If you’re not already persuaded that the current state of affairs in Russia should be a cause of great concern, Mark Kleiman makes the point quite concisely in this post.

I’ve been reading Kleiman’s work since dinosaurs roamed the Grand Concourse, carrying betting slips for wise-guys. When getting a copy of one of his article or books meant long waits via interlibrary loan, and many quarters spent printing microfilm reprints. He was one of the first people to look at drug policy in a methodical way. These days he posts at The Reality-Based Community

– and lots of other stuff.

While I was law school, and a bit after, I did some work as a ghostwriter and book editor. I was approached by aides to someone that I’ll refer to here as One of Many Current Candidates. OMCC wanted me to ghost-write a book persuading America that (illegal) drugs were evil, as great a threat as threats could be, and that only someone with the particular skills, experience, and temperament of OMCC could save America from the dreadful prospect of the universal availability of drugs, mandatory

drug use (an idea which, sadly, has not gotten the consideration it’s due), the whole country taken over by Colombian drug cartels.

I talked myself out of that job – and, in fact, I talked OMCC out of being one of many politicians who’ve written drug-war memoirs. One of the arguments I used was that to make the case he wanted to make, one would first have to take account of – and rebut – the work of a number of serious scholars who’d already addressed the issue – and who hadn’t necessarily come to the “no penalty too harsh, no intrusion sufficiently invasive” position this politician had come to. I’m sure I mentioned Kleiman, and Norman Zinberg, of Harvard Medical School. Their work was part of my introduction to drug policy, before I was involved in enforcing it, or criticizing it, or writing about it.

So I talked myself out of a well-paid gig; the politician – now a candidate for the presidence – never did have that book written.

I don’t know if Kleiman is the coiner of the phrase “Reality-Based Community.” I’ve been reading his stuff on the Internet since I found out that I could do it without using the microfilm machines or filling out an interlibrary loan slip and waiting two months. His current blog includes his contributions and those of a handful of other people – mostly scholars – who aren’t familiar to me. But The Reality-Based Community blog is worth checking out; its current skewerings of the Administration’s prevarications and obfuscations regarding the “overblown personnel matter” (the firing of eight United States Attorneys) are precise, and to the point. Each new statement from the Administration is like the Coyote’s new order to the Acme Company; Kleiman’s posts are like the Acme merchandise, unwrapped and in action. See, Coyote v. Acme, U.S.D.C., S.W.D., Arizona (No. B191294) (1990).