UPDATE: From the comments: “How about a proposal that as long as abortion is legal men are exempt from child support unless they chose to do so.” A logical extension of my body, my choice, but not likely to play well. It’s “my choice,” not “my responsibility.”
ROGER SIMON: Why Gingrich Lost Big And What’s Next. “After his solid victory in South Carolina, Gingrich did not continue the obvious strategy that got him there – running against Barack Obama by presenting himself to Republican voters as the great orator and thinker who could bring down the noxious incumbent, the man who rose above internecine intra-party squabbles for the greater good of his country. Instead, he did the exact opposite. He spent the balance of his time in Florida running against Romney when he had already beaten the former governor in South Carolina. Talk about dumb. Newt let his personal antipathy overwhelm his good sense. He played defense about the picayune and the irrelevant when he should have played offense on the philosophical and substantial.”
Plus, sore loser Newt. Yep. Newt’s intellect and speaking skill are his strong points. His ego is his weak point.
More thoughts on speeches, and some criticism of Romney’s, from Ira Stoll. “Please, folks, remember, if voters are looking for an anti-Wall Street candidate who is going to divide Americans by pitting them against the financial industry, there already is such a candidate. His name is Barack Obama. It’s not constructive. It’s verging on dispiriting.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: James Taranto: The Case Against The Case Against Romney. “In a Forbes.com column, our friend Richard Miniter aims to debunk the common view that Mitt Romney is ‘electable.’ This column will serve as a rebunking.”
MORE: Sean Trende: Gingrich and Romney Are “Unelectable”? So Is Obama. “It’s understandable that the focus would be on Republican candidates in the midst of a GOP primary. But we shouldn’t forget that the general election — like all incumbent elections — will largely be a referendum on Barack Obama. And, under current conditions, Obama is every bit as unelectable as the Republicans supposedly are.”
In Washington, the accepted wisdom by year-end was that the technology industry had matured at last into a lobbying force commensurate with its size and pocketbook. But what everyone missed was that the users had opened a third front in this fight, and clearly the one that determined its outcome.
The bitroots movement wasn’t led by Google. It wasn’t led by anyone. Even to look for its leaders is to miss the point. Internet users didn’t lobby or buy their way into influence. They used the tools at their disposal—Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and the rest—to make their voices heard. They encouraged voluntary boycotts and blackouts, and organized awareness days. This was a revolt of, by and with social networks, turning the tools that organized them into groups in the first place into potent new weapons for political advocacy. The users had figured out how to hack politics.
Somebody should really write a book on this phenomenon.
VIDEO: Self-Guided Bullet Spots, Steers and Nails Its Target. “Each self-guided bullet is around 4 inches in length. At the tip is an optical sensor, that can detect a laser beam being shone on a far-off target. Actuators inside the bullet get intel from the bullet’s sensor, and then “steer tiny fins that guide the bullet to the target.” The bullet can self-correct its navigational path 30 times a second, all while flying more than twice the speed of sound.”
THE GROWTH OF THE ACCORDION FAMILY. It’s a worldwide phenomenon, and it’s certainly on the upswing here in the United States. “In the United States, we have seen a 50-percent increase since the 1970s in the proportion of people age 30 to 34 who live with their parents. As the recession of 2008-9 continued to deepen, this trend became even more entrenched. Kids who cannot find jobs after finishing college, divorced mothers who can’t afford to provide a home for their children, unemployed people at their wits’ end, the ranks of the foreclosed—all are beating a path back to their parents’ homes to take shelter underneath the only reliable roof available. . . . They fall back into the family home because, unless they are willing to take a significant cut in their standard of living, they have no other way to manage the life to which they have become accustomed. Moreover, if they aspire to a professional occupation and the income that goes with it, a goal their parents share for them, it is going to take them a long time and a lot of money to acquire the educational credentials needed to grab that brass ring. Sheltering inside an accordion family leaves more money to pay toward those degrees.”
NOBODY TELL ANDREW SULLIVAN: AIDS Prevention Inspires Ways to Make Circumcisions Easier. “The goal is to circumcise 20 million African men by 2015, but only about 600,000 have had the operation thus far. Even a skilled surgeon takes about 15 minutes, most African countries are desperately short of surgeons, and there is no Mohels Without Borders.”
OAK RIDGE PHOTOGRAPHER ED WESTCOTT celebrates his 90th birthday. “In 1942, Ed Westcott was among the first few dozen employees to arrive at the East Tennessee site for ultra-secret work on the first atomic bombs, and he was the only one authorized to use a camera.”
A NEW COMPETITOR FOR SIRI: An app named Evi uses semantic data to provide a wider range of answers. “Created by True Knowledge, a Cambridge, U.K.-based semantic technology startup, Evi, like Siri, can answer questions posed aloud in a conversational manner. But unlike Siri, which is only loaded on the latest iPhone, Evi is available as an app for the iPhone and phones running Google’s Android software.”
SUBOPTIMAL: Funding Comes Too Late In Biomedical Research Careers. “So the younger scientists don’t start getting their own direct funding until they are past their peak years of research productivity. That’s dumb. They spend their younger years as grad students and (poorly paid) post docs. This puts their research directions much more under the control of (older) professors who run labs and have grants flowing to them. The young turk with a hunch does not always have the freedom to follow that hunch. Not good.”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Home prices drop, and consumers turn gloomy. “Home prices fell more steeply than expected in November, and consumer confidence soured in January, highlighting the hurdles still facing the economic recovery.”
Plus: “Highlighting the difficulty facing lawmakers who are aiming to rein in the deficit, congressional forecasters said the United States is on track for a fourth straight year with a $1 trillion-plus budget deficit as a sluggish economy holds down corporate tax revenue.”
SPEAKING OF THAT WHOLE “GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT” THING: Obama green jobs program faces further investigation. “House Republicans are expanding their probe into the Obama administration’s energy programs, investigating $500 million in green job training grants that placed just 10% of trainees in jobs, according to a government report.”
In Mexico, where criminals are armed to the teeth with high-powered weapons smuggled from the United States, it may come as a surprise that the country has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world.
Law-abiding Mexicans who want a gun to defend themselves have no good options. Either they fight government red tape to get a legal permit, or they buy one on the black market.
After an outbreak of violence, one embattled community in northern Mexico called Colonia LeBaron has begun to ask if it’s time for the country to address its gun laws. . . .
The cold-blooded murders of Benjamin LeBaron and Luis Widmar galvanized the community, Julian LeBaron says. It prompted them to take a stance that is familiar to Second Amendment advocates in the U.S., but one that is taboo in Mexico.
“I think there would be less violence if there were more guns, in the sense that I could barge in here and do whatever I want, knowing that this guy doesn’t have a gun,” says Jose Widmar, the brother of slain Luis.
Today, if the gangsters return, the LeBaron colony is locked and loaded.
#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy support drops more than 20 points in … San Francisco? You can tell that the movement has lost popular support because the press suddenly stopped the breathless coverage. As I predicted, once it became clear the movement was hurting the Democrats, the coverage dried up.
MILTON FRIEDMAN ON GREED: “Every now and then I love watching this (and things like it) to remind me that we’ve seen all this nonsense before. Note the year: 1979, the tail-end of another president’s single term.”
BIPARTISAN COMMISSION IN FAVOR OF VOTER ID: “Critics of requiring voters to present a photo ID at the polls say the practice would disenfranchise minority voters, and some even accuse proponents of being motivated by racism. They don’t mention, however, that a 21-member bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter, advocated just such a policy in 2005.”
MORE VOTE FRAUD: W.Va. county sheriff, clerk caught in vote probe. “Lincoln County Sheriff Jerry Bowman and Clerk Donald Whitten will plead guilty to charges that they attempted to flood the 2010 Democratic primary with fraudulent absentee ballots, becoming the latest southern West Virginia officeholders ensnared by an investigation into election fraud, federal and state officials announced Monday. Bowman has agreed to plead guilty to a federal conspiracy charge. He is accused of trying to stuff the ballot box in his favor while running for circuit clerk, U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin and Secretary of State Natalie Tennant said. Whitten will plead guilty to lying to a criminal investigator for Tennant as her office scrutinized the influx of absentee ballots.”
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY:Eric Holder’s False Testimony Warrants Impeachment. “Did Holder and his White House masters really think it was worth losing a few U.S. lawmen if it meant gaining public support for the idea of gun control in the U.S.? Are they that politically venal? Unfortunately, the failure of the White House to hold anyone accountable points to just such a conclusion. Either Holder should resign or be impeached, or someone in the White House should. Either way, Fast and Furious is a criminal disgrace.”
As the figure shows, as of 1970, almost 80 percent of either whites or blacks would have had to move neighborhoods in order to achieve an even distribution of whites and blacks within the average metropolitan area. By 1990, that dissimilarity measure had dropped to 66 percent; it is 54 percent today. We are very far from living in a perfectly integrated society, but our nation is far more integrated than it was 40 years ago.
The progress over the last decade has been particularly dramatic. Every one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas experienced drops in both dissimilarity and isolation of 3.6 points or more. The isolation index is below 45 percent in every one of those 10 largest areas, except for Chicago. Long among the most segregated places in America, the Windy City has experienced a particularly dramatic decline in segregation since 2000.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER:Holder’s fantastical claim about ‘Fast and Furious’. “Now Holder wants Americans to believe an obvious fantasy, namely that he didn’t know about Fast and Furious until witch-hunting House Republicans made it a highly charged partisan issue a few months ago. But after reviewing new emails made public by the Justice Department last Friday, it seems clear that accepting Holder’s claim at face value would be credulous in the extreme. . . . Either he actually knew about Fast and Furious months before he told Congress he did, or he didn’t know when he should have. No wonder nearly 100 House members have signed a resolution of no confidence in Holder.”
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: What’s the difference between Republican and Democratic political operatives who end up on the wrong side of the law? In the ‘unbiased’ press, only the Republicans’ party ID and connections merit attention. In a blog post on Publius’ Forum this week, Warner Todd Huston noted the glaring difference in how the media treated the recent arrests of Zachary Edwards and Tim Russell.”
ARE STUDENTS DROWNING IN DEBT? “Sure, but it’s from Obama’s policies, not student loans. . . . Instead of constantly pumping more money into an already distorted education market, government should do everything it can to get out of the way, allow free-market competition between lenders, schools, and students, and focus on the real student debt: the $48,000 Americans owe to the federal government at birth, twice the average debt owed by college graduates. It’s made worse every day by policies that have ballooned the national debt by trillions since Obama took office in 2009. President Obama’s focus on student debt is his attempt at a political sleight of hand with students: ignore the massive debt you already owe by no fault of your own, and focus on this debt half its size that you incurred by choice.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Rutgers law students protest merger plan. “The proposal to merge Rutgers University in Camden with Rowan University under Rowan’s name has been met with skepticism, bordering on disbelief, by alumni, faculty members and students at the Rutgers campus.”
ROSS DOUTHAT: Government And Its Rivals. “When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good. Unlike most communal organizations, the government has coercive power — the power to regulate, to mandate and to tax. These advantages make it all too easy for the state to gradually crowd out its rivals. The more things we ‘do together’ as a government, in many cases, the fewer things we’re allowed to do together in other spheres.”
UPDATE: Reader Blake Hiatt emails: “Buffy is available to Amazon Prime members, free via streaming. Along with Malcolm in the Middle, Angel, Arrested Development, etc. Thought you might want to plug Amazon Prime along with the Buffy DVD’s.”
MARK LEVIN: Lay off Matt Drudge! The MSM hates his guts, remember? Audio at the link. Plus this: “Levin’s comments come as a refreshing reminder that, among conservatives who care deeply about this election, differences of opinion are often motivated by the same root concerns and desires.”
PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: “Egyptian blogger and political activist Mahmoud Salem, more commonly known by his online persona Sandmonkey, filed a civil lawsuit on Thursday, January 26th against the well-known and influential Salafi preacher Yasser al-Bourhami for the latter’s incitement of violence against Coptic Christians. While the details of this suit are still emerging, they deserve serious domestic and global attention: if methodically pursued, the case could form an important challenge to Egypt’s still-persistent culture of legal impunity for violence and discrimination against members of the country’s significant Christian minority.”
#2 BUT NOT TRYING HARDER: Thoughts on the New York Times’ eclipse by the Daily Mail. “Oh, and one other reason why the Daily Mail is winning the newspaper war: it is willing to deflate the religious beliefs held most dear by the management and editorial bullpen of the New York Times.”
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN . . . OH, HELL, YOU KNOW THE REST: FDA staffers sue agency over surveillance of personal e-mail. “The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that they believed posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show. . . . Information garnered this way eventually contributed to the harassment or dismissal of all six of the FDA employees, the suit alleges. All had worked in an office responsible for reviewing devices for cancer screening and other purposes.”
MICKEY KAUS ON the demise of private-sector unions. “The most significant number in the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics release on unionization is probably this: Only 6.9 percent of private sector workers are in unions. That’s the same percent as last year. In the middle of the 20th century, it was 35%. … The number is significant because it suggests that labor’s much-publicized private sector organizing drives have failed. They appeared to be meeting with some success a few years ago–the private sector rate actually rose from 7.4% to 7.6% between 2006 and 2008. Those union gains have now apparently been lost, and the private sector unionization rate again asymptotically approaches zero. … Are Obama’s recess appointments to the NLRB labor’s last hurrah?”
Just a note to say how useful your book recommendations are – I’d estimate 20% or more of my fiction purchases result from a mention on InstaPundit (and I do try to go back and buy through your link, even if I don’t buy right away) – an excellent addition to the Amazon recommends method of finding new authors.
In particular, your readers who are authors and who offer cheap or free editions of books, are folks I consistently buy to try something new. Neil Gaiman has a great interview (linked on TigerHawk recently) on this point – he found giving away electronic editions of books boosted his sales. http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2012/01/neil-gaiman-on-copyright-and-piracy.html
Keep telling us when you read something good!
The biggest problem is finding time to read something good. I’ve been unusually busy lately and it’s really cut into my leisure reading. On the other hand, I find that if I don’t do enough leisure reading, my efficiency falls off anyway.
IS IT PARENTAL MALPRACTICE TO PUT YOUR KID IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS? Sex Criminal At Age 6. “I typically blog several of these cases a month these days — sexual assault charges or ‘weapons’ charges for some kid whose granny put a paring knife in her lunch bag to cut her apple.”
And nobody ever seems to get fired over them, though this Principal should be unemployed, and unemployable, after this incident.
Here, by the way, is an excellent treatment of that topic by my former student Robert Pinson, in the Environmental Law Reporter. It started as a paper in my Space Law seminar.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN WE’D SEE NEW HIGHS IN HOMELAND-SECURITY PARANOIA — AND THEY WERE RIGHT! British pair arrested in U.S. on terror charges over Twitter jokes. “‘I almost burst out laughing when they asked me if I was going to be Leigh’s lookout while he dug up Marilyn Monroe. ‘I couldn’t believe it because it was a quote from the comedy Family Guy which is an American show.” Yeah, but in Homeland Security’s defense, it kinda sucks.
THE HILL:Republican lawmakers begin pushback against Obama recess appointments. “GOP lawmakers are still steaming over the White House decision to ignore brief pro forma Senate sessions to single-handedly name three members to the National Labor Relations Board and Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Republicans have almost unanimously criticized the move as an unprecedented power grab that upturns nearly a century of precedent. But beyond irate statements, lawmakers are taking varied approaches to actually challenging the appointments.”
