VARIOUS PEOPLE have been emailing and asking for pictures of the UT Campus this spring. Alas, I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had much time. But I did manage to take a stroll around campus yesterday with a camera, so here are a few pics.

I’ll try to do better as the spring goes on. I had a kind of rough year in 2004-05 and had planned for this academic year to be a take-it-easy year. Instead, I wound up writing a book and several law review articles, and doing assorted other stuff. Not bad, but it’s probably about as busy as I’ve ever been.

That’s okay — I like the work I’ve done, though I could do without the family medical problems. But you can’t operate in “surge” mode every year. You’ve got to pace yourself.

Now, next year I plan to take it easier. No, really, I do.

Seriously.

No, really.

MALE TEACHERS: Victims of sexism? (“Confrontations with suspicious parents are rare, teachers say. That could be because parents who are uncomfortable with a man teaching their children often request a female teacher. Those requests are honored every year by Carol Hughes, principal of Leila G. Davis Elementary in Clearwater.”)

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The “Ending Earmarks Express” continues:

The Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s nationwide “Ending Earmarks Express” bus tour visited Charleston, WV, today for a stop outside U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd’s office. According to the Wall Street Journal, since 2000, Sen. Byrd and U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan (1st Dist. – WV) have helped secure $6 million in earmarks for the Mountain Made Foundation, which operates MountainMade.com, an Amazon.com-style e-commerce website where artisans sell their products. The Journal also reported in a front-page article on Friday that Congressman Mollohan is the subject of a federal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the earmarks he secured for the Mountain Made Foundation and other West Virginia not-for-profit groups.

They’ve taken on King Pork in his lair!

ALPHECCA’S WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF MEDIA GUN COVERAGE is up, and includes some good news for civil rights:

BATON ROUGE — With little debate, the Senate voted 39-0 Monday for a bill that would prohibit police from confiscating firearms of law-abiding citizens in times of emergencies or disasters.

The vote on Senate Bill 93 by Sen. Joe McPherson, D-Woodworth, an outdoors enthusiast and gun-rights advocate, sends the measure to the House for debate.

McPherson filed the bill in response to actions by New Orleans area police who confiscated firearms from evacuees during Hurricane Katrina. He said that the federal and state constitutions recognize the right of citizens to bear arms and that a hurricane or an evacuation from a natural disaster or emergency does not eliminate that right.

The New Orleans gun seizures resulted in a successful lawsuit against the New Orleans authorities, but it’s nice to see the Louisiana legislature responding, too.

DANIEL GLOVER: “Bloggers Beat The FEC, So Now What?”

HUGH HEWITT: ” It is hard to see how the GOP is not like the Titanic, except it is aiming for the iceberg.”

WANT TO HELP ZEYAD COME TO AMERICA? Jeff Jarvis explains how.

BOOTED FROM DINNER because of an unflattering blog post: “For 15 years, I’ve thought of Camille Paglia as an unusually tough and feisty woman. Wasn’t she the one who sneered at women who acted like fragile victims?”

iFRIST: Apparently, we’re successful podcast evangelists, based on this email from Bill Frist’s office:

Senator Frist’s appearances on the Glenn and Helen Show have gotten him excited about podcasting. Today we’re launching our own on the VOLPAC site: iFrist Podcasts.

We’ve got 5 legislative updates up on the site and on iTunes. We’ll be continuing to post these, but we’re most excited about the interactivity of “Majority Leader’s Questions.” Basically, we’ll be soliciting questions on the blog for the Senator to answer unscripted each week. Here’s the link . . . make sure and check out the (hilarious) picture of the Senator with his iPod.

Somebody tell Steve Jobs.

MICKEY KAUS: “today’s Los Angeles pro-immigrant demonstration–scheduled for 5:00 in the evening–was shockingly small. It filled an interesection and a little park in the Olvera St. section. That’s about it. Anybody who says there were more than 12,000 people there is full of it! I’d say 5,000-8,000.”

UPDATE: Report from Kansas here, with video here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A report with photos from Newark, Delaware: “In summary, this was a bust attendance-wise. But I’m still glad I went. This event stood out as a sharp contrast to the more spectacular protests elsewhere in the country. No yelling, chanting or megaphones, and the attendees with were all uniformly nice and well-behaved. Their message, however misguided I feel it to be, was free of the communist/socialist/Che/anarchist garbage seen at other events. Perhaps that makes this a unique and notable story.”

MORE: Michelle Malkin has posted photos and video from DC.

ANNEX MEXICO? Some thoughts about immigration, over at GlennReynolds.com.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike. James Lileks’ Newhouse column from last week: “The entire illegal immigration problem isn’t that difficult. Just annex Mexico. Upside: lots of oil at popular prices. Downside: Once the Mexicans are Americans, they will presumably be unwilling to put up drywall or pick tomatoes, since those are ‘jobs Americans will not do.'”

And Dan Riehl has posted an extensive response.

PIERCE WETTER’S MONTHLY ANALYSIS OF THE BROOKINGS DATA FROM IRAQ IS UP. Lots of interesting graphics, and this: “First off, US soldiers killed in Iraq continues to fall. This is the 5th straight month. Even IED deaths, after a brief surge in February are down to their lowest level since I started keeping track. Let me say that again. The #1 cause of death for US soldiers in Iraq was at its lowest level in March.”

Read the whole thing, though, as he thinks we’re moving into a new phase of the war.

UPDATE: Note, too, that (as mentioned here before) Brookings’ civilian casualty figures for last month appear to be incomplete.

MORE INNOCENTS EXONERATED BY DNA EVIDENCE? No matches in the Duke lacrosse case. LaShawn Barber is invoking Tawana Brawley. I think a bigger point is the absurdity of not requring DNA tests to be done in any criminal case where they might be relevant. More at TalkLeft.

UPDATE: “Free the Duke 46!”

Well, they’ve got a better defense than Mumia.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A later TalkLeft post is here: “If the accuser made up the rape claim, the damage she caused to these young players, to the lacrosse team which had its season cancelled, to Duke University and its reputation and to the team’s coach is incalculable. And, it will be a huge stab in the back to true rape victims everywhere, who already fear they won’t be believed if they come forward.”

Media claims that bloggers run with unsubstantiated stories will also be harmed.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: “Sorry, everybody, but Iraq did go uranium shopping in Niger.”

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: You have to love this:

The Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s nationwide “Ending Earmarks Express” bus tour visited Northeast Ohio today and made a stop at the University of Akron, which recently received $500,000 in federal funding for the “Hard Choices Program,” which teaches students how difficult it is to balance the federal budget.

“We have a great deal of respect for the University of Akron, but we find this particular federal earmark extremely ironic,” said Americans for Prosperity Foundation President Tim Phillips. “Considering that more than $47 billion was spent on earmarked projects last year, we have to wonder if one of the ‘hard choices’ that students learn about is whether or not to stop funding pet projects with earmarks.”

Did I mention that they’ll be visiting Trent Lott’s railroad to nowhere in Mississippi?

ANN COULTER and the Mark of the Beast.

A DISTRACTION FOR THE DEMOCRATS:

West Virginia Congressman Alan Mollohan’s opponent in this year’s general election is “holding his feet to the fire” after reports that Mollohan’s finances are under investigation and that he may have profited personally from federal funds he helped obtain for various entities.

Chris Wakim, a Republican member of the state House of Delegates from Ohio County, is challenging Mollohan, a Democrat, for his First District congressional seat in November.

The face of that race may be changing now that a federal investigation into Mollohan’s personal financial disclosures has been launched.

This makes the “culture of corruption” attack a bit harder. More on Mollohan here.

VIOLENCE REPORTED at the Dallas immigration protests. “I have to say that this incident was a small thing in the whole of the protest, which was, as the papers say, largely peaceful; but had this been a mostly white anti-illegal-immigrant rally and I were a Latino covering it, it would have been in the headlines of the [Dallas Morning News] the following day on page one.”

UPDATE: Area reader George Bednekoff emails:

I didn’t see the latest Dallas immigration protest on Sunday in person, but the local TV news coverage gave the impression that this was a large crowd with somewhat reasonable concerns that had arguments with a relatively small crowd of reasonable counter-protesters. Unlike earlier protests, this one started at a church, not a school. The main points I noticed follows.

1) The largely Latino crowd protesting the House immigration bill were mostly carrying American flags instead of Mexican flags. They seemed to want to be Americans, not just visiting Mexicans.

2) The counter-protesters were anti-illegal immigration, not anti-immigrant. They were most concerned that illegal immigrants were jumping ahead in line. Legal immigrants from Mexico would be welcome if they follow the same laws and practice of assimilation as other immigrants follow.

3) The protesters were most concerned about illegal immigrants being labeled “felons”.

4) Neither side really wants a guest worker program. Both sides want permanent legal immigration with disagreements about numbers of immigrants, fees, etc.

5) Both sides seemed to be frustrated with federal government incompetence.

Our federal government — a uniter, not a divider!

MORE: Photos from Rochester. A report from San Diego.

MORE STILL: Virginia Postrel, who hasn’t been blogging on the subject much at all, does send a link to the D Magazine blog from Dallas, which reports that the march there was “more celebration than protest, and it was a decidedly family affair: babies in strollers, grandmothers carrying flags, teenagers slurping popsicles. U.S. flags outnumbered Mexican flags 15 to 1, and signs like ‘Brown is Beautiful’ captured a sense of pride that was refreshing and inspiring.”

We also learn that Jessica Simpson is a dinosaur. This proves controversial, and then some.

Plus, here are some pictures from New York.

Still more New York pictures here.

STILL MORE: David Hogberg has photos from D.C.

And Byron York reports from DC’s rally. Excerpt:

Another unmissable aspect of the rally was the heavy labor union presence. There were lots of signs for the Service Employees International Union, the Laborers Union, UNITE Here, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. The various coalitions listed as organizers of the event, like the National Capital Immigration Coalition, appeared to have a lot of union involvement. At the rally, I ran into Harold Meyerson, the liberal, pro-union writer and columnist, and asked him why organized labor was so active in this cause, given many American workers’ fear that the presence of illegal immigrants drives down wages. “During the mid- and late 1990s, the unions that were actually still organizing people were realizing that increasingly they were organizing immigrants, many of them illegal, many of them undocumented,” Meyerson told me.

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, Eric Scheie reports from Philadelphia, with photos. Excerpt:

Much as I hate to sound biased, the fact is, my photographs today seem to favor white yanqui leftists, even though they were in the minority. Perhaps this is because I’m homesick for Berkeley; who knows? . . .

In all fairness, however, I don’t think too many members of the crowd were into socialismo. They know it didn’t work all that well in Mexico, and who knows? it may be a reason why so many of them came here.

Read the whole thing.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: Back to Iraq.

GOOD NEWS: “Two of every three eligible soldiers continue to re-enlist, putting the Army, which has endured most of the fighting in Iraq, ahead of its annual goal. The Army was 15% ahead of its re-enlistment goal of 34,668 for the first six months of fiscal year 2006, which ended March 31.”

UPDATE: Reader Tom Barry emails:

Perhaps you would like to compare and contrast the US Army’s ability to meet its recruiting goals versus major newspapers ability to match their circulation goals from the prior year? Guess which one is doing better?

I guess it’s a matter of trust.

DARFUR UPDATE: Why don’t black Americans show more interest?

ANN ALTHOUSE: “Stanley Fish has a blog . . . And he’s blogging about Scalia. Don’t you want to link to it? But you can’t! The NYT has put Fish in an aquarium: on TimesSelect, which makes him irrelevant in the great oceans of the blogosphere. Sigh.”

SO I GUESS KYOTO WORKED, THEN: “Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase.”

UPDATE: Canada is abandoning Kyoto. Just when it was starting to work!

FRANCE SURRENDERS: Here’s a roundup.

SOMEHOW I, ER, OVERLOOKED Cleavage Day.