The 'tude is practically dripping off my monitor:

Is there a difference between RENT CONTROL and RENT STABILIZATION?

Some of the people who email us say "rent controlled" but actually MEAN rent stabilized -- they do not know the difference.

Why is it so hard to be accurate? There is a difference between rent control and rent stabilization, as only about 50,000 rent controlled units exist vs. more than one million stabilized units, and rent control has a different set of regulations than rent stabilization.

Why is it so hard to realize that government euphemisms don't take hold over the vernacular overnight?  These things take time...

The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents 70 percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences.

Should government officials be allowed to torture people in order to obtain crucial information? A common hypothetical example is a terrorist allegedly knowing the location of a nuclear bomb in a major metropolitan area. If he indeed has the information, and many lives could be saved, waterboarding appears to be justified. But we won't know if he had the information until after he is waterboarded.

So here is a really obvious but probably wrong solution: if it turns out the torturee has no information, make the torturer and all his superiors liable for any crimes they commit. What would be the standard criminal penalty if I, as a private citizen, tied someone up and cut off their ear? Give the maximum punishment (with no trial) to the torturer. Make them sign a form beforehand. If it's a private in the Army, and it turns out the "terrorist" has no information about the alleged bomb, then everyone from his superior up to the Secretary of Defense and the President is punished. If the suspect did have the location of the bomb, no punishment is necessary.

I'm sure that will never work. And its chances of being implemented are even worse.

Today, Lew Rockwell links to a post by "Former Beltway Wonk" on the Orange Line of the DC Metro. FBW has covered the Orange Line before (note the context). While Rockwell is kind enough to say that everything is not evil along the OL, he claims that "they all work for the regime." Okay, I'm just gonna link to this presidential candidate's profile (note the address).

What, do I have to draw you a map?

(GMU also has two stops on the OL, but I'm not sure if that is evidence for or against.) 

The City of Los Angeles has now passed a law forcing pets to be sterilized at four months of age. I guess it's about externalities from irresponsible pet owners and the horror over pets being euthanized (apparently it's better that they were never born in the first place). And not surprisingly, the law "offers exemptions for animals of licensed breeders, show animals and service animals." Sounds like a classic Bootlegger and Baptist story!

But wait. It turns out that the American Kennel Club, who is one of the largest potential "bootleggers" in this story, has been actively opposing the law. It appears that voter (and representative) irrationality beats out special interest explanations (unless, of course, there is a bigger special interest I am missing). Score one for Bryan Caplan.

Yes, yes.  I know what they meant to say, but this is still a funny example of imprecise writing:

Stranded on the coast of Jamaica, the explorers were running out of food and faced with increasingly hostile local inhabitants who were refusing to provide them with any more supplies.

Columbus, looking at an astronomical almanac compiled by a German mathematician, realised that a total eclipse of the Moon would occur on February 29, 1504.

He called the native leaders and warned them if they did not cooperate, he would make the Moon disappear from the sky the following night.

The warning, of course, came true, prompting the terrified people to beg Columbus to restore the Moon -- which he did, in return for as much food as his men needed. He and the crew were rescued on June 29, 1504. 

Top that, Washington.

Sudha Shenoy blogs at Liberty & Power:

Let there be a Ron Paul write-in, in November. This will be a better & a permanent register of the true numbers of those who still hold to a genuine liberalism, one of tolerance & peace, of markets & people’s actions.

This is only the latest confusion of Ron Paul's political career with the broader libertarian movement, but it is certainly one of the most confused.

Presidential elections are used by many people to determine the identity of the next President, not to make general political statements; those people will not write in the name of a sure loser.  Many people will not vote.  Many people do not read blogs or visit campaign websites and will never hear of a Ron Paul write-in campaign.  Libertarian sympathizers are to be found in all these groups, and thus a Ron Paul write-in campaign will not remotely measure the "true numbers of those who still hold to a genuine liberalism". 

However, a Ron Paul write-in campaign would create "a permanent register" of some very low number.  So by promoting such a campaign and claiming (falsely) that a write-in vote for Paul must occur if the voter has libertarian sympathy, Shenoy effectively would be aiming to convince the public that the number of libertarians is far lower than what it truly is.   It is difficult to imagine a more counterproductive political strategy.

The paper is called "Drunk driving after the passage of smoking bans in bars" and is forthcoming in the Journal of Public Economics. The authors, Adams and Cotti, find a link between smoking bans and drunk driving fatalities that is robust to many controls. An early non-gated version is available. If you have ScienceDirect access, the article is online already, and here is the abstract:

Using geographic variation in local and state smoke-free bar laws in the US, we observe an increase in fatal accidents involving alcohol following bans on smoking in bars that is not observed in places without bans. Although an increased accident risk might seem surprising at first, two strands of literature on consumer behavior suggest potential explanations — smokers driving longer distances to a bordering jurisdiction that allows smoking in bars and smokers driving longer distances within their jurisdiction to bars that still allow smoking, perhaps through non-compliance or outdoor seating. We find evidence consistent with both explanations. The increased miles driven by drivers wishing to smoke and drink offsets any reduction in driving from smokers choosing to stay home following a ban, resulting in increased alcohol-related accidents. This result proves durable, as we subject it to an extensive battery of robustness checks.

No doubt there may be follow-up studies countering the claim, but I'm sure there will also be armchair dismissals by journalists and bloggers. I'll buy a beer for the first person to spot someone claiming that the authors didn't consider the effect of people staying at home following a ban, even though they mention this fact right in the abstract. In fact, the same authors have another paper showing that smoking bans do reduce bar patronage (people stay home to drink), but this newer paper shows that the effect is weaker than the "drive to other jurisdictions" effect.