Valerie Plame is running for Congress. She has a great ad.
Recent Bluessky Posts- Jotwell IP: Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Clinical Trial Transparency and Patent Prior Art, JOTWELL (Apr 30, 2026) (reviewing Dennis Byrski & Lucy Xiaolu Wang, Marketing Authorization and Strategic Patenting: Evidence from Pharmaceuticals, 247 J. Pub. Econ. 105415 (2025)), ip.jotwell.com/clinical-tri... April 30, 2026 Jotwell
- Had one been elected promising national health that would have been strong evidence of a winning coalition for it. That sort of thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy sometimes. Electoral campaigns are not the moment to discuss the nuts and bolts of horse-trading. They're the time to inspire. April 29, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- Emma Cave, Keeping Pace with Technological Advances, JOTWELL (April 29, 2026) (reviewing Neera Bhatia, Technology, Health, and Law in Life and Death Before the Cradle to Beyond the Grave (2025)), health.jotwell.com/keeping-pace.... April 29, 2026 Jotwell
- Seems to me there ought to be a problem if large numbers of women whose married names didn't match their birth names will need to get a passport in order to vote, and that passport will come with a partisan portrait. www.thebulwark.com/p/exclusive-... April 29, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- Sad to learn that Barney Frank has entered hospice. Unfortunate he turned against the party's left, his natural allies, later in his career. April 29, 2026 Michael Froomkin
And you like the CIA
Not especially. There are actually 2 CIA’s: the ‘light side’ and the ‘dark side’. The light side does analysis. I had huge problems with the light side in the cold war, because I thought their analysis of the USSR’s capabilities was wildly wrong, and because I thought they were illegally spying in the US and on some US persons abroad (some of it was not illegal). Generally I’m not real impressed with the ideological assumptions that (as far as we know) shade the work today, although there are exceptions eg global warming. There’s also an issue with duplication among the US’s many, many, many, many, many spy agencies of which the CIA is perhaps only the visible part of a big iceberg. And let’s not forget the domestic spying, although here right now the NSA’ electronic domestic recording policies seem to be the biggest issue.
All this pales in the face of my dislike of one part of he dark side, the folks who do the spying and run the secret wars. But let us distinguish between the two: I do think the US needs spies; it is a dangerous world — and Plame was a spy. Spying, novels tell us, is a trade for patriots and rogues. In either case, I think it’s evil in most cases to hang them out to dry as Cheney did to Plame. I can can conceive of exceptions to this rule, but none are relevant to Plame, who seems very clearly to be, and have, been a patriot.
The problem is the secret wars. I think they are usually immoral and almost always illegal. (We do get local fig leaves sometimes). That’s the part of the CIA that needs to be cut back to almost zero.