Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons have a new paper out on the effect of voter ID laws. Everyone will hate it:

We find the laws have no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation….ID requirements have no effect on fraud either – actual or perceived. Overall, our results suggest that efforts to reform voter ID laws may not have much impact on elections.

Naturally you want to see this in chart form. Here it is:

This paper adds to a growing literature that suggests voter ID laws have, at most, a very small effect—and quite possibly no effect at all. If you’re a Republican, this is bad news because you’ve been wasting a lot of time and money trying to repress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups, and apparently it doesn’t work. If you’re a Democrat, this is good news on two fronts. First, it means voter ID laws probably aren’t reducing Democratic turnout after all. Second, it does nothing to rebut the abundant evidence that blacks and Hispanics were the target of these laws, regardless of whether they worked. The fact that Republican leaders are incompetent racists makes them no less racist.

Alex Edelman/CNP via ZUMA

One of our new Muslim members of Congress has once again caught flack over her criticism of American policy toward Israel:

Freshman Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar ignited a new controversy on Sunday night when she suggested GOP support for Israel is driven by campaign donations from a prominent pro-Israel group. Omar singled out AIPAC, one of the most influential lobbying groups in Washington, as the source of those donations.

Omar’s comments touched upon a long-running, and particularly ugly, thread of the anti-Semitic movement — that Jewish money fuels backing for Israel in the United States and elsewhere. A freshman Democrat, Max Rose of New York, said, “Congresswoman Omar’s statements are deeply hurtful to Jews, including myself.”

It’s all about the Benjamins baby 🎶 https://t.co/KatcXJnZLV

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 10, 2019

There’s a problem here. It is common, on both sides of the aisle, to claim that the opposition has been “bought” by lobbies of one kind or another. Bernie Sanders accused Hillary Clinton of being bought by Wall Street because of the speeches she gave to big banking groups. Republicans accuse Democrats of being bought by Planned Parenthood. Democrats accuse Republicans of being bought by the NRA. And everyone accuses both parties of being bought by the defense industry.

In all these cases, the defense is the same: These groups didn’t buy my vote. They contributed to my campaign because I already support them.

In nearly all cases, both are true. Members aren’t literally being bought. They really did believe in these causes to begin with. If I were running for Congress, I’d be delighted to get support and campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood. At the same time, there’s little question that lobbyist money goes a long way toward putting golden handcuffs in place. If the NRA or Planned Parenthood or whoever gets into trouble for crossing a line, they can count on vigorous support in Congress anyway. That’s due largely to money.

None of this should be slightly controversial. The idea that money drives politics is so commonplace that you’d be laughed at for denying it. Of course money makes a difference.

But that leaves us with a problem. It is entirely correct that the idea of Jewish money controlling the world is an old antisemitic trope. At the same time, there’s no question that Jewish money is deployed in defense of Israel in the form of US campaign contributions. And there’s no question that everyone believes money drives politics.

So is this something Ilhan Omar is allowed to say because it’s a commonplace observation? Or is she not allowed to say it because it’s an old antisemitic trope? And does the answer depend on the fact that she’s Muslim and a frequent critic of Israel?

Brendan Fitterer/Tampa Bay Times/ZUMA

So how are the shutdown talks going? Apparently we’ve moved past the funding for a wall, so you’d think it would be pretty smooth sailing now. But apparently not:

The talks this weekend snagged over the issue of how many detention beds would be provided at the border for housing people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials….Democrats had proposed establishing a new limit on detention beds used by ICE officials when apprehending people for violations within the U.S., known as interior enforcement. Those beds would be capped at 16,500, as part of an existing overall cap of 40,520 beds funded in the fiscal year 2018 spending bill.

The idea is the limit would force the government to prioritize the detention of violent criminals, rather than people who had overstayed their visas. Republicans objected, wanting to exclude violent criminals from that cap. Democrats said the exclusion would undermine their objective.

After reading a dozen different accounts of the detention bed issue, I’m unable to parse exactly what this means. Prioritizing violent criminals sounds fine to me, but if that’s the goal why not allow unlimited detention beds for violent criminals and put a cap on the number of beds for visa overstayers? What am I missing here?

Here’s the first poll of Virginians about whether Gov. Ralph Northam should resign over his blackface photo:

It’s a tie overall, and African Americans believe he should stay in office by a 21-point margin. This probably means he’s going to stay.

Here’s the latest from our commander-in-chief:

Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2019

If you had asked me ten minutes ago, I would have sworn that Donald Trump had never heard of the Trail of Tears. But apparently he has. What’s more, he thinks that this episode in our obscene genocide of American natives is something worth joking about.

I suppose that by tomorrow Sarah Sanders will have invented some alternate story about why TRAIL is in all-caps, and then chastise us all for immediately thinking the worst of Trump and being so ultrasensitive about everything.

I hate to ruin your weekend, but this has to be seen to be believed. A driver in Glendale, Arizona was pulled over for a turn signal violation, and the passenger ended up being tased 11 times—including once in his testicles—solely because he politely asked some questions about what was going on. The officer who did this was suspended for 30 hours. The full story is here.

We are finally bringing the scourge of illegal noncitizen voting under control:

A 66-year-old woman from North Carolina was sentenced to two months in prison this week for encouraging her boyfriend to vote and helping him fill out his voter registration form, even though he was not eligible.

….On the voter registration card she helped him fill out, they left a question about citizenship unanswered, the release said. Paige told investigators that she then submitted the form to the Board of Elections for processing. But later on in the process, another person erroneously checked the citizenship question “Yes,” so Espinosa-Pena was registered to vote, Higdon’s office says.

So the form was actually filled out correctly, but then someone working for the Board of Elections ticked “Yes” in the citizenship box? But grandma is going to jail for two months anyway?

And in case you’re wondering: Yes, this case was brought by a U.S. Attorney, Robert Higdon Jr., who was appointed by Donald Trump. It never went to trial because Higdon apparently made it plain that if Paige fought the charges she faced a potential sentence of five years in prison and $250,000 in fines. We really have our priorities straight, don’t we?

A few days ago I posted a chart showing the annual growth rate of spending on prescription drugs. However, it only went back to 2001 because I couldn’t find annual data going farther back than that and didn’t have time to a serious search.

This morning, while I was looking for something else, I accidentally ran into a Kaiser page that has annual data back to 1960. So I figured I might as well update the chart. Keep in mind that this doesn’t show price increases for prescription drugs. It just shows how much we spend on them, and that can go up and down for numerous reasons. Still, it’s interesting to see.

I’ve gotten requests for my take on several things that I don’t really have a full post in me about. So here’s a quickie summary instead:

• Virginia: Northam should go and Fairfax should go, but Herring should stay. He fessed up, explained what happened, and apologized. My view is that this is sufficient for the level of offense at issue.
• Abramson: I don’t personally consider a few bits of quasi-plagiarism at the paragraph level to be any big deal in a book-length work. So I don’t care about what Jill Abramson did.
• The border: Unlike Nancy Pelosi, I don’t have a big problem with building bits and pieces of a southern border wall. My biggest objection is that I think it’s a waste of money, but it would hardly be the first time money has been wasted in search of a political deal. So yes, I’d support some kind of compromise deal with Trump.
• Tips: Delivery companies need to stop stealing their drivers’ tips. This is not rocket science.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone.

Here is Hilbert peeking out from behind Hopper, who’s ignoring both of us because she’s already captivated by something else entirely. Hilbert, by contrast, has spied the camera and is just getting ready to head over. Why? Because where there’s a camera, there’s a servant who can be ordered to pet him. Smart cat.