MEDIA HYPOCRISY UPDATE: David Gregory Mocks LaPierre for Proposing Armed Guards, but Sends Kids to High-Security School. Same school where the Obama kids go.
UPDATE: Did NBC’s David Gregory Violate D.C. Gun Law on National TV? That 30-round magazine he held up is illegal in DC.
STACY MCCAIN WONDERS what happened to all that “new civility” stuff?
Related item here. “I notice that Mr. Farrell did not respond to my most serious charge against Crooked Timber: that they systematically left out Professor Loomis’s most-vile comments. This omission probably gained many signatures for their statement but cost Crooked Timber some credibility.” Meh, it’s not like they had much to lose.
UPDATE: Henry Farrell responds.
MY MENTION THE OTHER DAY of the Orgreenic Frying Pan produced this email from reader Scott Boone:
I know you probably don’t want to do a whole big bleg on cookware, but I saw your post earlier on the Orgreenic frypans. Of course, you’ve used them personally, so that’s a pretty strong endorsement, I wanted to throw a hat in the ring for SCANPAN too. I’ve been using mine for years and it is awesome! They were one of the first ceramic-coated nonsticks, I believe. (ceramic titanium…oooooh) They’re more expensive than the Orgreenic, but have a lifetime warranty (a Danish company that’s been around) and you can use METAL UTENSILS with them! And I do, regularly–forks, knives, turners–never a problem. Can cook a steak tonight and do an omelet or fried eggs tomorrow morning. Really fantastic cookware.
http://amzn.com/B0000CDUUH
Also, another kitchen essential that I think NO chef should be without, a good silicone spatula/spoon.
(I don’t personally like the black color, I have white…and a red one, for tomato sauces. But looks like Amazon doesn’t have those in stock right now.But this design is great; all enclosed construction with no wood or stick-hole to trap nasty bacteria. Yuck.)
Maybe I’ll try the Scanpan out next time I’m looking for nonstick cookware. It’s pricier, but the construction quality seems higher.
AMY ALKON’S RADIO SHOW STARTS IN TWO MINUTES: Find And Keep Love Through Attachment Science.
JANICE FIAMENGO: Manufacturing Racism: Academic Hiring and the Diversity Mandate.
NEW JERSEY TOWN FOLLOWS THE NRA’S ADVICE: “We’ve made a collective decision as a town that we need armed security in each of our schools.”
UPDATE: Reader Mark Simon points out the political genius of the NRA: “NJ will have cops at every school for one reason. UNIONS. The cops are being driven back in their Over-time and the schools just provided justification as well as another local need for those hundred of so township police departments.”
THE PARANOID STRAIN IN AMERICAN POLITICS via Michael Mann. “The return label says COSTCO Photo Center, not Heartland, not Koch Brothers World Headquarters, and not ‘Skeptic Lair’. I guess Dr. Mann really is out of touch with the common man, because all he had to do was visit COSTCO photo center to see for himself that ANYONE can create and order calendars, and have them sent to friends or family, just like I did. No Koch Brothers credit card needed.”
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LARRY CORREIA: An Opinion On Gun Control. (Reposted).
JAKE SHIMABUKURO: Bohemian Rhapsody on ukelele. “You know, this is the underdog of all instruments.” He’s the Stevie Ray Vaughan of the ukelele. No, really.
THE ARCHIES: Sugar, Sugar.
MARIO LOYOLA: The Federal-State Crackup.
For decades, Democrats and Republicans alike have invested heavily in governance schemes that erode the Constitution’s separation of powers and mar its proper functioning. The Federal judiciary has uniformly rubber-stamped these schemes. The consequence has been an unsustainable spree of borrowing, spending and overregulation at the Federal level, cyclical fiscal crises at the state level, and less accountable and less representative government at every level.
These governance schemes are generally of two kinds: one erodes the separation of powers between Federal and state governments, while the other erodes the separation of powers within the Federal government. In the first category is “cooperative federalism”, whereby the Federal government uses monopoly powers to coerce and subvert the prerogatives of state governments. In the other is Congress’s delegation of vast rule-making authority to administrative agencies.
These two categories of concern are often treated as being entirely distinct, but they share profound similarities. Both are methods for Congress to escape accountability by hiding its power in other institutions of government. Cooperative federalism allows Congress to hide its power within the decision-making of state governments, while its delegation of rule-making authority allows it to hide its power in the far-flung bureaucracy of the Executive Branch.
The Federal judiciary has a crucial role to play in maintaining and policing the boundaries of America’s basic institutions of state. It is a role it abdicated when confronted with the popular nationalist programs of the New Deal. The constitutional doctrines the judiciary has invoked to let Congress blur these critical separations of power are deeply flawed as a matter of constitutional law, and they have ultimately become unsustainable as a matter of political economy.
Yes. And a “living constitution” approach will recognize that the New Deal doctrines are poorly adapted to a changing world, and return to limited government.
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JUST A REMINDER OF ANOTHER CRUSADE TO IMPROVE PEOPLE: The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science.
It’s about control. It’s always about control.
ANN ALTHOUSE: Scenery chewing in the Theater of Outrage over Wayne LaPierre’s unremarkable news conference.
So many violent metaphors from the Apostles Of Nonviolence. And may I note that if teachers are too dumb and undisciplined (“mobs”) to be trusted with guns, then why, exactly, are they to be trusted with our children?
TRIUMPH OF THE NERDS: The internet has unleashed a burst of cartooning creativity.
Well, yes.
THE NEVERENDING SCOURGE OF Ever-Present TVs In Restaurants. “So while we diners polish off our pepperoni, we get to hear about a body being unearthed from a serial killer’s basement in Iowa.”
UPDATE: Yes, there is a technical solution. But is it right?
WHAT TURNED JARON LANIER AGAINST THE WEB.
VIDEO: Ukulele weeps by Jake Shimabukuro. “This guy is a god on a ukulele.”
WELL, THOSE UCLA LAWPROFS ARE A WILD AND CRAZY BUNCH: UCLA Law Prof Lets Needy Strangers Live Rent-Free in His House: Cool or Crazy?
THE NEW SAMSUNG CHROMEBOOK GETS A REVIEW: Samsung’s Chromebook, priced at just $249, is a decent cheap laptop. But it’s not so good when there’s no Internet.
MEETING THE FAMILY: Do’s And Don’ts From The Movies.
WHAT WOULD JESUS BURN? The story of Frankincense and Myrrh.
99 CENTS ON KINDLE: From Joseph Bottum, Wise Guy: A Christmas Tale. You probably know him from his writings in the Weekly Standard.
IN THE MAIL: From Michael McCollum, Euclid’s Wall.
DID WE EVER GET AN ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION? Does Piers Morgan’s Bodyguard Carry A Gun?
Hey, I’m still waiting to find out what kind of gun Rupert Murdoch’s bodyguards carry. And Mike Bloomberg’s. And note this, seen on Facebook:
HARD TO BELIEVE IT’S BEEN SEVEN YEARS since Jim Hawkins died. R.I.P., Jim.
DAVID HENDERSON: Free Speech for Me but Not for Thee: The Case of Erik Loomis.
It turns out, by the way, that Crooked Timber also misled by omission. Everyone knows that the expression “head on a stick” is a metaphor, and that is how Crooked Timber defended Loomis. But see here for some of his truly vile comments. Crooked Timber quoted none of these.
Also, the other person, besides the people at Crooked Timber, who is unwilling to defend freedom of speech is . . . Erik Loomis. When given a chance to clarify his views on LaPierre, he wrote, “Dear rightwingers, to be clear, I don’t want to see Wayne LaPierre dead. I want to see him in prison for the rest of his life.”
And what would he want LaPierre in prison for? For murder? No. It would be for speaking out in favor of, and lobbying for, people’s right to own guns. So, again, “freedom of speech for me, but not for thee.”
That’s consistent with their general approach. They’re lefty-defenders, not liberty-defenders.
Plus this: “Reading how vile the comments of this ‘gifted young scholar’ were, I did start thinking that, at a minimum, some people at URI should occasionally monitor his class or question his students to find out whether he brings anywhere close to that amount of venom to discussions with students who disagree with him.”
And, from the comments: “One irony of all this: While FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) is already at work defending Loomis against possible sanction by URI, I doubt very much that Loomis himself would be supportive of other work FIRE does to protect the rights of students who, for example, agree with Wayne LaPierre.”
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Next Step In Kansas’ Red Revolution: End State Pensions?
Since the right wing of Kansas’ Republican party gained control over the state government last month (defeating both Democrats and moderate Republicans to establish perhaps the most pro-Tea Party state government anywhere in the United States), we’ve been keeping an eye on developments there that could tell us what Tea Party governance would look like.
A new proposal on state pensions from the Kansas Chamber of Commerce offers a clue: the proposal would substitute defined contribution plans for the current defined benefit plan that goes to state retirees. For those of you not fully up on pension minutiae, this matters. In a defined benefit program, your employer promises a fixed stream of payments (usually with cost of living adjustments to take care of inflation) to employees when they retire. The amount of your payment is based on a formula that looks at things like your length of service and your pre-retirement pay.
This used to be the standard pension system in the private economy as well as for government workers. It is a very “blue model” system: it assumes a world of lifetime employment and stable employers. Often, defined benefit pensions emerged from negotiations between unions and employers.
In the private economy, the defined benefit system is in rapid retreat. Employers don’t like these pensions because they are both risky and expensive to manage. If the investments set aside to pay future pension obligations don’t perform well enough, companies have to divert current earnings to them or, worse, borrow money to make up the gap. Another problem with these pensions is that they create problems for companies facing fast technological change. Automakers, for example, need many fewer workers today than they did thirty years ago to produce cars; as a result the proportion of pensioners to active workers has shot up, and companies are stuck with legacy labor costs which make it more difficult for them to compete or attract new capital.
It’s not that radical. I have a defined-contribution plan, and it’s been the rule in Tennessee for decades.
RACISM IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: Is The Ivy League Fair To Asian-Americans? “An admission officer’s uncomfortable explanation for why they don’t get in as often as their test scores would predict suggests it’s not.”
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THIS IS LIKE AN OLD LADY WORRYING ABOUT TEENAGERS “SHOOTING UP MARIJUANA:” New York Times calls for limits on “high capacity ammunition.”
UPDATE: Reader James Druse emails: “Too bad the NY Times has only low capacity journalists.” Heh. (Bumped).
OFF-SCRIPT AGAIN: Cory Booker: “Criminals are killing people. Not law-abiding gun owners.” Plus: “We do not need to go after the guns. A law-abiding mentally stable American, that’s not America’s problem.”
A FUN TWITTER FEED: Modern Seinfeld tweets 140-character plot summaries for new Seinfeld episodes set in the present. Examples:
Kramer becomes an Internet famous photo bomber, so Jerry checks his photos and finds Kramer in the background of every single one of them.
Elaine attends a party Michelle Obama is speaking at, offends the first lady when she complains at the buffet about the crappy health food.
George trips, accidentally gropes someone on the train, and a video of it goes viral. Elaine gets a job writing menu copy for Guy Fieri.
Pretty funny.
AN ENTIRE GOVERNING PHILOSOPHY IN ONE SENTENCE: “You get nothing,” the president said. “I get that for free.”
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: “First came the pen, and then the fist.”
EXAMINING SANTA CLAUS for inappropriate messages.
PROF. JACOBSON: I could not accuse Salon.com of tokenism, even if I wanted to.
NEVER: Jonah Goldberg: “When will liberals stop living in the past? Specifically, when will they accept that they aren’t all that stands between a wonderful, tolerant America and Jim Crow?”
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WAIT, WEREN’T THEY TELLING US THAT WORRIES ABOUT GUN CONFISCATION WERE A PARANOID FANTASY? Andrew Cuomo: “Confiscation Could Be An Option.”
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CATALONIA: Secession Looking More Likely. “Catalonia is the richest part of Spain. If it goes, Spain’s tax base shrinks dramatically. If it doesn’t go, but merely uses the threat to get lower taxes and more help with its own very large debts, Spain’s fiscal picture still looks a great deal bleaker. Which means, in turn, that Germany is going to have to pony up a lot more money.”
It seems like every European problem requires the Germans to pony up a lot more money. What if they don’t?
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LARRY CORREIA: An Opinion On Gun Control. (Reposted).
THE WAGES OF “SMART DIPLOMACY:” Egypt constitutional vote: ‘Things are definitely worse than under the old regime.’ Even aside from Benghazi, Hillary Clinton’s diplomatic record isn’t impressive.
Related: In Egypt, Liberals Losing at Polls and in Streets. Their cooperation was essential to bringing down Mubarak, but their cooperation is not essential to ruling Egypt, so they are being discarded.
EVEN SLATE IS MOCKING OBAMA FOR NARCISSISM NOW: Today We Are Gathered … To Hear More About Me: President Obama was supposed to eulogize the memory of Sen. Daniel Inouye. Instead he told us about his favorite summer vacation.
MICHAEL WALSH: ‘Assault’ — The Democrat-Media Complex Strikes Again.
In the town that launched the War on Poverty 48 years ago, the poor are getting poorer despite the government’s help. And the rich are getting richer because of it.
The top 5 percent of households in Washington, D.C., made more than $500,000 on average last year, while the bottom 20 percent earned less than $9,500 – a ratio of 54 to 1.
That gap is up from 39 to 1 two decades ago. It’s wider than in any of the 50 states and all but two major cities. This at a time when income inequality in the United States as a whole has risen to levels last seen in the years before the Great Depression.
Key quote: “We’re seeing an enormous transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the Washington economy.” Well, yes.
SO WHEN A FEDERAL JUDGE ARGUES FOR GUN BANS, I guess he’ll have to recuse himself on gun-rights cases in the future.
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MEDIA: Senate resolution tells Village Voice to take down ‘adult entertainment’ section.
Lawmakers said that website, Backpage.com, ends up promoting child sex trafficking in the United States. . . .
“As news reports of pimps and traffickers using Backpage.com to advertise sexual services by minors continue to increase, we cannot leave our children defenseless,” Kirk said. “The profit-first mentality at Village Voice Media, which prioritizes the rights of pimps, not children, must end.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) co-sponsored the measure.
Won’t they think of the children?
21ST CENTURY BUSINESSES: Maker Mom Builds Cookie-Cutter Empire With 3-D Printers.
CHANGE: One Out of Every 6.5 Americans Is on Food Stamps. “The new all-time record number of recipients, 47.7 million (up from 31.6 million when Obama took office) exceeds the combined populations of Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.”
From Woodstock Nation to Food Stamp Nation. Forward!
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: ABA: Law Schools Admit More Non-J.D. Students to Offset Decline in J.D. Enrollment.
IN THE FLESH: The Embedded Dangers of Untested Stem Cell Cosmetics. I can see using untested stem-cell procedures for, say, liver regeneration. But cosmetics?
TURNING THE INTERNET into a closed shop.
IN THE MAIL: Signs of War.
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A BAKING BLOG: Butter Me Up, Brooklyn!
HMM: Scientists Link Obesity To Gut Bacteria. “Obesity in human beings could be caused by bacterial infection rather than eating too much, exercising too little or genetics, according to a groundbreaking study that could have profound implications for public health systems, the pharmaceutical industry and food manufacturers. Researchers in Shanghai identified a human bacteria linked with obesity, fed it to mice and compared their weight gain with rodents without the bacteria. The latter did not become obese despite being fed a high-fat diet and being prevented from exercising.” Read the whole thing.
PREACHING Microbial Supremacy.
SO I MENTIONED THIS KITCHENAID MIXER the other day. We did buy it, and the Insta-Daughter used to to make whipped sweet potatoes the other night and pronounced it a winner. Haven’t tried to make butter, though.
SEE, THIS IS WHY PEOPLE hate Vegans. Not all of them are that self-righteous. But the 90% who are give the other 10% an undeserved bad name . . . .
FREEDOM: 35 Things That Were Banned In 2012.
HEH: White House Petition: Deport Piers Morgan. I say keep him at CNN, where he serves as an anchor for their brand. . . .
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Yes, there really is a Higher Education Bubble.
The big difference between the bubble metaphor as classically used and the bubble metaphor as applied to higher ed is simple: higher ed is a (mostly) non-profit industry. While colleges and universities issue debt (and with ratings agencies downgrading some higher ed institutions there is a small financial bubble in these securities that appears to be losing air), the higher ed bubble is less about profits and stocks than it is about capacity. We have built too much inefficient capacity in higher ed, and the bursting of the bubble won’t be manifested in a falling value of Yale stocks and bonds or of diplomas, but in a constricted hiring market, the closure of some institutions and painful contractions at others. It is also manifested in an excessive growth of student debt, much of which will not be repaid.
Just as some cities were more vulnerable in the housing bubble, so some departments and some programs are more vulnerable in higher ed. Just as some of the consequences of the housing bubble were felt quickly while others will work themselves out over an extended period of time, so some consequences of the higher ed bubble are already being felt while others will be with us into the future. Just as well managed, efficient construction companies were able to ride out the bust while highly leveraged and inefficient companies went under, so some higher ed institutions will manage the transition reasonably well while others will undergo great stress and even collapse. And just as people continue to need houses no matter what is happening in the housing market, so the business of earning and awarding diplomas will go on — even if methods change.
Look away from the difference between non-profit and for-profit industries, and higher ed looks to be in something very much like the early corrective phase of a classic boom and bust cycle. Overcapacity and over investment in some branches of higher ed is already leading to pressure to shift students out of the humanities and liberal arts and is likely to spread to law programs, where costs continue rising despite signs that enrollment may have already peaked. . . . Unrealistic prices and unrealistic expectations about how those prices will hold up; unrealistic investments predicated on unrealistic growth and revenue expectations; expensive structural inefficiencies developing over a long period of favorable market conditions exposing many firms to devastating losses if conditions change: these classic indicators of bubble dynamics all characterize American higher ed today.
Read the whole thing, which is in response to this post by Daniel Drezner that I had missed because it’s behind a paywall. But hey, Mead has responded, probably better than I would have, so I’m calling it a win!
CHRIS CHRISTIE criticized for establishment thinking, rejection of new ideas. “Claiming you’re resisting the ‘easy way’ when you refuse to do that is pure sophistry.”
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Appellate Court Affirms Dismissal of Placement Data Lawsuit Against New York Law School.
Plaintiffs allege that the disclosures cause them to enroll in school to obtain, at a very high price, a law degree that proved less valuable in the market-place than they were led to expect. We hold that defendant’s disclosures, though unquestionably incomplete, were not false or misleading. We thus affirm the dismissal of the complaint. . . .
We are not unsympathetic to plaintiffs’ concerns. We recognize that students may be susceptible to misrepresentations by law school. As such, “[t]his Court does not necessarily agree [with Supreme Court] that [all] college graduates are particularly sophisticated in making career or business decisions” (MacDonald, 2012 WL 2994107, at *10). As a result, they sometimes make decisions to yoke themselves and their spouses and/or their children to a crushing burden because the schools have made misleading representations that give the impression that a full time job is easily obtainable when in fact it is not.
Given this reality, it is important to remember that the practice of law is a noble profession that takes pride in its high ethical standards. Indeed, in order to join and continue to enjoy the privilege of being an active member of the legal profession, every prospective and active member of the profession is called upon to demonstrate candor and honesty. This requirement is not a trivial one. For the profession to continue to ensure that its members remain candid and honest public servants, all segments of the profession must work in concert to instill the importance of those values. “In the last analysis, the law is what the lawyers are. And the law and the lawyers are what the law schools make them.” Defendant and its peers owe prospective students more than just barebones compliance with their legal obligations. Defendant and its peers are educational not-for-profit institutions. They should be dedicated to advancing the public welfare. In that vein, defendant and its peers have at least an ethical obligation of absolute candor to their prospective students.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but a win’s a win and I’m sure New York Law School will take it. Just remember this stuff when you hear academics going off about greedy businesses that prey on consumers. . . .
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NUANCE: Hagel apologizes for calling diplomatic nominee ‘aggressively gay’ in 1998. Like gun owners, those people should know their place and act ashamed.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: More On North Carolina’s No-Show Classes.
Athletics-related motivations are not to blame for the breakdowns within the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Department of African and Afro-American Studies, in which hundreds of students — half of whom were athletes — received credit for no-show classes and benefited from unauthorized grade changes.
That was what one might call the positive takeaway from the latest investigation into the scandal, this one comprising two new reviews by former North Carolina Gov. James Martin and the management consulting firm Baker Tilly (both tapped by UNC). In laying all the blame on the department’s former chair and his then-assistant, the reports also cleared faculty in the department of any wrongdoing, and found that the bogus classes and grades do not appear to have extended to other departments.
But the news was far from all good for the university: evidence of erroneous classes and grades extends all the way back to 1997 — a decade earlier than UNC had previously documented — and it indicates that the number of courses that were not managed or graded properly is quadruple what UNC had previously reported. . . .
The entire inquiry into African and Afro-American Studies was prompted after a former tutor allegedly helped a football player plagiarize a paper for the class. Scrutiny of the role of athletics in the scandal exploded this year, following reports of star athletes with suspect transcripts, and of those courses sometimes being packed with athletes. Of the 54 suspect classes identified in an earlier review into the department (a fraction of the 216 identified in the new report), nearly two-thirds of the enrolled students were athletes, the News & Observer of Raleigh reported.
But Martin and his team found no evidence that administrators, coaches or tutors knew what was happening in the department or directed athletes to those classes in particular. They emphasized Thursday that athletes did not receive any added benefits beyond what other students in the classes got.
Word gets around. But remember this when people criticize online schools and other alternatives . . . .
CALL IT THE “HUNGER GAMES” BUBBLE: What The Hell Is Happening In The DC Housing Market? “People seem to be buying $650,000 houses on the assumption that they will someday turn into $1,000,000 houses—that central Washington will turn into Manhattan.”
It’s all explained here.
JIM TREACHER: Congratulations To Our Next Secretary Of State.
MIKE BLOOMBERG: There Is Not ‘Anybody That’s Defended the Second Amendment as Much as I Have.’
What’s interesting isn’t that this is a skull-poppingly enormous lie. What’s interesting is that he thinks he has to say it.
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JAZZERCISE IS BACK. The story seems kind of mocking. Hey, I had a girlfriend in college who was a Jazzercise instructor and, well, that Jazzercise stuff worked.
BRIDGET JOHNSON: ‘Travesty of Justice’: Limits on President’s Detention Powers Stripped from Final Defense Bill. “The amendment from Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) to block the president’s broad power to hold American citizens without trial was stripped from the final defense authorization bill in conference, prompting a ‘no’ vote on the entire bill from Lee and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). . . . In a speech on the Senate floor, Paul called the exclusion of the provision ‘so fundamentally wrong and goes against everything we stand for as a country that it can’t go unnoticed and should be pointed out.’”
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: “All that anger, turmoil and hopelessness you’re experiencing comes from a feeling of helplessness. But that’s all it is—a feeling. You’re not helpless at all. You only think you are.” Yes, if you find yourself feeling hopeless, helpless, and demoralized, then the media’s plan is working. Don’t cooperate.
READER RICK REMINGTON WRITES:
If you would, please bump Larry Correia’s piece a couple times this weekend.
It is the best explanation of what’s going on there is.
PS Larry Correia for NRA Exec. VP!
Ask, and ye shall receive.
THINGS THAT DON’T SUCK: The Orgreenic Frying Pan. To be honest, I bought this mostly for the Insta-Wife’s reaction to the AS SEEN ON TV label. But it really works, the non-stickness is really impressive, and the cleanup was much easier than my Cuisinart or All-Clad nonstick pans. (Bumped).
BOB OWENS: For ‘A Well-Regulated Militia,’ What Firearms, Gear, and Skills Should You Own?
If this interests you, you might want to read It Takes a Militia: A Communitarian Case for Compulsory Arms Bearing, which Brannon Denning and I wrote for the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal a while back.
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A WHITE HOUSE PETITION TO ESTABLISH FRANK HERBERT’S Bureau Of Sabotage. Er, isn’t that called the Administration?
CIVIL RIGHTS: Holding your mayors accountable. “Remember, most of the mayors don’t know that Bloomberg is signing their names to letters to Washington & in newspaper advertisements. It doesn’t matter that they didn’t expressly approve it, their signature appears on the letter. Hold them accountable.” (Via Bill Quick.)
BYRON YORK: Obama Uses Clinton’s Playbook To Exploit Shooting.
In his news conference Wednesday, President Obama argued that because a deranged young man murdered 20 children and six adults in a Connecticut schoolhouse last week, Congress should immediately raise taxes on the nation’s highest earners.
No, it didn’t make much sense. But Obama is following the example of predecessor Bill Clinton, who in 1995 used the Oklahoma City bombing not only to press security-related measures but also to enhance his political clout in a desperate battle with Republicans. It worked for Clinton; the next few weeks will tell whether it will do the same for Obama. . . . In all, Obama listed eight goals that Newtown should inspire lawmakers to accomplish. Gun control was No. 6.
Cynical, disgusting — and utterly predictable.
THE THREE BIGGEST CHALLENGES in a marriage.
ROGER SIMON: Dershowitzophrenia.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Study: Playing Hard to Get Actually Works!
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SCIENCE: Old Men Chasing Young Women: A Good Thing. “Older male fertility helps to select against damaging cell mutations in humans who have passed the age of female menopause, consequently eliminating the ‘wall of death.’”
