"Still true: 'a discussion with the likes of Brad DeLong is not productive' "

A couple of years ago, Stephen Bainbridge wrote a post entitled "a discussion with the likes of Brad DeLong is not productive".  Now William Jacobson has this post entitled: "Still true: 'a discussion with the likes of Brad DeLong is not productive'”

The class clown of the academic internet is beclowning again; must be he’s upset with my investigation into Elizabeth Warren so he attacks the only way he knows how. Rather than address the merits, he picks a three and one-half year old post of mine and calls me names. Class act. . . .

I know Brad's Dad and sister, and both are extremely nice people.  It is not at all clear what could have turned him into the type of person he is today.

Media Matters makes more false statements yet again

Media Matters makes more false statements yet again. This time they have a post with the headline: "Napolitano And John Lott Advocate For Allowing People To Carry Concealed Guns Without Permits." But the link that they have from my appearance on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show provides absolutely no such evidence. They have put up a video of about 2 minutes of a 4+ minute appearance that I have. The problem is that I never said that there should or should not be permits. Here is where Napolitano explicitly asks me the question about whether there should be permits starting at the 39 second mark.

Napolitano: I don't need to go to the court house and ask for a permit to exercise my free speech rights. What is gained by my going to city hall or the court house as the case may be in different places in America to get a permit to exercise my second amendment rights?

Lott: Well, I guess that those are the cases that are going to have to be coming down from the courts. The Supreme Court has only dealt with the very simple issue right now of whether a complete ban is constitutional or not. Can they ban an entire category of guns? But we see that some places require fees, large fees for getting guns. Some places require training. So there is a whole set of other issue. How much can they 'infringe'? How costly can they make it for people to be able to get guns?

There is an earlier answer that I give where I note how the law is in different states, but Napolitano's question isn't about advocating getting rid of permits and I am not advocating doing away with permits.

Napolitano: Should people be able to walk around with guns on their hips or under their jackets everywhere in the United States?

Lott: Well, we pretty much do that now. We have 48 states that to one degree or another allow citizens to be able to carry concealed handguns. We have 5 states now that people don't even have to have a permit to be able to do that. And the evidence is pretty consistent. Some states have had this for 90 years.

Here is the edited clip that Media Matters puts up. When I can find an unedited clip from the appearance I will put that up instead.





Review of recently doctored attacks on me by media matters:


Media Matters in a series of posts has doctored my picture.

See also here:


Given that Media Matters has no problem using a doctored picture of me (editing the color of my hair, skin, and clothes and distorting my hair) presumably because they presumably believe that it makes me look bad, it is surprising that even people such as Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong never question whether Media Matters will use doctored screen shots of webpages.
A response to Paul Krugman's other false claims is available here.
A response to the above post by Media Matters is available here.

UPDATE: After getting caught redhanded, Media Matters' defense is that the just didn't realize that somehow they had posted a doctored picture. Media Matters claims to be an expert on the most minute details of my life, including frequent visits to my website where there is a picture of me, but at the same time they claim they had no idea what I really looked like and thus they blame someone else for having doctored my picture without their knowledge.



Media Matters claims that "Lott offers nothing to back up that assertion" that they will falsify photographic information. They have just been caught using a photograph of me multiple times that edited the color of my hair, skin, and clothes and distorting my hair. But heck they now claim that they didn't really know what I looked like. Media Matters instead tries reiterating their earlier claim that they hadn't altered one of my quotes after getting caught doing that also. Now they claim they didn't know what I looked like when they use a doctored photo of me, and they say it is fixed anyway because they have changed the picture. Sorry, but changing the photo after you have been caught doesn't undo what was done to begin with. For a website that has made it impossible for me to respond on their website to their many false claims, it isn't too surprising to see the way that Media Matters tries to extricate themselves from these false claims when they are caught.

Media Matters doctors my picture

Media Matters in a series of posts has doctored my picture.

See also here:


Given that Media Matters has no problem using a doctored picture of me (editing the color of my hair, skin, and clothes and distorting my hair) presumably because they presumably believe that it makes me look bad, it is surprising that even people such as Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong never question whether Media Matters will use doctored screen shots of webpages.
A response to Paul Krugman's other false claims is available here.
A response to the above post by Media Matters is available here.

UPDATE: After getting caught redhanded, Media Matters' defense is that the just didn't realize that somehow they had posted a doctored picture. Media Matters claims to be an expert on the most minute details of my life, including frequent visits to my website where there is a picture of me, but at the same time they claim they had no idea what I really looked like and thus they blame someone else for having doctored my picture without their knowledge.



Media Matters claims that "Lott offers nothing to back up that assertion" that they will falsify photographic information. They have just been caught using a photograph of me multiple times that edited the color of my hair, skin, and clothes and distorting my hair. But heck they now claim that they didn't really know what I looked like. Media Matters instead tries reiterating their earlier claim that they hadn't altered one of my quotes after getting caught doing that also. Now they claim they didn't know what I looked like when they use a doctored photo of me, and they say it is fixed anyway because they have changed the picture. Sorry, but changing the photo after you have been caught doesn't undo what was done to begin with. For a website that has made it impossible for me to respond on their website to their many false claims by disallowing me to post responses, it isn't too surprising to see the way that Media Matters tries to extricate themselves from these false claims when they are caught.

Some of the 400 who participated in Journolist

From NPR to the Washington Post to Politico, there are a lot of well-known names here. The sources for these names is here. I haven't double checked all the names.

1. Ezra Klein - Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect
2. Dave Weigel - Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent
3. Matthew Yglesias – Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly
4. David Dayen - FireDogLake
5. Spencer Ackerman – Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect
6. Jeffrey Toobin – CNN, The New Yorker
7. Eric Alterman – The Nation, Media Matters for America
8. Paul Krugman – The New York Times, Princeton University
9. John Judis – The New Republic, The American Prospect
10. Eve Fairbanks – The New Republic
11. Mike Allen - POLITICO
12. Ben Smith - POLITICO
13. Lisa Lerer - POLITICO
14. Joe Klein - TIME
15. Brad DeLong – The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkley
16. Chris Hayes – The Nation
17. Matt Duss – Center for American Progress
18. Jonathan Chait – The New Republic
19. Jesse Singal – The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly
20. Michael Cohen – New America Foundation
21. Isaac Chotiner – The New Republic
22. Katha Pollitt – The Nation
23. Alyssa Rosenberg – Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive
24. Rick Perlstein – Author, Campaign for America’s Future
25. Alex Rossmiller – National Security Network
26. Ed Kilgore – Democratic Stategist
27. Walter Shapiro – PoliticsDaily.com
28. Noam Scheiber – The New Republic
29. Michael Tomasky – The Guardian
30. Rich Yeselson – Change to Win
31. Tim Fernholz – American Prospect
32. Dana Goldstein – The Daily Beast
33. Jonathan Cohn – The New Republic
34. Scott Winship – Pew Economic Mobility Project
35. David Roberts - Grist
36. Luke Mitchell – Harper’s Magazine
37. John Blevins – South Texas College of Law
38. Moira Whelan – National Security Network
39. Henry Farrell – George Washington University
40. Josh Bearman – LA Weekly
41. Alec McGillis – Washington Post
42. Greg Anrig – The Century Foundation
43. Adele Stan – The Media Consortium
44. Steven Teles – Yale University
45. Harold Pollack – University of Chicago
46. Adam Serwer – American Prospect
47. Ryan Donmoyer - Bloomberg
48. Seth Michaels – MyDD.com
49. Kate Steadman – Kaiser Health News
50. Michael Scherer - TIME
51. Laura Rozen – Politico, Mother Jones
52. Jesse Taylor – Pandagon.net
53. Michael Hirsh - Newsweek
54. Daniel Davies – The Guardian
55. Jonathan Zasloff – UCLA
56. Richard Kim – The Nation
57. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun
58. Jared Bernstein – Economic Policy Institute
59. Holly Yeager – Columbia Journalism Review
60. Joe Conason – The New York Observer
61. David Greenberg - Slate
62. Todd Gitlin – Columbia University
63. Mark Schmitt – American Prospect
64. Kevin Drum – Washington Monthly
65. Sarah Spitz – NPR
66. Jonathan Stein – Mother Jones
67. Daniel Levy – Century Foundation
68. Ben Adler – Newsweek, POLITICO
69. Avi Zenilman – POLITICO
70. Suzanne Nossel – Human Rights Watch
71. Nick Baumann – Mother Jones
72. Ryan Avent – Economist
72. Greg Sargent – Washington Post
73. Gautham Nagesh – The Hill, Daily Caller
74. Foster Kamer – The Village Voice
75. David Corn – Mother Jones