CALLING FOR AN INVESTIGATION OF COMMON CAUSE: “Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert wants Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate whether the liberal group Common Cause should lose its nonprofit status, after a conservative website published footage of protesters calling for the lynching of conservative Supreme Court justices. The footage shows enraged protesters making inflammatory and threatening comments about Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as well as Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas. Gohmert said that the inflammatory remarks are more troubling given the attack on Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords earlier this year.”

DAVID BERNSTEIN MOCKS Khaddafy-sellout Stephen Walt. In Walt’s defense, lots of academics were apparently taking money from Khaddafy.

MEMORIES: “Does this news story bring back memories, or what? Iran is arranging to buy yellowcake in Africa.” Nobody tell Richard Armitage.

PART OF WHAT TIM BLAIR CALLS THE GRAND CONVERGENCE OF IDIOCIES: Scientist Imam threatened over Darwinist views. “A prominent British imam has been forced to retract his claims that Islam is compatible with Darwin’s theory of evolution after receiving death threats from fundamentalists. . . . The campaign is part of a growing movement by a small but vocal group of largely Saudi-influenced orthodox Muslims who use evolution as a way of discrediting imams whom they deem to be overly progressive or ‘western orientated’.” Ah, yes, those progressive Saudis.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, WE’D BE TORTURING AMERICAN CITIZENS WHO HADN’T BEEN CONVICTED OF ANY CRIME: And they were right! People who voted for Obama are unhappy, though most of them aren’t exactly blaming him yet. But why not? They didn’t give Bush a pass. How’s that hopey-changey stuff working for you?

BRIBERY, MOSTLY: How The Loon Of Libya Won The West. “At least Nelly and Mariah, along with Beyoncé, Lionel Richie, Jay-Z and Usher – who’ve also performed for the Gadhafi clan – held out for decent sums of money. I suspect the intellectuals came far more cheap.”

WHEN DADS COME HOME FROM WAR: 5 Heartwarming Videos of Soldiers Surprising Their Kids.

ON SALE: Lost: The Complete Series, on Blu-Ray for $167.99. So if I sat down and watched the whole thing from beginning to end, would it make sense?

UPDATE: Reader Don Brockette emails: “No, but it would certainly entertain you to no end and you’d be pissed off at the ending just like the rest of us.” Heh. I think I’ll pass.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Ted Nolan sends this. Also this.

“FLEEBAGGER” UPDATE: WSJ: Wisconsin Democrats May Return Soon.

HOW THE NANOBOT SWARM will be stopped.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Report details HUD failures to protect FHA insurance fund from bad loans. “The Office of Inspector General found these lenders did not properly underwrite 140 of 284 loans reviewed, or 49%, because they weren’t following FHA requirements. For the 140 loans that did not meet FHA requirements, the borrowers made an average of only five payments before defaulting.” (Via NewsAlert).

UPDATE: C.J. Burch emails his suspicions: “Hmmm. A smart investigator would take a close look at the sellers and the real estate agencies and the closing attorneys and the bank’s attorneys. A real, real close look. A lawyer or real estate agent involved in enough of these would take all sorts of chances to cover them up. They’d figure they had nothing to lose in the covering. And no entity but a government would be this careless with other people’s money. Might pay to see how politically connected the real estate people and attorneys are too. A mayor or a governor or a congressman might really be in a position to profit. In the future everyone will be a friend of Angelo for fifteen minutes.”

IN THROUGH THE ABATTOIR: Rock Stars Who Sucked Up To Khaddafy and other dictators.

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals.

A 21ST CENTURY “WATERGATE?”

At 3:00, we see the use of fingernails to scrape off the stickers that have been moistened with something from a spray bottle that is referred to as “fresh water” (at 5:06) but produces foam.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

ANNE MCKINNEY: Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Be Westboro Baptists.

SPECIAL OPERATIONS: Egypt Quietly Invades Libya. “The rebellion against the Kadaffi dictatorship in Libya has not produced any official outside help, but Egypt has apparently sent some of its commandos in to help out the largely amateur rebel force. Wearing civilian clothes, the hundred or so Egyptian commandos are officially not there, but are providing crucial skills and experience to help the rebels cope with the largely irregular, and mercenary, force still controlled by the Kadaffi clan. There are also some commandos from Britain (SAS) and American (Special Forces) operators are also believed wandering around, mainly to escort diplomats or perform reconnaissance (and find out who is in charge among the rebels).”

WHO INFLATION hurts the most.

THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.

LOTS OF SPACE COVERAGE at SpaceTimesNews.

MY EARLIER LINK TO A roundup of shoot-and-share videocams led reader Carol Sweet to email: “Quick. Since I agree with second sentence. A recommendation for someone with no experience and to this point no interest.”

They’re pretty much all good, really, but I recommended the Kodak Playsport, since it’s cheap, easy, and rugged.

CHANGE: Senate Dems Give Up On Berwick.

SOME LOVE FOR THE “SWEET, SWEET VOLVO S60.” But why the disses for “tweed-jacketed professors?”

AT AMAZON, 70% or more off toys.

FORMER FRENCH PRESIDENT JACQUES CHIRAC TO STAND TRIAL FOR CORRUPTION. And that means an excuse to run my favorite Chirac-related picture, from the protests outside the French Embassy back when France was trying to save Saddam Hussein — for, as it turned out, rather corrupt motives.

SINCE I BOUGHT AN IPHONE 4, people are immediately starting to talk about the iPhone 5.

AUSTIN BAY: Al Qaeda Doesn’t Rock and Roll. “Al Qaeda doesn’t rock and roll. A burka is not sexy. On the twitter-connected Arab street, these may be Al Qaeda’s fatal social flaws.” Let’s hope. Some of the protests in Iraq, at least, have actually been pro-alcohol protests. You gotta love that.

TALKING ABOUT TANKLESS WATER HEATERS. One of the upsides to a tanked water heater, though, is that it gives you a built-in emergency water supply if things go south — 75 gallons worth in my case.

SUDDENLY NOTICING REALITY AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: State Workers and N.Y.’s Fiscal Crisis.

At a time when public school students are being forced into ever more crowded classrooms, and poor families will lose state medical benefits, New York State is paying 10 times more for state employees’ pensions than it did just a decade ago. That huge increase is largely because of Albany’s outsized generosity to the state’s powerful employees’ unions in the early years of the last decade, made worse when the recession pushed down pension fund earnings, forcing the state to make up the difference.

Although taxpayers are on the hook for the recession’s costs, most state employees pay only 3 percent of their salaries to their pensions, half the level of most state employees elsewhere. Their health insurance payments are about half those in the private sector. . . . To point out these alarming facts is not to be anti- union, or anti-worker.

Do tell. If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.

WELL, “TIMES SELECT” WORKED SO WELL: New York Times going to online pay model. On the other hand, anything that puts Krugman back behind a paywall can’t be all bad.

ANN ALTHOUSE OBJECTS TO TEA PARTY CAPITOL CLEANUP EFFORTS: “The reason the estimate is so high is that this is extremely valuable old marble that needs to be cleaned according to the protocols of historical restoration. Don’t come in here with buckets of water and scrub brushes or whatever you think will make you look good on camera. Don’t you realize you could cause more damage?”

But, from the comments: “If you can tape posters on the walls, sleep there overnight and bang a bongo drum nonstop, why can’t you mop the floors and scrub the toilets? Seems to me there are no rules.” It’s funny that cleaning is now transgressive.

COMPARISON TEST: Bagless Upright Vacuum Cleaners.

ERIC S. RAYMOND: What women, and men, can learn from Pick-Up Artists. (Via the Insta-Wife). Interesting discussion in the comments.

IN THE MAIL: From John Barnes, Daybreak Zero.

BILL WHITTLE: The End Of The Beginning: Why Public-Sector Labor Unions Are Doomed.

PROSECUTORIAL OVERREACH in the Loughner prosecution?

THAT DRILLING-BAN THING not going so well.

MY SUNDAY WASHINGTON EXAMINER COLUMN: Here Comes The “Lower Education Bubble.”

UPDATE: They’re having some sort of site issues at the Examiner and the link quit working. This new one should work.

AT AMAZON, a roundup of shoot-and-share videocameras, including some wearable models. Ubiquitous video is a must-have for any Tea Party protest or other political event.

REASON TV: Harry Reid is Nanny Of The Month.

CONTINUING WISCONSIN COVERAGE from Ann Althouse and Meade. Just keep scrolling.

OOPS: Bloomberg’s Bubble Bursts: Voters Finally Realize That There’s No There There. I’m no fan of Bloomberg’s — he’s a vapid nannyist. But I think New York voters elected him (as Chicago voters did with Rahm Emanuel) not because of his virtues, but because the alternative was someone from the usual gang of hacks.

UPDATE: A Wall Street reader emails:

Taxpaying New Yorkers would much rather have an administratively competent mayor with dilettante nanny proclivities than a member of the insane clown posse of local clubhouse goons. Recall the snow removal debacle was not caused by Bloomberg’s inaction, but by a sanitation union conspiracy to frame the mayor.

I disagree strongly with Mayor Mike on things like the second amendment…but it’s a great trade for New Yorkers to let him have a bully pulpit for his nonsense, in return for his excellent management of the city apparatus.

Well, I think part of the argument in the piece is that his management has fallen down. It’s still well above insane-clown-posse levels, though. . . .

TODAY ONLY: Another treadmill on sale. This one folds.

PAUL JOHNSON: Why America Will Stay On Top. “‘Of course I worry about America,’ he says. ‘The whole world depends on America ultimately, particularly Britain. And also, I love America—a marvelous country. But in a sense I don’t worry about America because I think America has such huge strengths—particularly its freedom of thought and expression—that it’s going to survive as a top nation for the foreseeable future. And therefore take care of the world.’”

FREE SPEECH UPDATE: French Court Finds in Favor of Journal Editor Sued for Libel Over Book Review. I had somehow neglected to blog this before.

SUSANNAH BRESLIN: How to sell your fiction online: A love story. “I’m a journalist. That means I work in a dying industry. I’m also a fiction writer. That means I work in two dying industries.”

ROBBING THE TAXPAYER to give to themselves.

A REQUIEM FOR multiculturalism.

And don’t miss these thoughts from Andrew Klavan.

ENDING FACULTY UNIONS in Ohio.

GEORGE WILL IS not so hot on Huckabee, Gingrich. I would vote for a syphilitic camel over Barack Obama in 2012, so therefore I would even vote for Huckabee or Gingrich. But I might try to talk the camel into running one more time.

PROFESSOR JACOBSON: Obama Bitterly Clings To Bitter Clinger Stereotype.

LIGHTS OUT, CUSTOMERS BETRAYED: HECO strike: 1,300 workers walk off the job amid power outages.

UPDATE: A reader notes that there’s not much love for the union showing in the comments to this news story.

THE TWO-MINUTE HATE IS LASTING A LOT MORE THAN TWO MINUTES: Salon.com Commenter Calls for Lynching Of Koch Brothers.

MORE GOOD NEWS ABOUT health and breasts. Sure, it may turn out to be wrong, but why take chances?

BILL HOBBS POSTS PHOTOS from today’s Tennessee teachers’ union protest rally. Give ‘em credit — they didn’t call in sick to attend.

Plus, Tea Party counter-protesters. And one who asks: “Why can’t we get our Democrats to flee the state?” Tennessee Democrats haven’t tried that since they absented themselves to block passage of the 14th Amendment during Reconstruction. They were hauled back by Pinkertons, counted present, and locked in a closet until it was over. Of course, this is the first time since Reconstruction that Democrats have been in the minority.

BUT OF COURSE: Tea Partiers Clean-Up Mess Left By Union Protesters in Wisconsin.

NO TYPEWRITER NOSTALGIA from Rand Simberg.

CAN OVERUSE OF ASPIRIN AND OTHER NSAIDS increase the risk of erectile dysfunction?

AT AMAZON, markdowns on 2010 model HDTVs.

COLLEGE AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS are having less sex. “Fewer teens and young adults are having sex, a government survey shows, and theories abound for why they’re doing it less. Experts say this generation may be more cautious than their predecessors, more aware of sexually spread diseases. Or perhaps emphasis on abstinence in the past decade has had some influence. Or maybe they’re just too busy. . . . The study, released Thursday, is based on interviews of about 5,300 young people, ages 15 to 24. It shows the proportion in that age group who said they’d never had oral, vaginal or anal sex rose in the past decade from 22 percent to about 28 percent.”

Personally, I credit the porn and videogames!

MARK STEYN: America saves Kosovo’s Muslims from genocide, and what do we get? “A decade on, Kosovo is a sorta sovereign state, and in Frankfurt a young airport employee is so grateful for what America did for his people that he guns down U.S. servicemen while yelling ‘Allahu akbar!’”

UPDATE: A reader notes that Michael Totten found people in Kosovo pro-American. In Kosovo, yes. In Germany, not so much, apparently.

JONATHAN ZITTRAIN AND MOLLY SAUTER on U.S. Internet “Kill Switch” Legislation.

STUDY: Facebook Builds Self-Esteem. And if there’s anything America’s youth needs, it’s more self-esteem.

WILL THIS BE the week of iPad 2? I’m actually thinking of buying one for a friend of the family who’s stuck in a nursing home. They don’t have in-room internet, so a 3G iPad might be the way to go. It’s pretty boring there. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Doug Orr emails:

Got my iPad last July, and since then have been in the hospital twice for 3 days and 8 days. I would have gone stir crazy without the iPad. Nurses loved asking about it, all the doctors said their wives had one already. Ha!

Also, i got to avoid the dreaded daytime television shows. Those things will kill you.

Yeah.

And reader John Williams writes:

My father in law had a stroke about two years ago and is living in an assisted care facility. We bought him a first generation iPad about 6 months ago and it is a huge hit. He carries it with him wherever he goes almost like a kid with a security blanked.

He struggles with email a bit but is able to communicate far more with his family than any other medium. He manages his investments, keeps up on the news, reads Instapundit, and plays Yahtzee.

Technical support for him using the device has been pretty easy as well. You just can’t get into the kinds of trouble you can with a “real” computer.

Good point. And reading InstaPundit is bound to be therapeutic. Another reader says that I’ll be able to pick up an original model iPad for $100 less once the new one comes out. Maybe I’ll pick up one of those; it should be entirely adequate for nursing-home amusement purposes.

And reader Barry Dauphin emails:

Maybe you’ve hit on to a bigger idea. Nursing homes should try to get them in bulk for their residents. Learning how to use them would be very stimulating and there’s all kinds of things you can do with them. Apple could cut deals, the way they do with schools and computers.

That sounds like a really good idea. Maybe Apple should donate some of the first-gen iPad stock to a nursing home or two as an experiment.

MORE: Reader Trent Kelso emails:

Adding to the in praise of the iPad chorus…

I got an iPad in Sept when my dad was set for brain surgery and knew I’d have a week with him at UCLA Med Ctr with nothing to do. I decided to splurge on the iPad because my laptop was waaaaay too clunky to lug around conveniently, gets real hot, and is just too bulky to use all day long. Unfortunately, mom & I were cooped up in the hospital with dad for 9 weeks and the iPad kept us sane. We downloaded and played games, watched Netflix, read our favorite blogs, read books (via the Kindle app), took notes on dad’s treatment and had our questions immediately handy when the docs walked in. We were able to instantly access medical info on the net via the hospital’s free wifi to help us understand dad’s condition and why the docs were doing what they were doing. The iPad made us formidable medical consumers; it armed us with information almost instantaneously.

Like your other reader, when docs saw my iPad, they said things like “Don’t you love it?” or “I need to get one on my next day off.” When RNs or CNAs saw it, they’d say “Is that an iPad?” or, “Do you think it’s worth it?”. Naturally, I told the RNs & CNAs that it was the best thing since beer, and that it was worth every penny. An amazing device, which, incidentally, I’m using to write this e-mail.

Oh, one more noteworthy feature is that the user interface is extremely intuitive. My mom is 78 and took to the iPad like a duck to water. Try that with a PC laptop.

Good point. And reader Joe Jackson emails:

After an 18 month stretch in a nursing home my wife died last May. During those final months her lifeline to the world was a MacBook. An iPad would have been better and I was just about to buy her one when she died. Anything than can be done to relieve the boredom in a nursing home – and keep the residents mentally engaged – is worth doing. And yes, that includes Apple discounting the iPad to extended care facilities (I say this as an Apple stockholder).

The crushing boredom and isolation of those places is one of the worst things about them — and even someone with a big family that visits as much as it can is going to have a lot of downtime.

REPORT: Libyan Rebels Announce Creation Of A Republic. Easier to announce than to do, but stay tuned.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Outlet Sale.

GAS BREAKS $5 A GALLON in Florida.

ECONOMICS: Lies, Damn Lies, and Government Statistics.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE on insider trading at the Department of Education. “We know bureaucrats leak information to reporters all the time in an effort to influence policy. But leaking information to short sellers is a new one on me.” I suspect that there’s a lot more of this going on, given the incentives and the low level of scrutiny involved — though, to be fair, the initiative on for-profit education was unusually politicized and shady to begin with.

Plus a link to his piece on Insider Trading Inside The Beltway.

UPDATE: Reader David McCune emails:

I don’t think the point can be emphasized too much:

The preferred solution to this is not tighter regulation, it is less power in the hands of government.

Absolutely. Power corrupts. They’re more corrupt now because they’re more powerful.

IN MASSACHUSETTS, talk of putting GPS chips in guns. How about we put ‘em in state legislators instead? Statistically, they’re far more likely to be used in crime. And no, that’s not a joke, it’s true. . . .

ALZHEIMER’S PLAQUE and the liver.

REPORT: Ford Losing Interest in Electric Vehicles.

A LOOK AT Human Rights Watch and Libya.

MANCESSION UPDATE: The Struggles of Men: “The Hamilton Project has produced a fairly stunning chart, suggesting that median real wages for men have dropped significantly more than is commonly understood.”

SOMEWHERE, FRED HOYLE IS SMILING: NASA Scientist Claims Evidence of Alien Life on Meteorite.

IN THE MAIL: Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicle.

CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN’S TERRIBLE MISTAKE: “The thinking was: ‘Why waste our time with African-American voters? They have no other place to go.’” But they wound up voting for a white guy who seemed, you know, kinda competent, and who was willing to ask for their votes. “Victory in every black ward went to Mr. Emanuel, who won the mayor’s office with 55 percent of the overall vote.” There’s a broader lesson here, perhaps.

BAD NEWS FOR MY BIZ: Armies Of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced By Cheaper Software. Obviously, the bar associations need to get this banned. In the public interest, of course.

DIET AND FITNESS THE REALLY OLD-FASHIONED WAY: The Paleo Rodeo is up.

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR ON THE ATF GUNRUNNING DEBACLE: Before a US border patrol agent was killed in a shootout with Mexican bandits, the agents opened fire with bean bags. Found at the scene: two guns the ATF allowed gun runners to purchase.

THE FIRST SUVs: The Willys Jeep Wagon and Jeepster.

FAREWELL, MY LOVELY: How public pensions killed progressive California.

CHEAP DIGITAL CAMERA: Canon Powershot A490 on sale for $69.95.

UPDATE: Reader Bruce MacMahon emails:

In 2001, I paid $700 for a 4.0 MP Canon PowerShot camera. If we had let the government take over the digital camera industry back then, this camera would cost twice that today.

But ownership would be mandatory . . .

NERVOUS: China Paper Blasts Middle East Protest Movements. “A Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper on Saturday attacked anti-government protest movements in the Middle East and dismissed the possibility of something similar happening in China.”

TIM CAVANAUGH: Has Anybody Seen Jimmy Carter Lately? I would snark “Look in the White House!” but as I’ve been saying, at this point a Carter rerun looks like a best-case scenario.

HMM: Injection wells in Arkansas shut down as earthquake concerns mount. Well, they’ve had some of the same concerns with geothermal power. No clear causal relationship here, but unlike some of the clearly-bogus concerns others have raised about “fracking,” this seems genuine enough to merit caution. Note that it’s only the ones in the immediate vicinity of a suddenly-shaky earthquake fault that have been stopped.

UPDATE: Reader Kent Budge comments: “Is this necessarily a good thing? Maybe it’s better to continue the injection to help the fault stresses bleed off gradually rather than in a single catastrophic slip.” Quite possibly, but at this point I don’t think we know enough to be sure.

CAREY ROBERTS: AG Holder Needs to Retract False Statement about Domestic Violence.

In ringing prose, President Barack Obama underscored his March 9, 2009, memorandum on scientific integrity with this promise: “Under my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over….To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy.”

As luck would have it, Attorney General Eric Holder issued a statement a few months later designed to spotlight the issue of domestic violence. In Holder’s own words, “Disturbingly, intimate partner homicide is the leading cause of death for African-American women ages 15 to 45.”

Turns out this statement is not one-sided or misleading. It’s flat-out wrong.

Good luck on that retraction.

TODAY ONLY: A food scale / nutritional analyzer for $22.99. The question is, do you really want to know that much about what you’re eating? . . .

UPDATE: I guess so. The Insta-Wife just asked me to order one.

HOMEBREWER-IN-CHIEF: Obama now brewing his own beer at the White House. Well, I approve.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: From Baghdad To Benghazi: Everyone Is a Convert to George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda.

Now that revolutions are sweeping the Middle East and everyone is a convert to George W. Bush’s freedom agenda, it’s not just Iraq that has slid into the memory hole. Also forgotten is the once proudly proclaimed “realism” of Years One and Two of President Obama’s foreign policy – the “smart power” antidote to Bush’s alleged misty-eyed idealism.

Read the whole thing. And that whole “smart power” / “smart diplomacy” thing has kept turning up short on the “smart” part.

Plus this: “For Libyans, the effect of the Iraq war is even more concrete. However much bloodshed they face, they have been spared the threat of genocide. Gaddafi was so terrified by what we did to Saddam & Sons that he plea-bargained away his weapons of mass destruction. For a rebel in Benghazi, that is no small matter.” Yes, and even the New York Times noted that.

LOOKING FOR AKBAR: “Evidence of Islamic terrorism is difficult to find. Especially if your mission is to avoid finding it.”

RICK SANTELLI: DON’T GET TOO EXCITED ABOUT THAT JOBS REPORT: “Upon closer scrutiny though, there is another factor contributing to the drop that is not necessarily good news: The official size of the U.S. labor force is shrinking. . . . The government’s definition of the labor force is all individuals 16 years of age and older, who are employed or seeking employment. It does not include students; retirees; anyone with unreported income, or ‘discouraged’ workers. . . . The last time the participation rate was above 66 percent — the 10-year average — was in August 2008.”

Meanwhile, Gallup has unemployment rising to 10.3%. And Gallup doesn’t think the labor force is shrinking: “The percentage of part-time workers who want full-time work worsened considerably in February, increasing to 9.6% of the workforce from 9.1% at the end of January. A larger percentage of the U.S. workforce is working part time and wanting full-time work now than was the case a year ago (9.3%).”

Also: People won’t hire the long-term unemployed.

CHINA BUILDING massive rocket-production facility.

STUDY: Staring At Breasts Increases Heart Health. I’m pretty sure this is just the same bogus report that resurfaces every couple of years. But why take chances?

And in that vein, Stacy McCain takes a strong interest in preventive medicine. “The staff of the Collins-McCain Institute for Therapeutic Breast-Staring would like to thank Christina Hendricks and Anne Hathaway for their heroic efforts to improve America’s cardiovascular health.” Plus, from the comments: “Consensus has been reached. The science is settled.”

ANN ALTHOUSE: A Free-Speech Countervoice Takes the Center of the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda.

Related: “There may be a deal brewing in Wisconsin.”

WELCOME TO THE ENTITLEMENT STATE: Welfare-Funded Hawaiian Vacations. I need one of those. But Milt Wolf is a traditionalist: “Only Congressmen should get sweetheart beach deals…”

MARKDOWNS on grilling tools.

HUGH HEFNER takes Playboy private.

NOW THIS IS JUST SAD: Law Students So Broke They Can’t Afford to Look Decent at Graduation?

OUR NOBLE ACADEMIC CLASS: Harvard Professors Raked in Millions from Khadafy.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “What’s the over-under on number of years till Harvard expresses contrition for taking Alwaleed’s $20 million?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “At least they haven’t committed the mortal sins in academia of being registered Republicans, evangelical Christians, or vocal opponents of the welfare state! You might say taking money from dictators is a lot more acceptable than praising George Bush.” Well, yeah.

MORE: Harvard Professors say: ROTC Bad. Gaddafi money Good! “Those fastidious folks who could not bear to have their campus sullied by American servicemen apparently had their price. It’s amazing what and who you can buy if you show them the money. Remember Carville’s slur about Paula Jones and dragging a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park? It turns out that dragging hundred dollar bills through Harvard Yard will get you full professors willing to cover up dictatorship and murder.”

Well, to be fair, Harvard has now decided to let ROTC back on campus. But will the military want to be associated with people who took money to flack for Khaddafy?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Reader Greg Gell writes: “Rick Perry’s newly appointed Chairman of the Board of Regents (University of Texas System) has confirmed that he has been charged with implementing a $10,000 four-year degree. Rick Perry is serious about bursting the bubble!”

Here’s the news story. Excerpt:

In legislative testimony, the chairman has pledged to cut costs and to do all he can to hold tuition level or even lower it. That echoes themes sounded by Perry, whose proposed budget for higher education essentially mirrors the House and Senate versions.

In contrast, UT System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa warned last month that proposed reductions would have “immediate and future devastating consequences for our students, patients, faculty, staff and the communities of Texas.”

Powell said his to-do list includes a bachelor’s degree program that costs no more than $10,000 for all four years, counting tuition, fees and textbooks. The governor has challenged universities to develop such programs, and Powell said he would have the UT System look into whether that could be done at one campus and replicated at others.

Using a car analogy, he said a $10,000 degree would be more like a Chevrolet Bel Air, a midlevel vehicle from a generation ago, than a Cadillac. There’s nothing wrong with a Bel Air-quality education, he said.

I’d prefer an electronics analogy, and note that my $995 Macbook Air is a much better computer than my $3200 Kaypro 4 was.