LIVING THE BLOGGER DREAM: Attended a small dinner party at James Taranto’s tonight, featuring sous vide and cigars. It doesn’t get any better than that!

IT’S A GOOD IDEA, AND I’M SURE C-SPAN WOULD BE WILLING: Put Fiscal Cliff Talks On TV.

ABOUT MY MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD POST LAST NIGHT, Rick Brookhiser emails:

Your advice to Egyptian moderates tracks what Arnold Beichman, old socialist, said to to me as we looked at the Winter Palace c. 1985: “Kerensky, that jerk–if only he’d shot a few people, millions would be alive!”

You can’t be halfhearted in a revolution. Values that serve well in a civil society don’t work in a state of nature.

SPIN: Iraqi refugee arrested for bombing Arizona Social Security office with IED, media silence ensues. “I just spoke again with my contact in the FBI Phoenix field office (who is not authorized to speak on behalf of the FBI office) that it is highly unlikely that Aldosary will be charged with any terrorism offense. While they are internally treating it like a domestic terrorism investigation, including looking at if he had any help constructing the explosive device, the FBI is saying very little and and will prosecute this as a simple explosives and arson case because of ‘the political sensitivities involved.’”

Is there a YouTube video we could blame?

ROSS DOUTHAT: More Babies, Please.

BRYAN PRESTON: Bob Costas’ Shame. When did sportscasters turn into such a bunch of whiny manginas?

More here.

UPDATE: Reader Rob Cooper emails: “Can someone remind me what caliber weapon OJ used on Nicole and Ron Goldman?” Maybe someone should ask Costas. Honestly, he should be taken off the air for such a rant. But he probably won’t be, given his employer.

POLITICAL RELIGION:

The need for a permanent campaign was another drum he beat. Politics is NOT my number one priority in life. For the Left, it seems like it may be. There seem to be Statists who view politics as life itself. A lady in the audience mentioned a rich Obama family (around Richmond, maybe) that put up four Obama operatives for a full year leading up to the election. Think of Democrats as political Jehovah’s Witnesses. I say that in admiration of a work ethic, not endorsement of either viewpoint. . . .

“Organization wins elections,” said a fellow in the crowd. Not just the phone calls and door knocks by random people from wherever. The precinct captains who know their turf are what the GOP lacks. As a terrible neighbor who hardly knows anyone on my block, I have to own my slice of the problem. If we’re not engaging in a minor invasion of privacy to get to know people, we’ll be suffering increasing major invasions of privacy from Leviathan.

Read the whole thing.

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COMING: A Tea Party Tsunami? It’ll happen if people work to make it happen.

The first Tea Party wave was a threat to Democratic control of Congress, and the response was vicious demonization and false accusations of racism.

Operation Demoralize is the Democrats’ attempt via sympathetic media to convince opponents of the Obama agenda that there is no hope and no alternative but capitulation.

Post-election, Operation Demoralize is in full swing. We are told the permanent liberal majority has arrived, that we live in a media bubble and cocoon, and that we were dishonest — not just wrong — in our 2012 assessments.

Expect Operation Demoralize to go bipartisan. Already we are told to blame the Tea Party movement for not taking back the Senate, even though more “moderate” Republicans lost their races than Tea Party supporters. (Todd Akin uniformly and incorrectly is described as a Tea Party candidate, when he was not.)

In reality, the Tea Party movement gave rise to our next generation of leaders, including Marco Rubio (the establishment backed Charlie Crist) and Ted Cruz (the establishment backed David Dewhurst).

The next thing for Tea Party people to do is to take over their county and state GOP operations. That shouldn’t be especially hard, especially in the wake of a big defeat. Work on recruiting good candidates — not just candidates who say the right thing, but candidates who can win, by not saying the wrong thing — and building networks to support them.

Don’t worry about 2016 right now. Work toward keeping the House in GOP hands — and encouraging those hands to be fiscal-restraint types, not old-style GOP establishment types — and taking back the Senate.

UPDATE: Andrew Morriss recommends Robert Heinlein’s Take Back Your Government. “A good manual for that Tea Party Tsunami!” It’s a little dated technologically, but the basic advice remains sound — particularly the part about how easy it is to get involved at a local and state level.

FIXING DIABETES WITH GASTRIC BYPASS SURGERY.

Sorry, but I’d try the Gary Taubes approach, first. With a dash of Mark Rippetoe.

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HOW MANY PEOPLE DIED BECAUSE OF BAD, POLITICIZED SCIENCE? Rachel Carson Was Wrong.

NO, BUT IT USUALLY IS: Prof. Bainbridge: Does Clinical Legal Education Really Have To Be About Left-Liberal Politics? “Most of the clinical professors whose work we have reviewed this semester have pursued a model of inculcating left-liberal political values in students and deploying those students to advance left-liberal political causes. . . . This model is troubling on several levels. First, it privileges a certain set of political views in the hiring process, contributing to the marginalization of conservative viewpoints among law faculty. Second, it inevitably will tend to exclude students of moderate or conservative viewpoints, who will either self-select out of clinical classes or be harassed out of it. Third, cause lawyering is wholly unrelated to the work most of our students will do most of the time. . . . Fourth, at state schools such as ours, it often deploys taxpayer funds to advance fringe causes that may damage the state economy or antagonize important mainstream groups such as the business community. . . . Fifth, much clinical legal education really seems to be about limousine liberals assuaging their guilt for living lives of extreme comfort (law professor salaries put most of these folks in or near the evil 1%).”

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: White House’s Own Data Debunk Myth Bush Cuts Built Deficit.

While President Obama insists the Bush tax cuts caused the recession and record deficits, his own economists say otherwise.

He might want to consult their data for the truth.

Kicking off fiscal cliff negotiations last month, Obama said: “What I’m not going to do is extend Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% that we can’t afford and, according to economists, will have the least positive impact on our economy.”

During the White House press conference, he added, “If we’re going to be serious about deficit reduction, we’ve got to do it in a balanced way.”

Obama argued voters made it clear in the election that they don’t want to go back to Republican policies that “cost” the Treasury revenues and “blew up the deficit,” as he told them repeatedly during the campaign.

The Washington media by and large share these assumptions. And they’re driving the debate over what to do about the federal budget crisis before Jan. 1, when the tax cuts and spending programs are set to expire.

But the assumptions are faulty, based largely on political demagoguery rather than hard numbers — including ones certified by Obama’s own fiscal policy advisers and bean counters in the White House. . . . Based on Bush fiscal policies, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected budget deficits of 0.7% to 1.5% of GDP for the years 2008 through 2011. The CBO even predicted surpluses for the subsequent years through 2018. . . . Obama’s economic report shows that the average deficit-to-GDP ratio during the entire Bush administration — 2001 to 2009 — was 2%, which is well below the 50-year average of 3%. During the Obama years, in contrast, the same deficit ratio has averaged 9.1%.

Check out the graphic.

TENNESSEE: Prof. Jacobson: The first battle of the next Tea Party wave — December 5 rally in Nashville against Obamacare exchange. Crap, I’ll be on a plane that day or I’d be there. Someone be sure to send me pics and reports. (Bumped).

TRAINING REGIMENS: “For girls, it raises your testosterone, so I try to have as much sex as possible before I fight.”

SHOCKER: Tina Fey Not As Good A Mom As Thought. The comparison to Honey Boo-Boo’s mom is just cruel, though.

THE CLEVEREST BUSINESS MODEL in online education.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Slow Cooker Shortcuts.

Here’s my recipe for Lamb And Guinness Stew. And here’s the Insta-Chicken recipe again. It does well in the slow cooker, too. On my cooker, it’s fine at either the High or the Low setting; a bit tenderer on Low, but not much difference.

BRAINSTORMING RESPONSES to America’s plummeting birthrate.

WORST PRISONS IN THE WORLD? Sierra Leone.

READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Sheldon Townsend asks me to plug his book. Rock Klller. Done! It’s asteroid miners vs. eco-terrorists.

A LOOK AT BUTTER CHURN TECHNOLOGY. “I mean, the difference between how people made butter in the 1700s and how they made butter in the 1940s—seems hopelessly small. Butter is formed when the membranes surrounding fat globules in cream are stripped through the process of physical agitation; this allows the fat to clump together into a single mass, i.e., butter. Thus all churns work the same way—they transfer human power into physical agitation within a vessel holding cream—and that’s why they never really advanced until humans found a feasible alternative to human power. Until industrialization came along, all churning was the same: You spent minutes or hours plunging or cranking a shaft until, at some point you couldn’t quite predict, long after you felt your arms were about to fall off, butter began to form.”

I was looking at Consumer Reports’ mixer recommendations yesterday, and they liked this KitchenAid. Now I’m thinking I should buy it and make some homemade butter.

UPDATE: At the Insta-Daughter’s request, just ordered the mixer!

FISCAL CLIFF TWEET OF THE DAY: #Obama like angry spouse who wants everything: house, car, kids, & only scorched earth for other side. Did we have a divorce or an election?

HOUSE INTEL CHAIR: “Gross Negligence” In Handling Benghazi.

HOW THE ROBERT FROST ESTATE uses copyright to crush use of “Stopping By Woods.” In a now-rare Virginia Postrel blog-post.

FOR RICKY GERVAIS, a Twitter self-beclowning incident.

IN THE MAIL: From Oliver North, Heroes Proved.

MORE PEOPLE WHO DON’T LIKE FREE SPEECH: British Press Report Brings Out the Speech Nannies. You can bet that these people have something to hide — or anticipate having something to hide in the near future.

The “good” people, the “helping” people, the “nurturing” people and the idealists are usually the ones eager to punish people who say hurtful things. The left recognizes this when Andrew Sullivan’s dreaded “Christianists” try to stop the teaching of evolution on the grounds that it is false and destructive. But when the left’s most cherished ideas are rudely and nastily challenged, the hammer comes down.

“Nice” people who want to limit your freedom of speech so that only “nice” ideas will be expressed are some of the most horribly misguided and dangerous people around. They must be relentlessly mocked and resisted so that human freedom can survive.

They are not nice people, and they do not mean well. They are bad people, cynically trying to secure their own power against challenge. And, most of all, they are the very thing they affect to despise most: Hypocrites.

And may I say that the exaggerated outrage over the “phone hacking” scandal is particularly hypocritical given the culture of pervasive surveillance of citizens that the British government — ahead even of our own — has established over the past decade or two. Those criticizing the press here are in no position to complain about invasions of privacy.

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THE NEXT BIG THING: CoEd Fraternities And Sororities.

If women live in a fraternity, is it still a fraternity? Can a sorority house men?

Most people would probably say no. At least, not by today’s standards.

But officials at Trinity College in Connecticut aren’t thinking about today’s standards. They’re thinking about the standards of 2023. That’s why they’re requiring Greek life to go coed.

It’s part of a strategic plan to improve the sense of community and image of the college, where students tend to run in cliques, retention rates have declined slightly, and social culture has grown out of proportion to academic life, said Frederick Alford, dean of students.

It’s sounding more and more like the world of Fred Saberhagen’s 1985 political-correctness dystopia in Love Conquers All. But the world’s looking like that a lot — at least when it’s not looking like Fallen Angels.

FAILING UPWARD: Investor’s Business Daily: For Susan Rice, Benghazi Was Kenya 1998 Deja Vu.

A mission was attacked after warnings, Americans were killed after security requests were denied, and a diplomat went on TV to explain it all — our current U.N. ambassador, after embassy bombings in 1998.

‘What troubles me so much is the Benghazi attack in many ways echoes the attacks on both embassies in 1998, when Susan Rice was head of the African region for our State Department,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Wednesday after two hours with our U.N. ambassador. “In both cases, the ambassador begged for additional security.”

In both cases, Susan Rice was involved more than she would like to admit.

And had press cover. So be sure to read the whole thing.

A “MODERATE” AND “PRAGMATIC” DICTATOR: Rand Simberg: President Morsi and the “non-ideological” Muslim Brotherhood.

ROGER KIMBALL: Why Kafka Would Like FEMA.

AT TAX-PROF, a roundup of responses to Case Western law dean Lawrence Mitchell’s oped arguing that law school is still a good deal.

THIS IS NICE: ALS Patient Is Living His Second Miracle: Follow-up stem-cell operation has more amazing results. Faster, please.

PATTERICO: Why does Brett Kimberlin think it might incriminate him to answer a question about what he knows about SWATting?

Related: Brett Kimberlin’s paperwork trail.

THIS IS INTERESTING: Baltimore Activist and Blogger Arrested, Streams SWAT Team Standoff Online.

SHOCKER: Small Business Owners Lose Confidence After Election. “According to a Gallup poll, American small-business owners became extremely pessimistic about their future prospects following the presidential election. After hitting a nadir in mid-2010, optimism had been growing steadily over the past two years. But in the last month, that positive trend has reversed.”

Hey, they’re small. They’re not stupid.

ERIC CANTOR DENOUNCES the Imperial Presidency. And the ensuing economic depression caused by “regime uncertainty.”

When “laws” are created without going through Congress; when laws are selectively executed; when an administration intervenes into the normal judicial process and diminishes an individual’s property rights; and when the normal regulatory process is circumvented, the rule of law is eroded.

All of this increases uncertainty. Individuals, families, and businesses now not only face uncertainty with respect to the policy decisions made by government, but they face uncertainty as to how those decisions will even be made, Numerous economic studies and surveys indicate that uncertainty itself (which is certainly increased with the breakdown in the rule of law) also hinders economic growth.

While Administrations of both political parties have been known to test the bounds of the limits of their power, the breadth of the breakdown in the rule of law in recent years has reached new levels.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Related:

Yet the State, despite its failures, is consistently given a benefit of the doubt that no one would extend to actors and firms in the private sector. For instance, educational outcomes remain dismal despite vastly increased expenditures and far lower class sizes than in the past. Had the private sector presided over such a disaster, we would never hear the end of all the denunciations of the malefactors of great wealth who are keeping our children ignorant. When the government sector performs so poorly, there is silence. Silence, that is, interrupted by demands that the State be given still more resources.

Indeed.

FUTURE TALK: Literacy In The Age of Google.

GEORGE WILL has a column on Greg Lukianoff’s new book about the campus assault on free speech. But he also touches on yet another reason why the Higher Education Bubble may be bursting:

Such coercion is a natural augmentation of censorship. Next comes mob rule. Last year, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the vice provost for diversity and climate — really; you can’t make this stuff up — encouraged students to disrupt a news conference by a speaker opposed to racial preferences. They did, which the vice provost called “awesome.” This is the climate on an especially liberal campus that celebrates “diversity” in everything but thought.

“What happens on campus,” Lukianoff says, “doesn’t stay on campus” because censorship has “downstream effects.” He quotes a sociologist whose data he says demonstrate that “those with the highest levels of education have the lowest exposure to people with conflicting points of view.” This encourages “the human tendency to live within our own echo chambers.” Parents’ tuition dollars and student indebtedness pay for this. Good grief.

Yes, good grief.

NILE GARDINER: 45 percent of US Democrats favour socialism. Fortunately most Americans still believe in capitalism.

WEBB WILDER: Human Cannonball. “It’s a llttle risky, but I’m my own boss.”

Original version here.

All right folks, just make yourselves at home. Have a sno-cone and enjoy the show.

DAN MITCHELL: The Sadistic Brutality of England’s Government-Run Healthcare.

Governments exist, historically, for only one reason: Because they’re really, really good at killing people. So “sadistic brutality” shouldn’t come as a complete surprise.

TOM BLUMER: Remembering Some of Those Who Said the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt Wasn’t a Threat to Democracy.

ONE GENERATION GOT OLD, One Generation Got Sold. “This 50-something, white, conservative Republican wishes to thank America’s youth for sacrificing their financial futures and standard of living so that boomers, such as my wife and I, can look forward to a long and comfy retirement, which we could easily have afforded on our own. Now we have the youth as our guarantors and providers of a little something extra. . . . With the president’s electoral crushing of Mitt Romney, my overriding sense of morality and guilt have vanished. Thank you, kids!”

Is this the world that we created?

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THE PHANTASMAGORIC Matt Drudge.

“SMART DIPLOMACY” UPDATE: Investor’s Business Daily: Egypt Is Collapsing Thanks To Obama Foreign Policy.

REPORT: Muslim Brotherhood ‘paying gangs to go out and rape women and beat men protesting in Egypt’ as thousands of demonstrators pour on to the streets.

Were I among the anti-Morsi forces, I’d make a gruesome example of some of these guys, and put the video on YouTube. I’d make their home addresses and family names public, too, so that anyone else tempted to try this would fear all sorts of reprisals.

But then, if I were among the anti-Morsi forces, I’d be trying to decapitate the Muslim Brotherhood, and kill enough lower-level folks to make them keep their heads down. Because that’s how you deal with murderous thugs who are trying to seize your government. Other approaches don’t work. Ask Kerensky.

And it’s not so important that you’re outnumbered. The Bolsheviks were outnumbered, too, until they were on top.

UPDATE: Rick Brookhiser emails:

Your advice to Egyptian moderates tracks what Arnold Beichman, old socialist, said to to me as we looked at the Winter Palace c. 1985: “Kerensky, that jerk–if only he’d shot a few people, millions would be alive!”

Yep. In a revolution, you can’t be halfhearted. And Brookhiser adds:

Thanks for all you do, and an extra thanks to your helpers this fall–they were terrific. (I owe them since I once grumped over your substitutes.)

Heh. I remember that. But it turned out fine this time!

BAD STUFF: AAA warns EPA to halt sale of E15 gas.

THE WORLD’S most and least emotional countries.

THE CORDAIR ART GALLERY FOLKS ARE HAVING AN AUCTION. We have Lunch Break hanging in our living room.

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ANALYZE THE BODY LANGUAGE: It often speaks louder than facial expressions.

But InstaPundit readers have known this for years.

FRANK J. FLEMING: The Biggest Lesson the GOP Should Learn from the Election. “Republicans need to stop nominating right-wing extremists like John McCain and Mitt Romney.”

HOW SELF-RELIANCE AND TIGHT BUDGETING GOT COLORADO SPRINGS THROUGH THE RECESSION: “This is a mainstream media piece using the word ‘libertarian,’ so we should assume that Colorado Springs residents responded to hard times by resorting to cannibalism and emulating the plot of Road Warrior, right? Not so much. Actually, residents voted down onerous tax hikes that would have been spent on politician-preferred priorities in favor of paying for or providing their own services.”

TAKING A CONTROVERSIAL STAND: Single People Shouldn’t Get To Have Weddings.

WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: Bacon Shaving Cream.

THE RETURN OF OLD-FASHIONED CHICLE-BASED CHEWING GUM.

HMM: “If States Don’t Set Up Insurance Exchanges, Will ‘Obamacare’ Implode?”

MORE GREEN-CAR PROBLEMS: Fisker Suspends Production Of The Karma. “Because we have no batteries, there’s no production right now. Inventory is starting to get a little low.” Government-subsidized Fisker doesn’t have batteries because the government-subsidized battery-maker, A123, went bankrupt and doesn’t have a buyer.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: New York Times: Saying No To College.

Even the staunchest critics of college concede that a diploma is still necessary for many professions — law and medicine, clearly, and in many cases, for a Fortune 500 executive, too. But that’s the point: how many more lawyers and middle managers do we need?

“College is training for managerial work, and the economy doesn’t need that many managers,” said Michael Ellsberg, the author of “The Education of Millionaires: Everything You Won’t Learn In College About How to Be Successful.”

Mr. Ellsberg, 35, graduated from Brown University and spent years trying to translate his expertise in post-colonial critical theory into a paying career. So his book tries to impart real-world skills, like salesmanship and networking, which he argues are crucial as white-collar jobs are being downsized or shipped to Bangalore. The future, he added, belongs to job creators, even if the only job they create is their own.

“I’m not saying you have to be Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs,” Mr. Ellsberg said. “I know people with dog-walking businesses who make six figures.”

I wonder if these changes will lead to more political support for entrepreneurship? Also, I told you so.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A Shocking Chart On Tuition vs. Earnings For College Grads. “While President Obama has supported increasing the availability of student loans, others are questioning if student loans are becoming too easy to obtain, putting those who have no hope of paying off the loan into crushing life-long debt.” Ya think?

MORE MEDICAL CHANGE: Scanadu hopes its tricorder-like device and a smartphone will help people track their health and diagnose problems.

NICE: NYPD Officer’s Act of Kindness Goes Viral on Facebook and Reddit.

THE HEAVIEST THING that Amazon will ship for free weighs nearly a ton. This is it.

YOU THINK IT’S BOOMING NOW? JUST WAIT UNTIL OBAMACARE: Medical tourism booms in Costa Rica. “When Canadian house cleaner Marlene Trithardt needed a tooth replaced, she drove past her local dentist’s office in Alberta and flew to the beach paradise of Costa Rica – to save money.” When I was last on Cayman they were talking about setting up a medical-tourism destination facility there, too.

NOTHING SAYS SEXY LIKE menswear designed by Yoko Ono.

VIDEO: VodkaPundit interviews Sarah Hoyt.

Her new novel, Darkship Renegades, is the topic. You’ll be shocked to see that alcohol is being consumed.

A MOVE TO NEUTER FLEET STREET? As with the UN Internet initiative, the global elites seem to want to shut down criticism. Reminds me of this passage from Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom:

Everything which might cause doubt about the wisdom of the government or create discontent will be kept from the people. The basis of unfavorable comparisons with elsewhere, the knowledge of possible alternatives to the course actually taken, information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve conditions–all will be suppressed. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced and uniformity of views not enforced.

But I’m probably just being paranoid.

KATRINA ON THE HUDSON: Angry New Yorkers say Obama pledge to cut red tape ignored by FEMA. “Some 1,000 people, many left homeless by the Oct. 29 storm, attended the meeting at Staten Island’s New Dorp High School. They were initially scheduled to submit written questions that would be picked and answered at random, but the session turned into an angry shouting match where residents booed FEMA officials and accused them of lying.”

Takeaway quote: “FEMA ain’t doing nothing.” This would be getting more, and different, coverage if we had a Republican in the White House.

IN THE MAIL: From Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life.

THE PRESIDENT VOTES PRESENT: “We’ve Seen An Utter Lack of Leadership From President Obama.”

LIVING IN THE HUNGER GAMES: Getting Fat Off The Taxpayer: Since 2000, D.C. Area Wealth Grew at Twice National Average.

WHERE THE DEBT COMES FROM, in one chart. Note the narrowing gap during Bush’s second term, where we were actually heading toward surplus before the financial crisis, despite Obama’s claim that the debt is all Bush’s fault because of “two wars on the credit card.”

UPDATE: Reader Steve Nelson writes to point out that the deficit only started growing after the new Democratic Congress came in in 2007. “You know, the section of the US government that actually spends the money. . . . This cannot be stressed enough.” Good point.

SO DOESN’T THIS MEAN WE SHOULD BE INCREASING TAXES ON “MOST AMERICANS,” AND NOT JUST THE TOP 2%? New York Times: Tax Burden Is Lower for Most Americans Than in the 1980s.

POWER GRAB: School Quotas and Speech Codes May Result From Senate Amendment to Defense Bill: Democrats try to sneak expansion of “disparate impact” claims under cover of Defense Authorization legislation.

SO MAYBE THERE’S NOTHING NEW HERE: “Our babysitter got laid by one of the Secret Service.”

HMM: DSK Pays To Make That Maid Go Away?

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JOHN GALT WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: Collecting Disability Becomes A Career Choice For Men.

GUY BENSON: Republicans’ Ace in the Hole: Simpson-Bowles?

THE TELEGRAPH: The White House’s Benghazi bungling is proving a disaster.

They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, Brit pundits would mock the White House for foreign policy ineptitude — and they were right!

COPYRIGHT: Recording Industry Could Catch More Flies With Honey, But Keeps Betting On Vinegar.

You’d think the GOP would be smart enough to take advantage of that. Well, some may be learning. . . .

Related item here:

The Founding Fathers wanted that term to be 14 years, with an additional 14 years if the author were still alive. After 28 years, they figured you’d had your chance to exploit your creation, and now it belonged to the nation at large. That way we would never end up with a system of hereditary privilege, similar to the printers guilds of Renaissance England, who tied up rights to dead authors and tightly controlled what could or could not be printed and who could or could not use literary material. . . . The Constitution is quite clear on the matter. It says copyrights are to be granted for “limited times.” I don’t know any definition of “limited” that would mean 75 years plus a 20-year extension plus the chance of getting another extension later. The whole issue was argued three centuries ago, and it was established as a principle of democracy that, when the author is dead, his work becomes the property of all. This was modified slightly to allow the first generation after his death to continue to collect royalties, presumably to protect widows and children. But that’s all that was intended. There was no argument ever made for a third- or fourth-generation royalty, much less a perpetual assignment of royalties to a corporation that never dies.

As a great man once said, at some point you’ve made enough money.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A Student Loan Bailout Would Consume 62% of New Obama Taxes.

Americans concerned about what President Obama plans to do with the $1.6 trillion in new taxes he is proposing in the a “fiscal cliff” deal have a new worry: Will it go to bailout some $1 trillion in student loan debt, leaving enough to pay for less than two years interest on the national debt?

Critics are raising that possibility on the heels of a new Federal Reserve report that student loan debt has reached $956 billion, and it’s growing.

“Outstanding student loan debt now stands at $956 billion, an increase of $42 billion since last quarter. However, of the $42 billion, $23 billion is new debt while the remaining $19 billion is attributed to previously defaulted student loans that have been updated on credit reports this quarter. As a result, the percent of student loan balances 90+ days delinquent increased to 11 percent this quarter,” said the New York Fed.

Anxious Republicans skeptical of the president’s fiscal cliff plan and proposed $1.6 trillion in new taxes, mostly on the wealthy, are worried that the administration is planning new spending programs, not debt payments with the money.

They are turning their attention to a Democratic proposal to pay off student loan debt and the president’s focus on student loans during his many campaign stops at college campuses earlier this year.

Create a problem, then pay it off with other people’s money. Buy votes. Lovely.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Study: American Households Hit 43-Year Low In Net Worth. Forward!

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Case For Drinking As Much Coffee As You’d Like.

“What I tell patients is, if you like coffee, go ahead and drink as much as you want and can,” says Dr. Peter Martin, director of the Institute for Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt University. He’s even developed a metric for monitoring your dosage: If you are having trouble sleeping, cut back on your last cup of the day. From there, he says, “If you drink that much, it’s not going to do you any harm, and it might actually help you. A lot.”

Read the whole thing. Over a cup of coffee!

THE PRESS MAY HAVE MANAGED TO DISILLUSION A LOT OF REPUBLICAN PUNDITS AND LEADERS, but these blog commenters don’t seem to have lost their mojo.

THAT WOULD BE NICE: Grover Norquist: New, Larger ‘Tea Party Second Wave’ Coming. “We are about to have a Tea Party second wave that will dwarf the first wave and that is because while ‘spend too much’ brought the Tea Party into existence, we’re about to walk into ‘spend too much, regulate too much, and tax too much,’ all together. It’s going to be a perfect storm of annoying government behavior, which is devastating to the economy, and I think the small business community which is particularly hit by Obama’s tax increases are going to lead the fight bigger, stronger, tougher than the last Tea Party.”

LOOKING INSIDE Mitt Romney’s Polling Numbers. “The Romney pollsters apparently were also misled by their finding that those most interested in the race strongly supported Romney. It turned out, of course, that Obama supporters who perhaps weren’t hugely interested in the election nonetheless voted, at least in the important states.”

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, SECRETIVE INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES WOULD BE CALLING ALL THE SHOTS. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! The NSA Tells Congress What to Think And Say About the NSA: Checks and Balances in Action.

QUIZ: Kitchen Utensil, or Sex Toy?

PATTERICO: The Untold Story of the Shenanigans in a Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Louisiana — and Why Eric Holder Should Be Asked About It.

PROTEST SONG of the year.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Kindle Fire HD, as low as $199.99.

Also, 100 Kindle books for $3.99 or less.

Just a reminder: InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you do your Christmas/Hanukkah shopping — or any other shopping — through the Amazon links on this page, including the “Shop Amazon” tab at the top or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you support the blog at no cost to yourself. Just click on the Amazon link, then shop as usual. It’s much appreciated! (Bumped).

MOVE TO CONTAIN HIGHER EDUCATION COSTS now a multi-state phenomenon.

NOW ON YOUTUBE: InstaVision: Read My Lips: Why The ‘No-Tax-Hike’ Pledge Is an IQ Test for Republicans. With a special guest appearance by George H.W. Bush. (Bumped).

CAL WATCHDOG: The union assault — covert and overt — on California’s direct democracy.