KATHERINE HEIGL’S HATRED OF TESTICLES:
“Unfortunately I can’t cut the nuts off human men — yet,” Heigl, 33, quips in the video. “So I’ve dedicated my time to the neutering of dogs because that’s legal.”
Hilarious.
KATHERINE HEIGL’S HATRED OF TESTICLES:
“Unfortunately I can’t cut the nuts off human men — yet,” Heigl, 33, quips in the video. “So I’ve dedicated my time to the neutering of dogs because that’s legal.”
Hilarious.
HOW TO UNDERSTAND someone with chronic pain.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “I can’t thank you enough for posting that link for understanding chronic pain. I started suffering from fibromyalgia and psoriatic arthritis when I was 17. Now at 25 I’m constantly told how fibromyalgia is a made up disease or that I’m too young to have arthritis. People don’t understand what it is like to be trapped in a body that doesn’t function properly. This really will give valuable insight for people who don’t have to live with chronic pain.”
DAILY CALLER: Politico reporter withheld information about liberal Media Matters For America.
Related: Is The White House Coordinating With Media Matters?
THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in cookbooks, food & wine.
I MENTIONED COL. MARTHA MCSALLY THE OTHER DAY, and reader Kevin O’Brien wrote in:
don’t know Col. McSally and don’t have anything against her. She sounds like she’d be a good representative for the folks in AZ-8. (To be AZ-2 after the special election). But I’d like to see you mention another vet for the seat, State Senator Frank Antenori.
Frank is a Special Forces veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan he was a member of Task Force Dagger, the 200 guys from 5th SF Group who (with their CIA counterparts) won the war before mission creep set in. In Iraq, he was at the Battle of Debecka Pass, where one SF ODA and a few straphangers held off a tank attack. He’s the real deal.
I’ve left his party identification till the end, but I’m not really the Associated Press, I’m just pretending, because Frank’s a proud Republican. He’s rock solid on national defense and on 2nd amendment issues, as you might expect for an SF guy.
His book is not the usual campaign speech collection, it’s one of the best first person memoirs of the Iraq war. I live in New Hampshire and the representative of that district in sunny Arizona will be chosen by the Arizonans themselves. And like I said, I have nothing against Col. McSally whatsoever, just want your readers to know that they have lots of good choices in the district.
Here’s his website. And thanks, Kevin!
WHAT TO DO when you’re not quite ready to retire. “Some retirees will work by choice, while many will work out of necessity.” Emphasis on the “many” in this age of Hope And Change.
HOW TYPE 2 DIABETES became an accepted lifestyle.
Hey you know, the surge in diabetes accompanied the government’s switch to the politically-inspired Food Pyramid. Just sayin’ . . . .
UPDATE: Reader John Larson writes:
Long-time reader, first-time writer.
Instapundit is my daily newspaper. I check it several times a day, and learn more from Instapundit than I do from newspapers and TV news combined. I am in Utah, and have learned about David Kirkham and Mia Love from Instapundit. My family lives in Saratoga Springs, where Mia is currently mayor, and we learned about her congressional candidacy from Instapundit.
Your link to the article on Type II Diabetes could not have been better timed. I went to the doctor this morning, and he informed me that I had successfuly cured myself of diabetes. After a year without medication, my blood sugar is normal.
Of course, I did not do this on my own. It was Gary Taube’s book “Good Calorie/Bad Calorie” that showed me the way. And although I did not learn about Gary Taubes from Instapundit, I have seen you link to his work several times. Now would be a good time to plug his books. “Why We Get Fat” and “Good Calories/Bad Calories” should be required reading for everyone, especially doctors.
I could go on and on, and talk about the dietitian that explained the Food Pyramid to me and told me I should be eating carbohydrates and not fat. I followed her plan for a while to no avail. A year of following Gary Taube’s advice, and I’m 60 pounds lighter, my blood pressure is normal, my cholesterol levels are good, and I am no longer diabetic.
Oh, yeah, and BACON!
I keep hearing stories like that.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Sarah Hoyt writes:
My husband has now been two years without medication. His blood sugar is normal. He can even have a small piece of candy, now and then. He lost 135 lbs. I’d say we followed Taubes, too, only he figured it out on his own, before we read him. Oh, yeah, and our always-overweight, very active, not overeating 19 year old FINALLY dropped 100 pounds. If anything he’s eating more and exercising less than he did before we cut the carbs. Yes, it really was “that easy.”
Okay, I ONLY lost 45 lbs, but I’m a woman of a certain age.
Impressive.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Dr. Stanley Tillinghast writes:
I am a cardiologist, and my “specialty” within cardiology for almost 30 years has been preventive cardiology.
I fervently preached the gospel of 30% fat diet (no matter how many calories or how much sugar) as promulgated by the AHA, NHLBI and the heart disease experts.
I knew that no large-scale randomized controlled trial had been done to prove that this low-fat diet actually reduced heart disease events; but at the time (early 90′s) it still was not clear that lipid-lowering drugs would reduce events and improve morbidity and mortality.Since then I’ve been convinced by the evidence that statins, specifically, have a dramatic benefit in reducing heart attacks and related events, and without any major drawbacks for most people. Is that because they reduce LDL cholesterol? That’s not clear. It may be that the more potent the statin (atorvastatin and rosuvastatin for example), the greater the reduction in events. We have no direct proof. I used to promote primarily (low-fat) diet, niacin, and earlier bile acid resins such as cholestyramine. But it wasn’t until the evidence of statin benefits piled up that it was clear they were superior not only to niacin, but to diet alone.
During the same period that we cardiologists and the health care community were promoting the low-fat/don’t count calories or sugar diet, the nation experienced its epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Cause and effect? We don’t know. But it’s starting to look as if the public health establishment may be responsible for the greatest episode of epidemiological malpractice ever committed.
My personal experience with low-carb diets (I don’t follow Atkins, more the South Beach diet with attention to fat) has been very positive, resulting in a 16 pound weight loss, saying good-bye to my paunch, and with higher HDL, lower LDL, and lower blood pressure. Yes, while eating (Canadian) bacon and eggs every morning.
However, when I protested in an e-mail to the group I work with in prevention guideline development that it’s a pity we don’t have the strength of evidence of benefit of diet for treatment of high cholesterol and high blood pressure that we have with drugs, I was met by a chorus of protests from those who want to regulate salt intake for the public at large.
It will take a major trial with total mortality as an endpoint to prove whether any diet can reduce heart disease events in primary prevention. Will that ever happen? It doesn’t look like it.
If these experts were held liable for unfounded advice the way drug companies are for bad drugs, they’d all be broke and in jail. And what about the dermatologists?
HOW TO GET A USED-CAR WARRANTY and not get screwed.
EUROPE: More downgrades.
UPDATE: More here.
UPDATE: Britain could be stripped of AAA credit rating within a year.
AT AMAZON, a sale on Men’s Levi’s. Actually, it’s a “sale event,” which I guess is like a sale, only more . . . eventful!
PRIORITIES: Navy’s Railgun Blasts Through Budget Restrictions: “The Navy came very, very close to losing its futuristic gun that shoots bullets with a giant electric charge. But while a congressional committee recommended axing the Electromagnetic Railgun in June, the program survived — even if it’s still got to clear lots of technical hurdles before it can launch bullets from ships at hypersonic speed. And it’s not the only high-tech Navy project that looks like it (mostly) dodged the budget axe.”
STEPHEN PINKER ON the decline of violence.
INSIDE SECRETS of Valentine card writers. “Actually, we in the business call it ‘flitter’: the glittery cards, or the flower-shaped ones or anything with a cutout or a window. Those are more expensive and they usually have more text because that offers more perceived value. Only problem is, the more you say, the more you get into trouble.”
AT AMAZON, Bestsellers in Toys & Games.
THE HILL: Dem lawmaker: Obama budget is a ‘nervous breakdown on paper’.
WILL TORT LAWSUITS be the downfall of the NFL?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Are Liberal Arts Colleges Becoming Finishing Schools For Women?
EVERYBODY INTO THE POOL: How the inventor of basketball and the father of the fast break beat segregation in the 1930s.
Decades later, John McLendon, Jr. told his friend and biographer Milton Katz what his father said as he was packing to leave. “Go up there and do what everybody else does, and try to do it in a way that won’t have you getting hurt,” he had told his son. “If you happen to get hurt, let me know. I’ll be up there with my .44.”
The man had reason to fear for the boy. John B. McLendon, Jr. was about to become the first black man to enroll in the physical education program at Kansas.
When they arrived, John, Sr. let his son out of the car, gave a final set of instructions, and drove away. John, Jr. entered Robinson Gymnasium and followed his father’s parting advice to the letter. After a brief search, he found himself standing in an office doorway, looking in at the university’s Director of Physical Education. Dr. James Naismith looked up and examined his unexpected guest.
Read the whole thing.
GIVING UP on biofuels.
INSIDE MEDIA MATTERS: David Brock’s Enemies List. “An internal Media Matters For America memo obtained by The Daily Caller reveals that the left-wing media watchdog group employs an “opposition research team” to target its political enemies. Included in the list of targets are right-leaning websites, conservative think tanks, prominent financiers and donors, and more than a dozen specific Fox News Channel and News Corporation employees. . . . One of those singled out for scrutiny in the memo is PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, a self-described libertarian.” This perhaps explains the surprising wave of outrage over his skip-college scholarship plan.
HISTORY: German soldiers preserved in World War I shelter discovered after nearly 100 years. “Many of the skeletal remains were found in the same positions the men had been in at the time of the collapse, prompting experts to liken the scene to Pompeii.”
ELECTRIC CAR BUMMER: University of Tennessee Researchers Find E-Car Emissions May Be More Harmful than Gasoline Cars’.
REASON MAGAZINE’S FEBRUARY ISSUE ON SPACE IS TERRIFIC: You can now read the whole thing online for free.
MAURICE STUCKE: Occupy Wall Street and Antitrust.
IN THE MAIL: Worthless: The Indispensable Guide to Choosing the Right Major.
FROM WALTER RUSSELL MEAD, the Week In Review.
#NARRATIVEFAIL: Apple Paid A Lower Tax Rate Than Mitt Romney.
Mack isn’t opposed just to SOPA, but a slew of other acronyms that Smith has supported: TARP, NDAA, the PATRIOT Act. The former Graham County, Arizona sheriff announced he would run against Smith in the 21st District’s GOP primary back in December, but his profile didn’t blow up until this past Sunday, when the social media giant Reddit christened him the anti-Smith, and promoted his Ask Me Anything (AMA) question-and-answer session on the Reddit homepage. . . .
By Reddit standards, the thread was a success. Many Reddit users seemed to agree that an ObamaCare opponent who also opposed SOPA was better than the ObamaCare opponent who wrote SOPA. After Mack laid out his opposition to the drug war, the PATRIOT Act, and the National Defense Authorization Act, one user wrote, “I hope you are not talking out of your ass, because I like you.”
“No, I am sitting on it,” Mack replied minutes later.
SOPA is just an entry point for Mack’s campaign against federal overreach. “Lamar Smith has been a tax, borrow, and spend Republican, who has tried to increase the powers of D.C. with SOPA, TARP, and increasing the debt ceiling,” Mack said. “His vote for NDAA gave more power to President Obama than all the Democrats put together.”
Read the whole thing.
HEATHER MACDONALD: California’s Demographic Revolution: If the upward mobility of the impending Hispanic majority doesn’t improve, the state’s economic future is in peril. “California is in the middle of a far-reaching demographic shift: Hispanics, who already constitute a majority of the state’s schoolchildren, will be a majority of its workforce and of its population in a few decades. This is an even more momentous development than it seems. Unless Hispanics’ upward mobility improves, the state risks becoming more polarized economically and more reliant on a large government safety net. And as California goes, so goes the nation, whose own Hispanic population shift is just a generation or two behind.”
Well, nothing inhibits upward mobility like a heavy-regulation, income-redistributionist government.
THE HILL: Calls grow for ticker-tape parade to honor veterans from Iraq War.
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Do Medical School Acceptance Rates Reflect Preferences for Preferred Minority Groups? Check out the table — the discrepancies are staggering. Either the admissions criteria don’t mean much, or they’re admitting a lot of unqualified people based on race.
THE INSTA-WIFE is now blogging at PJ Media.
AS SEEN AT CPAC: Hating Breitbart: The Trailer.
BATTLESPACE PREPARATION: Remember when no one understood why ABC asked about contraception at the NH Republican debate? “It’s almost as if Stephanopoulos got the memo first. Unless, of course, you believe in coincidences.”
THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED OVER THE WEEKEND:
Hope, Change, and Shortages of Critical Medications.
Osama bin Laden gave up on Jihad.
Ray Nagin under investigation for corruption.
Mia Love: Conventional Wisdom Says I Don’t Exist. She’s got a campaign website.
Promoting domestic violence on nationwide TV.
Gawker Media criticized for gang-rape video.
College Student Suspended for Writing About Being Attracted to Professor.
Open your mouth, and you’re dead.
Moody’s May Downgrade Law Schools’ Credit Rating.
Elizabeth Price Foley’s Tea Party book is out. Endorsed by George Will, Ron Paul, and me, among others.
The ups and downs of laser sights.
Clive Crook: U.S. Taxes Are Actually Unusually Progressive.
Investigation Reveals Close Coordination Between White House, News Organizations, and Media Matters. Plus, David Brock’s erratic behavior and gun-toting “bodyguard.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Europe In the Rearview Mirror. “There was quite a EU veneer placed over the politically incorrect ‘German Problem.’ Most of us listened in disbelief as we were lectured that veritable disarmament, subsidized windmills, reach outs to a Syria or Libya, easy anti-Americanism, and sermons about cradle-to-grave socialism were the way of the new Europe. And always came the grating condescension, that a self-appointed bureaucratic class in Brussels might lecture Neanderthals what was good for them, without worry over democratic checks and balances.”
TIM BLAIR: The hot new word for “cold” is “extreme”.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Whatever Andrew Breitbart is Drinking, Send a Case.
SALENA ZITO: PENNSYLVANIA A TALL ORDER FOR OBAMA:
During a drive between the Mon Valley towns of McKeesport and Elizabeth, a man named Ray was overheard calling into a local radio station to talk about the subject of the hour: November’s presidential election.
The first thing he said is that he is a Democrat who voted for Barack Obama in 2008. Pressed by the talk-show host, he said he would not vote for Obama this time.
The rest of Ray’s answer was not unique or remarkable: Yes, he is a union member. Yes, he wanted Obama to succeed. And, yes, he is very disappointed after giving the president more than enough chances to prove he can lead.
Ray said he had finally given up.
It is a story heard over and over across the country, one that began not long after Obama took office in 2009 and followed a series of heavy-handed moves such as appointing policy “czars” to avoid Senate confirmation fights and a lack of transparency with the press and the public (a list too long to elaborate) despite vows to the contrary.
Stimulus signs that dotted highways after a trillion-dollar federal spending spree became signs to mock when the economy failed to improve — and guys like Ray began to detach. . . . While Obama campaigners salivate over the primary battle among Republicans Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, they fail to realize that the GOP’s family feud will heal more easily than did Democrats’ in 2008.
Read the whole thing.
DAVE HARDY: Sobering Thoughts About The Next Election.
WASHINGTON POST: Five Myths About White People.
THAT LIBYA WAR: Caught on video: The horrifying proof that Libya’s freedom fighters have turned into brutal torturers. Wonder why nobody’s asked Obama about this?
LAWS, LIKE TAXES, ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Cops among Florida’s worst speeders, Sun Sentinel investigation finds. “We’ve all seen it, and now there’s proof: Police officers sworn to uphold our traffic laws are among the worst speeders on South Florida roads. A three-month Sun Sentinel investigation found almost 800 cops from a dozen agencies driving 90 to 130 mph on our highways. Many weren’t even on duty — they were commuting to and from work in their take-home patrol cars. . . . Speeding cops can kill. Since 2004, Florida officers exceeding the speed limit have caused at least 320 crashes and 19 deaths. Only one officer went to jail — for 60 days.” Privatize ‘em. And pay citizens a bounty for catching speeding patrol cars.
DAN MITCHELL: A Swiss Response to American Fiscal Imperialism. “What makes this situation particularly frustrating is that it is entirely the result of bad American policy.”
JOHN HINDERAKER: Cronyism 101. “Here it is, a pretty good introduction, I think, to the subject of corporatism in the Age of Obama.”
CHANGE: Average Gasoline Price Jumps To Highest In 5 Months.
NOT ONE HOSTAGE CRISIS: Lots of them.
DAILY CALLER INVESTIGATION: Inside Media Matters: Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior, close coordination with White House and news organizations.
My favorite bit: “Greg Sargent [of the Washington Post] will write anything you give him. He was the go-to guy to leak stuff.” Lots of other names named, too.
Of course, to the extent that Media Matters affects coverage it’s because left-leaning journos regard it as legitimate, and want to help. In this regard, like JournoList, it’s a “self-herding device.”
IS PINTEREST A PINK-COLLAR GHETTO? “AppData and Facebook’s advertising tool show that over 97% of Pinterest’s Facebook fans are women.”
WHEN EVERYTHING BECOMES A COFFEESHOP: Stephen Gordon’s blog post became a piece in the Boston Globe. Some serious higher education bubble implications.
Now, imagine a personnel manager at a mid-sized corporation who’s looking for an employee with some particular knowledge. There are two candidates: one with an appropriate college degree from the local state school, a second with relevant MITx certificates. Let’s say all other things between the candidates are equal. Which should the manager choose?
Given the caliber of professor at MIT, the online student may have learned just as much. The candidate who went to college probably enjoyed his experience more, but the potential employer is unlikely to care about that. Finally, there’s the financial reality: To some extent, the student debt of the job candidate dictates his salary requirements. If the MITx candidate has the knowledge required and far less student debt, he probably can be hired more cheaply. Ultimately, the cheaper option will win.
Phil Bowermaster has some additional thoughts.
AT AMAZON, bestselling books on Home Repair.
Also, books on container vegetable gardening.
ABC NEWS: White House Chief of Staff Errs on Senate Budget Rules.
JUSTIN HIGGINS: Why I Choose to (Tea) Party, Not Occupy.
THE PROBLEM WITH RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS IS THAT THEY’RE HOSTAGE TO FUTURE CONGRESSES’ GREED: Congress Eyes New Rules For Inherited IRAs. “A Senate Finance Committee proposal floated this past week as part of a highway-funding bill would give heirs five years to empty inherited individual retirement accounts or 401(k)s, which would typically trigger income-tax payments. The rule change could raise some $4.6 billion in income taxes over the next decade, according to a statement by Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.”
J.E. DYER on Russia and Syria.
LOOK AT THE BRIGHT SIDE — LOTS OF IT ISN’T BURNING: Athens tonight. Nice pic, though.
UPDATE: Reader James Ellison writes: “So, your main source of hard currency is tourism and you scare all the tourists away? Wizards of smart.” Greece and Egypt.
THE MOST AMAZING SCIENCE IMAGES OF THE WEEK.
SHOULD YOU convert your car to natural gas?
LIVING IN THE AGE OF BIG DATA:
The story is similar in fields as varied as science and sports, advertising and public health — a drift toward data-driven discovery and decision-making. “It’s a revolution,” says Gary King, director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. “We’re really just getting under way. But the march of quantification, made possible by enormous new sources of data, will sweep through academia, business and government. There is no area that is going to be untouched.”
Welcome to the Age of Big Data. The new megarich of Silicon Valley, first at Google and now Facebook, are masters at harnessing the data of the Web — online searches, posts and messages — with Internet advertising. At the World Economic Forum last month in Davos, Switzerland, Big Data was a marquee topic. A report by the forum, “Big Data, Big Impact,” declared data a new class of economic asset, like currency or gold.
We’ve barely begun to tap the power of this sort of thing. On the other hand, there will always be a place for a more aesthetic, intuitive angle, too — especially where consumers are involved. And will Big Data methods go small in an Army-of-Davids fashion via intermediaries like Wolfram Alpha?
TOO CRAZY FOR MSNBC: Scarborough Calls ‘Preposterous’ Sullivan’s Claim Obama Intentionally Set Contraception Trap for Conservatives.
DANGER IN THE EAST: “The Times report would at any rate explain the unprecedented buildup of the Pakistani nuclear stockpile in recent years. It was building weapons not just for itself, but supply a whole region.”
MORE SAFETY NET MUSINGS: “The NYT never paints wealthy liberals who don’t volunteer extra money to the state as hypocritical and guilty, but that’s no surprise.”
Plus this: “The NYT is continuing the progressive bait-and-switch here: Social Security and Medicare were sold to America as earned benefit programs, not welfare. It’s the ‘secondary mission’ of middle-class vote-buying — and the Boomers heading into retirement — that accounts for most of this story. The NYT overlooks that the US welfare state contributes to the supposed income inequality problem progressives have been decrying for the past few years. Moreover, compared to other developed countries, the US system is unique only in terms of low upward mobility from the bottom among men (although cross-country comparisons of mobility can be tricky). The left would no doubt argue this means we must have ever-higher taxes and more redistribution, while the right would argue we need lower taxes and less redistribution. However, what seems clear is that the Democrats’ version of the welfare state has been a political boon to Democrats and less beneficial to the poor they claim to champion. Moreover, if the NYT is at least correct that the increase in the safety net is fueling anger at the government, it may be that the political value of the welfare state to Democrats is diminishing as well.”
EUROPE: Greek protestors greet bailout vote with fire-bombs.
Related: Athens Burning As Police Run Out Of Tear Gas. “FinMin Venizelos has been speaking for the last 15 minutes so. He says that the country produces nothing and that is its main problem.” But they feel entitled to consume.
FASTER, PLEASE: New Surgery Heals Nerve Damage In Weeks. “When a nerve is severed through injury, surgeons must suture the two stumps together as quickly as possible. Yet even under controlled lab conditions, Bittner’s tests in rats suggest that these conventional sutures restore little more than 30 per cent of previous mobility, even three months after surgery. His new technique helps to restore twice that, in as little as two weeks. The secret, he says, is to prevent the body lending a helping hand.”
CAR DEALERS WINCE at site designed to end sales haggling. I predict additional state laws to protect car dealers from competition.
AT AMAZON, best deals in HDTV and video.
THE CRISIS OF ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE: Bacteria are finally overrunning our last defenses. Can we stop them? We need newer and better antibacterial drugs. Also new antivirals. But in the interim, we need to increase our emphasis on sanitation and disease control methods of the sort that were a keystone of public health back during the pre-antibiotic era.
Unfortunately, it seems as though most “public health” people these days would rather talk about gun control or climate change than, you know, actual diseases.
HEALTH CARE: Supply of a Cancer Drug May Run Out Within Weeks. “A crucial medicine to treat childhood leukemia is in such short supply that hospitals across the country may exhaust their stores within the next two weeks, leaving hundreds and perhaps thousands of children at risk of dying from a largely curable disease, federal officials and cancer doctors say.”
This seems kinda third-worldish to me. And these shortages keep happening.
UPDATE: Reader Don Jansen writes: “So price controls are imposed on injectable drugs and lo and behold a shortage arises. Who would have thunk it?” Indeed.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Physician-reader Eric Novack writes: “Glenn- these shortages are very real… one center I work at has trouble getting propofol for anesthesia and another cannot get zofran (ondansetron), one of the most effective anti-nausea drugs on the market…” Very upsetting.
MORE: More here: “Again, the reader is left with the impression that drug manufacturers are hugely incompetent, failing to produce the needed amount of drugs even in the face of rising prices. Thank goodness President Obama is on the case, issuing executive orders! But the existence of any kind of shortage in a market-driven economy should make one’s nose twinkle. One drug shortage might be some kind of freakish anomaly, but 180 crucial drug shortages? The usual suspect in these kind of situations is the dead hand of government, and according to bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel, writing in last August’s New York Times, that’s exactly the case. . . . In other words, government has distorted the market and removed incentives for the production of life-saving drugs. And the New York Times’ readership, unless they somehow recall Emanuel’s opinion piece, are left none the wiser.”
THE MITSUBISHI MIEV’S ACHILLES HEEL: A cheap, crappy interior.
JUSTICE: Court of secrecy: How Richard Baumgartner, a drug-addicted judge, stayed on the bench despite warnings. Check out the photo.
I continue to wonder if the “wall of protection” erected around him by law enforcement has anything to do with the rather obvious foot-dragging in the Henry Granju case. There may be no connection, but it’s easy to imagine that law enforcement folks might have feared one would turn up if they looked into things. And there really was a lot of foot-dragging.
I’ll also note that if this kind of scandal happened in a private-sector entity, we’d be hearing criticisms of the entire enterprise, not just the players involved. Why is it different when it’s the government? People are covering for impaired judges in courthouses all over the country.
NEAL BOORTZ doesn’t like Rick Santorum. “Rick Santorum believes that Libertarians belive in ‘no government.’ Now anyone with just the most basic education would know that it is anarchists who believe in not government, not libertarians. So why would Santorum utter this absurdity?”
IN THE MAIL: Why Americans Hate the Media and How It Matters.
REPORT: BIN LADEN GAVE UP ON JIHAD:
The big news today: according to family members, by the end of his life Osama bin Laden was telling his family to “Go to Europe and America and get a good education.”
What? The great Islamic umma, center of global culture and light of the world has no universities where the children of the Great Jihadi can get a decent education? The clueless, hell-bound infidels of Europe and America make the Sons of the True Faith look incompetent and backward on the vital matter of educating the young? It isn’t enough to sit on a dirt floor in Pakistan memorizing the Koran and learning how to wear a suicide bomb vest?
But what about the obligation to take up the cause of jihad and violence and crush the evil doers in the West?
Never mind about all that, Osama supposedly told his children and grandchildren. “Do not follow me down the road to jihad,” he said. “You have to study and live in peace and don’t do what I am doing or what I have done.”
All those Salafi ideologues promoting the idea of jihad against the West as a sacred obligation compulsory on all Muslims are presumably choking on their beards as they read these words. The homosexual-hangers and the adultress-stoners are having a bad morning. No doubt they will tell themselves that this story is yet another lie from the cynical west, but they will have to wrap themselves ever more tightly in the delusions and wishful thinking that blinker their thoughts — and undermine their political effectiveness.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: Reader Dave D’Auria writes: “So wait, that can’t mean Bush was right when he basically said Bin Laden wasn’t that important anymore, right?” Of course not. Bush, right? Don’t be ridiculous.
STICKY FINGERS IN THE CHOCOLATE CITY? Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin under investigation: source. “The investigation includes whether Nagin received favors or items of value from vendors to the city in return for contracts they received while Nagin was in office, the source said.”
BALTIMORE POLICE: It’s Legal For You To Record Us, But If You Keep It Up We’ll Arrest You For Loitering.
Okay, they obviously don’t care about the law. But as a result, citizens will start to wonder why they should respect the law, or those who purport to act in its name. The citizens of Baltimore shoud fire ‘em, and privatize. Their replacements will probably have a clearer sense of responsibility, or at least a smaller sense of entitlement.
“I THINK MY BREASTS SAVED MY LIFE:” Huge-breasted model, 32, walks away from horror crash after her 38KKK chest acts as AIRBAG. Is there anything they can’t do?
TOM MAGUIRE ON THE NEW YORK TIMES’ CAREFUL BLURRING OF ENTITLEMENTS: “Wait – Medicare is now a ‘safety net’ program? I thought that, like Social Security, it was an earned benefit – we all paid our taxes, and we are all eligible. Medicaid is means-tested; Medicare is not.”
Plus, from the comments: “If you’re paying for the pizza, you might as well take a slice. That’s the other part of the big government agenda. One is to create a permanent class of non-paying clients while the other is to make sure everyone else takes advantage of entitlements they’re paying for.” Yeah, you don’t want people to question the whole redistribution scheme, so you displace alternative approaches then call anyone who uses it a hypocrite if they complain. It’s political genius, until you run out of other people’s money.
UPDATE: Several readers point out that you can’t decline Medicare without also giving up Social Security.
“YELLOW PERIL” FEARS ON CAMPUS: Asian students face discrimination in college admissions.
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Plus, today only: Stuhrling Original Men’s Trinity Collection Chronograph Watches for $59.99.
Also today only: Free One-Day Shipping on Valentine’s Day Gifts.
MIA LOVE AT CPAC: Conventional Wisdom Says I Don’t Exist. “If CPAC has reinforced one thing for me, it’s this: The presidential election is important, but retaining the House and taking back the Senate is essential.”
Here’s her campaign website.
VIOLENCE AGAINST MEN: This Oikos yogurt commercial where the man (John Stamos) gets head-butted to the floor is still bugging me. Imagine if the genders were reversed. If you can. There certainly wouldn’t be excuse-making from lefty publications. Instead we’d hear that there’s no excuse for domestic violence!
HISTORY: Secret documents lift lid on WWII mutiny by US troops in north Queensland. “An Australian historian has uncovered hidden documents which reveal that African American troops used machine guns to attack their white officers in a siege on a US base in north Queensland in 1942. Information about the Townsville mutiny has never been released to the public. But the story began to come to light when James Cook University’s Ray Holyoak first began researching why US congressman Lyndon B Johnson visited Townsville for three days back in 1942.”
JOURNALISM: BBC ‘buried Savile sex abuse claims to save its reputation.’
The BBC now stands accused of covering up the allegations, which were detailed in The Oldie magazine, because senior executives did not want the corporation’s reputation to be tarnished.
A BBC News source said: “The extreme nature of the claims about Savile meant that the Newsnight report was going to seriously compromise the lavish BBC tributes scheduled to run later the same month.
“And second, the allegations directly involved the BBC, in that the woman who gave the interview said that she and others were abused by Savile on BBC premises.”
Well, it’s not like there were priests involved or anything.
MARK STEYN: Obama goes Henry VIII on the church.
The president of the United States has decided to go Henry VIII on the Church’s medieval ass. Whatever religious institutions might profess to believe in the matter of “women’s health,” their pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities and immunities are now subordinate to a one-and-only supreme head on earth determined to repress, redress, restrain and amend their heresies. One wouldn’t wish to overextend the analogy: For one thing, the Catholic Church in America has been pathetically accommodating of Beltway bigwigs’ ravenous appetite for marital annulments in a way that Pope Clement VII was disinclined to be vis-a-vis the English king and Catherine of Aragon. But where’d all the pandering get them?
The wages of appeasement are usually the same.
LIFE AMONG THE BARBARIANS: Islamists Storm Maldives Museum & Destroy Entire Collection of 12th Century Buddhist Relics. Hmm. This’ll do wonders for the tourism industry upon which Maldives depends, just like the previous ban on hotel spas.
Fine. Go ahead and starve.
ANDREW BREITBART on libertarians in 2012.
LIES: George Lucas Confirms It: The Star Wars We Loved Never Existed. “Here’s the medicine we all need to swallow: as children we were more grown up than George Lucas is now as an adult. Han Solo’s entire character rested on what we saw in that early scene in the film. In shooting first Han Solo was a role model doing what any Real Man was supposed to do. Now we know that character only existed in our imaginations, not his creator’s. And that George Lucas regards most of his fans as amoral neanderthals.”
Meh, after the three “prequels,” who cares what he thinks?
A LOOK inside the bubble.
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: WHY IS IT THAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING that the lesson of Enron is that we need more regulation? Seems to me, the lesson is that regulators are corrupt or incompetent. Or both. And by “regulators,” I include the press.
Also this: “It has always amazed my that the people who want the government to do a few important things, and to do them well, are called ‘anti-government,’ while those who want the government to do many things, all of them badly, are not.”
AT AMAZON, markdowns in Tools & Home Improvement.
ON THAT JEZEBEL GANG-RAPE VIDEO: “They definitely violated the SPJ code of ethics by posting this, but as we’ve seen, Gawker Media’s code of ethics seems to be limited to one rule, and that is ‘if it gets hits, publish it.’”
IN A TRULY UNCHARACTERISTIC FAILURE OF SELF-PROMOTION, I somehow forgot to post on my New York Post column earlier this week: Obama’s Flawed Fix For the College Cost Crisis. I don’t think he really understands the higher education bubble.
MITT ROMNEY wins the Maine caucuses.
PETER ROBINSON’S UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE IS NOW ON PJTV.
THIS IS SAD: Reportedly, Whitney Houston has died.
