G.O.P. ESTABLISHMENT VS. TEA PARTY: Just remember, it was the Tea Party movement — not the establishment — that got Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio elected. If the establishment had had its way, neither would be there.
Karl Rove hasn’t had a good election since 2004. Big GOP donors would be better advised to follow this advice.
CONN CARROLL: America’s Governing Party.
DEMOCRATS NO LONGER SO HOT on party founder Andrew Jackson.
Jackson’s election ushered America into the age of participatory politics: Before him, only 20 to 30 percent of the eligible population voted; after him — and for the next 70 years — 70 to 80 percent of the electorate often turned out, Nichols explained.
In fact, the Democratic Party was created to help Jackson gain the presidency.
With Jackson in the White House, politics would never be the same in America, much to the chagrin of his well-bred opponents.
Jackson brought to the presidency the fierce, liberty-loving values of those who settled Appalachia. He preferred to allow state governments to handle many public affairs, rather than expanding the size and scope of the federal government.
Now the bitter clingers are out of style.
MORE CRITICISM OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’ ADHD PIECE at SmarterTimes.
GOOD QUESTION: “Who Are The Police At War With?”
DOES ROBERT MENENDEZ HAVE A VALU-CARD? In Dominican Republic seaside village, a virtual supermarket of sex.
Politico: Can Robert Menendez survive?
JUDGING BY MY FACEBOOK AND TWITTER FEEDS, this is the winning Super Bowl commercial.
AN AMERICA CRAMPED BY DEFENSIVENESS:
Since I returned home, a darkness has grown in me as both I and our nation have failed to live up to the sacrifices of these young men and women. I had no expectation of “victory” in Afghanistan or Iraq, whatever that would mean. Nor did I expect some epiphany of strategic insight or remorse from the nation’s brain trust.
I just found that I could not square the negativity, pettiness and paranoia in the discourse of our country’s elders with the nobility and dedication of the men and women I had seen and served with in Afghanistan.
Over time, as I listened to the squabbling, I realized that about the only thing Americans agree on these days is gratitude bordering on reverence for our military.
We have the worst political class ever, and our most respected institution is the military. That’s not a good set of circumstances.
UPDATE: Michael Walsh — no slouch at writing himself — emails: “Look how beautifully this is written. Can you imagine a college professor or some other state apparatchik doing as well? The fact is the officer corps – and in particular the Marines – is far better educated and more sophisticated than their civilian counterparts.”
Also not a good sign.
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY: Super Bowl City Leads on Energy Efficient Forefront. “To make this the greenest Super Bowl, the New Orleans Host Committee has partnered with fans and the community to offset energy use across the major Super Bowl venues.” Everything went according to plan!
PROF. BAINBRIDGE: Instead of cutting law school to two years, why not up it to four undergraduate years?
The problem is, law faculty would see a shift to teaching undergraduates as a loss of status, I believe.
ADVICE FOR A DIRECTIONLESS PARTY: 13 Ideas For The 2013 GOP.
AT AMAZON, markdowns on knives and multitools.
SO NOW IT’S THE ACLU touting my Due Process When Everything Is A Crime piece.
TREATING ADHD BY ADDICTING KIDS TO AMPHETAMINES?
Medications like Adderall can markedly improve the lives of children and others with the disorder. But the tunnel-like focus the medicines provide has led growing numbers of teenagers and young adults to fake symptoms to obtain steady prescriptions for highly addictive medications that carry serious psychological dangers. These efforts are facilitated by a segment of doctors who skip established diagnostic procedures, renew prescriptions reflexively and spend too little time with patients to accurately monitor side effects.
Richard Fee’s experience included it all. Conversations with friends and family members and a review of detailed medical records depict an intelligent and articulate young man lying to doctor after doctor, physicians issuing hasty diagnoses, and psychiatrists continuing to prescribe medication — even increasing dosages — despite evidence of his growing addiction and psychiatric breakdown.
All too often, boys are medicated for acting like . . . boys.
On the other hand: “Blowing through a month’s worth of Adderall in a few weeks” is hyperbole. “A few weeks” not much less than “a month.” Math is not the Times’ strong suit.
The government wiped out AIG shareholders while using AIG to bail out other companies whose shareholders were not wiped out. Why?
AIG’s owners perhaps deserved their fate due to AIG’s reckless reliance on rating agencies and bond insurers. But other companies (including many foreign banks) were excused from suffering for their own reckless reliance on AIG. Why?
All the more so because government’s profit on the bailout ($22.7 billion) so clearly accrued because taxpayers acquired AIG’s assets at fire-sale prices even while sparing other companies similar embarrassment. . . .
If the nuances here sound familiar, they should. In the Chrysler and General Motors bankruptcies, government played the role of “debtor-in-possession” financier, then behaved as no DIP financier would, using its leverage to do favors for an important Democratic constituency group, the United Auto Workers, at the expense of debt holders.
The regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac trumpeted them as solvent and well-capitalized amid the crisis, then gave their boards immunity from shareholder lawsuit in the government takeover that followed a short time later, wiping out their shareholders.
Not directly related to the financial crisis but coming in the same moment of untrammeled government discretion was the BP oil spill. The White House dictated a $20 billion compensation program, funded by BP shareholders, without benefit of any legal process at all.
Some call this “gangster government.”
READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Bradley Convissar, Blood, Smoke and Ashes. 99 cents on Kindle.
A FUNERAL DIRECTOR’S NIGHTMARE: ‘Dead’ woman, 101, wakes up in coffin. “I am a lucky woman. Not only did I get to see how many people care for me, but I also woke up before they took me to the crematorium.”
HOW YOUR BRAIN TELLS YOU when it’s time for a break.
AT AMAZON, up to 50% off on woodworking tools.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Introducing The Facebook Hookup App. “Here’s how it works: People anonymously select those on their friend list who they’d like to sleep with, then the app notifies the two people if they’ve selected each other. The app only launched last week but it’s already racked up over 20,000 users and facilitated 1,000 hookups. . . . The goal is to take the rejection out of asking a totally random person on your friend list for sex (because a request like that is always a tad awkward) and to ‘cut to the chase’ (because who has time to date anymore?)”
ED DRISCOLL: Containment Breach.
THE LIVES WE DIDN’T LIVE, and how they affect us.
I discussed a similar phenomenon in the Yale Law Report quite some time ago.
LEARNING OVER BURGERS AND BEERS AT SCIENCE CAFES:
Americans may be turning away from the hard sciences at universities, but they are increasingly showing up at “science cafes” in local bars and restaurants to listen to scientific talks over a drink or a meal.
Want a beer with that biology? Or perhaps a burger with the works to complement the theory of everything?
Science cafes have sprouted in almost every state including a tapas restaurant near downtown Orlando where Sean Walsh, 27, a graphic designer, describes himself and his friends as some of the laymen in the crowd.
That’s cool.
FINALISTS IN THE POPULAR MECHANICS wood-stove design competition.
EVE TUSHNET: The End of Premarital Sex? Hey, you can’t be premarital unless there’s going to be a “marital” someday.
IN THE MAIL: From David Drake, Night & Demons.
CHARLIE MARTIN: Thirteen Weeks: Week 13 — in Which We Speculate.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: National Greatness Democrats In Silicon Valley.
Google’s Eric Schmidt has a new book coming out (co-authored by former State Department whiz-kid Jared Cohen), and it looks like it will be quite provocative. . . .
Others have pointed out how over time, Silicon Valley has rediscovered the state. Companies that once tried to fly below the radar are now much more aware of the importance of government policy for their industry. This runs very much counter to the popular idea that in the modern world, multinational corporations will lose a sense of connection to their ‘home country’. Google, for one, seems to be getting more patriotic lately.
This has implications for the politics of American defense policy, and foreign policy generally. Silicon Valley is a major donor to Democrats, and it seems to be moving toward an understanding of the importance of a strong and outward looking America. Historically, cutting edge corporations have supported the rise of American power partly as a way of assuring that U.S. foreign policy and power would support their corporate agendas and help them get fair treatment in a world where foreign corporations enjoyed clear backing from their governments. It’s beginning to look as if Silicon Valley is heading down this well-trodden trail. This suggests a revival of a strong national defense and national greatness lobby in the Democratic Party, especially if we reflect on the degree to which defense spending in the future is likely to intersect with the kinds of products Silicon Valley makes.
Interesting times ahead.
Indeed.
SELECTION AND MARKDOWNS AT the Amazon Shoe Store.
Also, today only: LifeSpan Fitness TR3000i Folding Treadmill, $1199.99 (40% off).
And, for about the next 4 hours or so, Cuisinart Chef’s Classic Stainless 17-Piece Cookware Set, $169.99 (75% off). It’s a “lightning deal,” so jump on it or miss it.
GIVEN THEIR SUPERIOR PERFORMANCE, GETTING OUT OF THESE STOCKS FOR POLITICAL REASONS LOOKS LIKE A BREACH OF FIDUCIARY DUTY: Rahm Emanuel and Grandstanding over Guns.
Emulating New York and California, two deep-blue states with mammoth unfunded pension liabilities, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) has hectored a $5 billion pension fund into divesting its holdings in companies that manufacture firearms. . . .
Chicago’s current and retired public employees might wish the city had invested more in both companies. Barack Obama, for whom Emanuel was chief of staff, has become a potent gun salesman because of suspicions that he wants to make gun ownership more difficult. Since he was inaugurated four years ago, there have been 65 million requests for background checks of gun purchasers. Four years ago, the price of Smith & Wesson stock was $2.45. Last week it was $8.76, up 258 percent. Four years ago, the price of Sturm Ruger stock was $6.46. Last week it was $51.09, up 691 percent. The Wall Street Journal reports that even before “a $1.2 billion balloon payment for pensions comes due” in 2015, “Chicago’s pension funds, which are projected to run dry by the end of the decade, are scraping the bottoms of their barrels.”
I mean, seriously.
I’M BEGINNING TO THINK THAT PUTTING YOUR KIDS IN PUBLIC SCHOOL IS PARENTAL MALPRACTICE: High-school freshman suspended for having a picture of a gun. Thoughtcrime! But wait, there’s more:
This incident is the latest in a growing line of extraordinarily strong reactions by school officials to things students have brought to school — or talked about bringing to school — that are not anything like real guns.
At D. Newlin Fell School in Philadelphia, school officials reportedly yelled at a student and then searched her in front of her class after she was found with a paper gun her grandfather had made for her. (RELATED: Paper gun causes panic)
In rural Pennsylvania, a kindergarten girl was suspended for making a “terroristic threat” after she told another girl that she planned to shoot her with a pink Hello Kitty toy gun that bombards targets with soapy bubbles.
At Roscoe R. Nix Elementary School in Maryland, a six-year-old boy was suspended for making the universal kid sign for a gun, pointing at another student and saying “pow.” That boy’s suspension was later lifted and his name cleared. (RELATED: Pow! You’re suspended, kid)
In Sumter, South Carolina, a six-year-old girl was expelled for bringing a clear plastic Airsoft gun that shoots plastic pellet to class for show-and-tell. The expulsion was later revoked.
Remember, these are the people who claim that they teach critical thinking.
MATT YGLESIAS MAKES A SHOCKING DISCOVERY: Starting a Business Is a Huge Pain: I’ve been to three offices, filed five forms, spent $200, lost a day of work—and I’m not even close to getting the simple license I need.
As reader Darrin Moore emails, “America’s economy isn’t failing because there are too many people trying hard to make a profit, it’s failing because the government makes it too hard for people to make a profit.”
UPDATE: IowaHawk: “Perhaps instead of starting a small business, young Matt should have taken the time-honored liberal approach and started a BIG business. Those rules are simpler: (1) come up with idiotic idea, (2) give large wads of cash to a politician, (3) reap ginormormous government contract. Bob Menendez is waiting to take your call, Matt.”
MORE THOUGHTS ON prosecutorial power and limits thereon. We do seem to have gotten a conversation started.
“THIS CANNOT POSSIBLY BE A GOOD SIGN FOR HHS:” Administration Extends Obamacare Deadline Yet Again.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Pick A Wife If You Want To Have Kids.
Related: A review of Suzanne Venker’s How To Choose A Husband.
SPIN: White House blames Sandy, spending cuts as economy shrinks. It’s always somebody else’s fault.
WELL, GOOD: Forbes: NRA Winning The Influence Battle Over Gun Control. It’s always nice to see a civil rights organization having some success in protecting constitutional liberties.
HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Harvard Cheating Scandal Ends In Dozens Of Forced Withdrawals.
TYING IT ALL TOGETHER: Aaron Swartz Died For Piers Morgan’s Sins.
WHERE HAS ALL THE AMMO GONE? Stacked in basements everywhere.
You might try my former students’ online ammo dealership, LuckyGunner.com. The good news is, you always know exactly what they’ve got in stock.
UPDATE: Say, perhaps all this gun-control sabre-rattling is really just a cleverly underhanded effort to get Americans as armed-up as possible before the alien invasion. If so, it’s succeeding brilliantly! Much more than actual government encouragement to buy guns would, I suspect. . . .
OPPOSING GUN CONTROL EFFORTS WITH A Day Of Resistance. Scheduled for February 23.
THOUGHTS ON THE DOWNSIZING OF LEGAL EDUCATION. “In my view, 52,000 is far too many law students and even 40,000 is too many. The ‘right’ number of law students must surely be related to the job market.”
Well, this whole branching out into dealing Meth approach to the legal job market isn’t working out. But high level legal education does still seem effective at breeding hubris: “What emerges from accounts of his fellow drug dealers, his customers and his own words, is of a drug dealer who believed that because of his intellectual ability, he was able to outwit law enforcement and avoid detection.”
UPDATE: From the comments to the first link:
I think law schools do themselves a disservice by continuing to pay undue attention to U.S. News, when it is obvious that other sources of information weigh at least as heavily in the minds of prospective law students – AutoAdmit, Top-Law-Schools.com, Above the Law, etc., etc. Those sources are telling them to focus on two things: the amount of indebtedness that they are likely to incur, and the rate at which graduates have recently found full-time, JD-required employment from those schools.
The University of Minnesota is a law school traditionally well-regarded by U.S. News, landing in their top 25. In terms of employment outcomes for the class of 2011, it falls below Samford University and South Texas School of Law and just barely above Touro, all of these allegedly “third-tier” institutions. Maybe we can start by jettisoning the notion that rankings mean anything, if they don’t convey what chance a graduate has of practicing law upon graduation.
Good point!
MICHAEL WALSH: A Hill To Fight On — Not a Desk to Die Under. “That’s why the battle over firearms — which as far as the Left is concerned has only one true objective, which is the complete abolition and confiscation of guns in civilian hands — is so important, because it’s a fight conservatives can actually win. And, in winning, can make many new friends among hitherto reflexive Democrat voters. . . . Just look at the disgraceful video from the DHS above.”
WELL, TO BE FAIR, WHAT HAS THE LAW DONE FOR THEM, LATELY? Mexico’s Masked Vigilantes Defy Drug Gangs—And the Law.
A dozen villages in the area have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers that have terrorized the region and a government that residents say is incapable of protecting them from organized crime.
The villages in the hilly southern Mexican state of Guerrero now forbid the Mexican army and state and federal police from entering. Ragtag militias carrying a motley arsenal of machetes, old hunting rifles and the occasional AR-15 semiautomatic rifle control the towns. Strangers aren’t allowed entry. There is a 10 p.m. curfew. More than 50 prisoners, accused of being in drug gangs, sit in makeshift jails. Their fates hinge on public trials that began Thursday when the accused were arraigned before villagers, who will act as judge and jury.
Crime is way down—for the moment, at least. Residents say kidnapping ceased when the militias took charge, as did the extortions that had become the scourge of businessmen and farmers alike. The leader of one militia group, who uses the code name G-1 but was identified by his compatriots as Gonzalo Torres, puts it this way: “We brought order back to a place where there had been chaos. We were able to do in 15 days what the government was not able to do in years.”
It’s not as pretty as the orderly function of a bourgeois liberal society. But that wasn’t among the options. . . .
UPDATE: A reader emails: “A miltia providing for the security of a free state? In the 21st century? But I was told that was crazy NRA talk.”
HE’S AIMING KIND OF LOW FOR SKEET, AND IS THAT A SEMI-AUTOMATIC ASSAULT SHOTGUN HE’S USING? White House Photo Shows Obama Engaged in Sport Shooting. Okay, maybe it’s sporting clays.
UPDATE: A cruel comparison with a picture of Richard Nixon.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Seen on Facebook, another cruel comparision:
MORE: Hilarity ensues as Twitter users caption and Photoshop Obama’s shooting photo.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WOULD LOOK LIKE MAD MEN. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Fashion Advice At The Defense Intelligence Agency: ‘Makeup Makes You More Attractive.’
A week after women were cleared to serve in combat, Defense Intelligence Agency employees got a different message. “Makeup makes you more attractive.” “Don’t be a plain Jane.” “A sweater with a skirt is better than a sweater with slacks.” “No flats.” “Paint your nails.” “Don’t be afraid of color.” And, “brunettes have more leeway with vibrant colors than blondes or redheads.”
Can we replace Susan Rice with Christina Hendricks?
HOW CONGRESS is not like America.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Nanotechnology Didn’t Shrink And Disappear: In Fact, It’s Everywhere.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Something rotten at UNC. “To expose the fake classes, surely these athletic department officials sent an email to the chairman of the Faculty Committee on Athletics? Or wrote a memo to the chancellor? No such paper trail exists. Because there’s little evidence a serious warning was sounded.”
INSTANTLY IMPROVE YOUR DAY, with this magical baby tapir.
WHY WE TOOK COCAINE out of soda.
NICK GILLESPIE ON BOY SCOUTS AND GAYS. Wait, Nick Gillespie is an Eagle Scout?
JIM TREACHER ON FACEBOOK: “The same people who claimed Mitt Romney was waging a ‘War on Women’ are doing everything they can to avoid talking about Bob Menendez.”
THE CARNIVAL OF CARS is up!
HIRAM BINGHAM: The Real Indiana Jones. A Yale man, natch.
GLAD TO HELP: Reader Cassandra Stajduhar writes: “Downloaded Brandy Engler’s book, The Men On My Couch from Amazon via a link on instapundit. It was an interesting read–she seems like a smart cookie. Thanks for the link.” Amy Alkon is a big fan of hers.
PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: A fed up Antigua opens its doors to Megavideo. They’re tired of the U.S. government screwing with them in violation of the WTO.
RATHER A LOT, REALLY: Audit report: 3.7 million nuclear weapon components in storage at Pantex.
LYING LIARS OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Changing “shotgun” into “assault rifle” to fit the narrative — and then changing it back when caught. I suppose it might have been an honest mistake, but this kind of thing happens so often that there’s not a lot of doubt to give them the benefit of anymore.
ATF UPDATE: Jones pick as ATF chief is in deeper trouble. “Earlier this week, Donald Oswald, a former Minneapolis FBI director and self-described Democrat, wrote to alert the Senate Judiciary Committee to Jones’ ‘atrocious professional reputation within the federal law enforcement community.’ . . . The newest flashpoint involves operation ‘Fearless Distributing,’ a Milwaukee sting operation in which the ATF set up a phony storefront targeting gun traffickers. A recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found what it called a string of mistakes, including a military-style machine gun that ended up on the streets, and a robbery of the agency store that netted $35,000 in merchandise.”
This agency doesn’t seem to be ready for primetime.
IN THE MAIL: From Russell K. Nieli, Wounds That Will Not Heal: Affirmative Action and Our Continuing Racial Divide.
I’M QUOTED IN THIS BOSTON GLOBE PIECE ON PROSECUTORS AND JURIES. “What we really have is a plea bargain system with a thin froth of showy trials floating on top.”
The reporter on this story, Leon Neyfakh, has brought together a lot of really interesting observations and proposals from a lot of people, some of which overlap with my Due Process When Everything Is A Crime piece and most of which go well beyond it.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama’s Jobless Recovery Continues Unabated. “So the economy created 157,000 new payroll jobs in January. Wow. At this rate, we might actually get back down to Bush-era unemployment rates sometime, oh, within the next 100 years.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Underperforming Investments Squeeze Higher-Ed. “American colleges may be going broke faster than we thought. According to a recent New York Times report, investment returns on university endowments fell by 0.3 percent last year. This could be the beginning of a major funding crisis at many universities. . . . Given that, as one person quoted in the piece said, the average rate of return over the past ten years has been about 6.2 percent, this poses a major problem for schools already facing steep declines in philanthropic giving, alumni donations and government funding. Ordinarily, schools would raise tuition, but students and parents are beginning to balk at higher fees and annual tuition hikes. There’s no way out: Schools should be looking for ways to cut costs. Fortunately, there’s plenty of low-hanging fruit.”
WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: Biden Tells Merkel Our ‘So-Called’ Fiscal Crisis Ain’t That Bad.
JOURNALISM: Sadly, 2013 begins with CBS destroying its reputation for editorial integrity in an attempt to eliminate an innovative competitor. Well, to be fair, since Dan Rather there wasn’t that much to destroy.
AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals on Kitchen & Dining.
Also, today only: Swann Freestyle 1080p HD Waterproof Sports Video Camera, $119.99 (57% off).
MATT VESPA: Harry Reid and the Crumbling Democratic Caucus.
MICHAEL BARONE ON THE BLUE MODEL’S DEMOGRAPHIC TRAP: Fewer dollars and babies threaten social programs. “When Medicare was established in 1965 and when Social Security was vastly expanded in 1972, America was accustomed to the high birthrates of the posWorld War II baby boom. It was widely assumed that the baby boom generation would soon produce a baby boom of its own. Oops.”
Related thoughts from Jonathan Last: The nation’s falling fertility rate is the root cause of many of our problems. And it’s only getting worse.
HMM: Former Minneapolis FBI director attacks Jones’ ATF nomination.
A former director of the Minneapolis FBI office sent a letter this week to members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee denouncing B. Todd Jones’ performance as U.S. attorney in Minnesota as they prepare to consider his nomination to director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Donald E. Oswald, 54, a self-declared Democrat and supporter of President Obama, said he felt “morally compelled” to alert the committee about what he describes as Jones’ “atrocious professional reputation within the federal law enforcement community” in Minnesota.
“He was, and still remains, a significant impediment for federal law enforcement to effectively protect the citizens of Minnesota from violent gang, drug and gun activities,” Oswald wrote in an eight-page, single-spaced letter.
Oswald said he decided to go public with his concerns because active law enforcement officers in Minnesota are afraid to do so.
Read the whole thing.
“THE NEWSROOM WHERE TWO REPORTERS TOOK DOWN A PRESIDENT?” Prof. Joseph Campbell busts a recurrent media myth.
Speaking of the Post, there’s another media myth about the Jessica Lynch story.
ACCOUNTABILITY: College President Personally Smacked with $50,000 Bill for Violating Constitution.
There is great news for students from a Georgia jury today, as former Valdosta State University President Ronald Zaccari has been found liable for $50,000 in damages for unjustly kicking one of his students, Hayden Barnes, out of school for a collage he posted on Facebook.
Absurdly declared a “clear and present danger” and kicked off of campus in 2007 because of his opposition to a parking garage project that former president Zaccari saw as part of his “legacy,” Barnes filed a federal lawsuit against Zaccari and his employer in 2008.
Why did it take so long for justice to be served? The case was more complicated than many, as the court first had to determine that a state college administrator (in this case, Zaccari) was not entitled to the defense of “qualified immunity” for his actions because he should have known they were unlawful when he was doing them. Usually, public college administrators who blatantly violate the Constitution and due process rights get off scot-free even when they lose, as their employers (read: the taxpayers) get stuck with the bill for their transgressions. The thin reed of reason on which this “qualified immunity” rests is that administrators supposedly didn’t know that their actions were unconstitutional when they took them. (Yes, that’s pretty farfetched in most of the case FIRE sees, but courts tend to buy it.)
Zaccari appealed this finding, and it went all the way to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, where Zaccari lost. When the appeals were finished and the case came before a jury, the jig was up: Zaccari personally owes Barnes $50,000—and the court has not even assessed attorneys’ fees yet.
That was a disgraceful episode.
ILYA SOMIN: What to Do When Illiberal, Anti-Democratic Forces Take Power Through the Democratic Process.
Remember: Democracy is a means, not an end. It’s valuable as a means of protecting those unalienable rights that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But those rights are unalienable — incapable of being alienated, that is, bought, sold, or given away — which means that even if you live in a democracy, you haven’t surrendered them to the majority. A majority that wants to take away your unalienable rights isn’t a legitimate government. I’m gratified by how many Egyptians seem to grasp that; it’s more than I expected, though perhaps not as many as it needs to be. It’s clearly more than the Muslim Brotherhood expected, too.
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Crop of New Law Schools Opens Amid a Lawyer Glut.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Arthur Brooks: My Valuable, Cheap College Degree.
I possess a 10K-B.A., which I got way back in 1994. And it was the most important intellectual and career move I ever made.
After high school, I spent an unedifying year in college. The year culminated in money problems, considerably less than a year of credits, and a joint decision with the school that I should pursue my happiness elsewhere. Next came what my parents affectionately called my “gap decade,” during which time I made my living as a musician. By my late 20s I was ready to return to school. But I was living in Spain, had a thin bank account, and no desire to start my family with a mountain of student loans.
Fortunately, there was a solution — an institution called Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, N.J. This is a virtual college with no residence requirements. It banks credits acquired through inexpensive correspondence courses from any accredited college or university in America.
I took classes by mail from the University of Washington, the University of Wyoming, and other schools with the lowest-priced correspondence courses I could find. My degree required the same number of credits and type of classes that any student at a traditional university would take. I took the same exams (proctored at local libraries and graded by graduate students) as in-person students. But I never met a teacher, never sat in a classroom, and to this day have never laid eyes on my beloved alma mater.
And the whole degree, including the third-hand books and a sticker for the car, cost me about $10,000 in today’s dollars.
Now living back in the United States, I followed the 10K-B.A. with a 5K-M.A. at a local university while working full time, and then endured the standard penury of being a full-time doctoral fellow in a residential Ph.D. program. The final tally for a guy in his 30s supporting a family: three degrees, zero debt.
Did I earn a worthless degree? Hardly. My undergraduate years may have been bereft of frissons, but I wound up with a career as a tenured professor at Syracuse University, a traditional university. I am now the president of a Washington research organization.
We need more diversity in our approaches to education. Here’s another model.
ED KOCH IS DEAD, but still getting his licks in against the homophobic Mario Cuomo. And Andrew Cuomo, too.
WELL, TO BE FAIR, TWITTER-FOLLOWING ISN’T MUCH OF A RELATIONSHIP: Why is Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) following a very young-looking Dominican girl on Twitter?
JOHN HINDERAKER: Minnesota Democrats’ Unconstitutional Gun Grab.
NRA 3, OBAMA 0: Martin Luther King Jr. High School coach shoots attackers.
Police sources tell 7 Action News that a women’s basketball coach from Martin Luther King, Jr. Senior High School shot two men who attacked him as he was walking two basketball players to their cars in the school parking lot.
Police sources say the coach was walking the two girls to their cars when two men allegedly approached and one pulled out a gun and grabbed him by his chain necklace. The coach then pulled out his gun and shot both of them, according to sources.
Well, that turned out well, considering.
LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Postal Service says it’s immune from local traffic laws.
A SHORT HISTORY of tattooed women.
AND APPARENTLY, HE DIDN’T QUALIFY FOR THE DAVID GREGORY EXEMPTION: NY Vet Arrested For Empty 30-round Magazines. “He thought he had something that was legal and it turned out that they weren’t.”
Reader Steve Eimers notes that he’s raising money for his defense. He’s crowdsourced over $20,000 so far. He’ll need it, in Cuomo’s barbaric police state. . . .
DOWNTON ABBEY now streaming live for free at Amazon Prime Instant Video.
UPDATE: Virginia Postrel emails that it’s also free at PBS.org.
AT AMAZON, 20% off on select laptops.
BRUCE SCHNEIER: Power And The Internet. “When the powerless found the Internet, suddenly they had power. But while the unorganized and nimble were the first to make use of the new technologies, eventually the powerful behemoths woke up to the potential — and they have more power to magnify. And not only does the Internet change power balances, but the powerful can also change the Internet. Does anyone else remember how incompetent the FBI was at investigating Internet crimes in the early 1990s? Or how Internet users ran rings around China’s censors and Middle Eastern secret police? Or how digital cash was going to make government currencies obsolete, and Internet organizing was going to make political parties obsolete? Now all that feels like ancient history.”
LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: What Uncle Sam can (and cannot) do to improve K–12 schooling: Lessons for the next four years.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Husbands who do housework may have less sex, study says: Traditional chores are linked with more sex for married couples.
Husbands who do a lot of cooking, cleaning, laundry and other traditionally female forms of housework may do their marriages some good — but, contrary to popular belief, they are not rewarded with more sex, a new study finds.
Instead, it’s the guys who do the most lawn work, car repair, driving and bill-paying – traditional men’s jobs – who have the most sex in marriage, the study suggests. The same is true for women who do the most traditional female housework, according to the study published in the February issue of American Sociological Review. . . .
In other words, the study concludes: “Men or women may, in essence, be turned on (however indirectly) when partners in a marriage do more gender-traditional work.”
There’s a caveat, though. But there’s also this.
WHO’S RUNNING Y-12? “The National Nuclear Security Administration and its primary contractor at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant are refusing to release information on who’s managing the government installation with a billion-dollar annual budget. This appears to contradict President Obama’s memo on openness and transparency, which was delivered to federal agencies soon after he took office four years ago.”
IS MCDONALD’S GETTING HEALTHIER, or does it just have good PR? Plus, the last laugh: “If you’d bought its stock in 2004, when Morgan Spurlock released Supersize Me and some people predicted the eventual death of the giant, you’d have tripled your money by now.” My own sense is that their food is better than it was a few years ago.
AT AMAZON, markdowns on cellphones and accessories.
JAPAN’S DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER: “Recently, the Japanese government announced that the population decrease for 2012 is expected to be 212,000—a new record—while the number of births is expected to have fallen by 18,000 to 1,033,000—also a record low. Projections by the Japanese government indicate that if the current trend continues, the population of Japan will decline from its current 127.5 million to 116.6 million in 2030, and 97 million in 2050. This is truly astonishing and puts Japan at the forefront of uncharted demographic territory; but it is territory that many other industrial countries also are beginning to enter as well.”
