I have been inveighing against high-speed rail, one of Barack Obama’s pet projects, for some time, as faith ful readers know. Now it appears that writers on the left have problems with high-speed rail too. Kevin Drum, writing on his Mother Jones blog, weighed in on this last week. I’ve never met Drum, but from his writings he seems to be a very nice person, not given to nasty invective and willing to consider issues on their merits. Like California high-speed rail, the estimated costs of which have just been raised sharply. Drum concludes: