OUCH: “In other news from the world of academia, it seems that while Larry Summers isn’t welcome to be a dinner speaker at the University of California, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an honored guest at Columbia.”

DISSING DAN RATHER, at Slashdot. From the comments: “I heard he has an email from Pres. Bush that he sent Boeing in 1945 proving that they knew the plane was unsafe.”

SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS on politics, law school hiring, and the Chemerinsky affair.

MICHAEL MALONE WRITES FROM LONDON:

I remember as a kid, my parents, both children of the Great Depression, telling me of bank runs. And, of course, like everyone else, I’ve seen a run on a bank dramatized in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but I never expected to see one in the 21st century, and especially just a few blocks away from my apartment.

According to the BBC, the bank run is all America’s fault. Plus, banks as cybercriminals?

PINUPS FOR VETS: Seems like a worthy cause.

THE “JENA SIX:” Okay, the fact that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are involved doesn’t prove that there’s no actual injustice, but it was enough to make me email Radley Balko — I’ve gotten a lot of email on the case, but most of it seems to assume that I already know what’s going on. Radley’s lengthy reply is below: click “read more” to read it. As always, it’s constructive to ask how people would act if the races were reversed.

UPDATE: An update and a minor correction at Radley’s blog.

IN THE MAIL: John Bowe’s Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy.

THE KNOXVILLE POLICE OFFICER WHO BODY-SLAMMED A MAN who was legally carrying a firearm has been disciplined.

The official action(s) taken are:

– A written reprimand for the officer, “which reprimand carries with it certain inter-departmental consequences beyond just a notation in their personnel file.”

– Remedial training in TN Handgun Carry Permit law, and in dealing with the public.

– All KPD officers will be undergoing refresher training on Tennessee Handgun Carry Permit law during the next in-service training session.

– An apology from the Chief of Police, Sterling Owen.

This seems to have been well-handled.

ONLY FROM THE BRITISH PRESS: “I Spent a Week Living Like a Woman.”

I’VE SAID BEFORE that the Bush Administration’s best strategy is to get Democratic members of Congress on TV and let them talk as long as they want. Thomas Edsall seems to agree. “Questioning Petraeus: Squandered Opportunities, Longwinded Monologues.”

A PROFESSOR’S last lecture. For real, alas.

TENS OF THOUSANDS OF GOVERNMENT SPYCAMS, but 80% of London crime is unsolved. That’s because spycams aren’t about solving crime, just as red-light cameras aren’t about traffic safety.

THE HARVARD CRIMSON: “The protest against former President Summers is a disgrace to academia. . . . the UC’s regents have sent an altogether different message—the University of California has ceased to value academic freedom.”

BREAKING UP AN AL QAEDA CELL IN SAMARRA: The big news is that it was done by the Iraqi National Police, who have been considerably less effective than the Iraqi army overall.

EVERYTHING OLD IS HSU AGAIN: “A list of the donors who have ‘bundled’ large sums from dozens of individuals to give to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign includes several figures who were involved in the 1990s Democratic Party fundraising scandal that tarnished her husband’s record.”

What, you thought I was running out of Hsu puns?

MORE CRITICISM OF THE U.C. REGENTS in the Larry Summers affair, at The New Republic. U.C. Davis history professor Eric Rauchway writes:

By succumbing to a demand that they reject a controversial, though–as a former treasury secretary, university administrator, and respected economist–obviously relevant speaker, the Regents have suddenly made life much more difficult for those of us in the business of presenting controversial, if relevant, ideas and guest speakers on UC campuses. Casting someone as utterly outside the university’s conversation is the severest penalty we as scholars can impose–appropriate perhaps to Holocaust deniers and such ilk as exhibit a chronic impenetrability to reason. Lawrence Summers, though he said some things well worth objecting to, falls well short of that standard. By applying this ban to him, the Regents suggest an impossibly low tolerance for controversy at the University of California.

Indeed. Though rather than “suggest,” I’d say the appropriate word is “demonstrate.”

SPYWARE IN THE WORKPLACE: A big look at how businesses are spying on their workers. “More stealthy and prevalent than ever before, corporate security software is monitoring your every move inside and out of the office, whether it’s with your corporate computer, e-mail, phone or BlackBerry. . . . your employer has more powerful tools to watch over you than the cops—and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

MAHMOUD DOES MANHATTAN: “On the same day that the Iranian air force commander announced that Iran has drawn plans to bomb Israel, NY Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly revealed that the Bloomberg administration was in discussions to escort Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Ground Zero. Mahmoud won’t get to Ground Zero, but he will talk at Columbia University after addressing the UN on Monday.” Follow the link for an extensive roundup.

UPDATE: Organizing an Ahmadinejad welcoming party.

RON ROSENBAUM ON Mearsheimer & Walt and the fear of a second Holocaust. “The world’s willingness to permit one Holocaust gives cause for concern that it will stand by, if not enable, another.” There are a lot of enablers out there.

MUSLIMS AGAINST SHARIA offer a bounty on Al Qaeda leader. Heh.

IN AN UPDATE TO HIS POST LINKED BELOW, Beldar has a link to Dan Rather’s complaint and some choice comments on the lawsuit.

THE TIP OF THE HSUBERG? IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, more questions about “bundling.”

When Hillary Rodham Clinton held an intimate fund-raising event at her Washington home in late March, Pamela Layton donated $4,600, the maximum allowed by law, to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

But the 37-year-old Ms. Layton says she and her husband were reimbursed by her husband’s boss for the donations. “It wasn’t personal money. It was all corporate money,” Mrs. Layton said outside her home here. “I don’t even like Hillary. I’m a Republican.” The boss is William Danielczyk, founder of a Washington-area private-equity firm and a major fund-raising “bundler” for Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Layton’s gift was one of more than a dozen donations that night from people with Republican ties or no history of political giving. Mr. Danielczyk and his family, employees and friends donated a total of $120,000 to Mrs. Clinton in the days around the fund-raiser.

In an interview, Mr. Danielczyk said he “did not and would not” reimburse employees or others for their political donations. Such reimbursement would be illegal. Mr. Danielczyk said he was a co-host for the event at Mrs. Clinton’s home. “Everybody was asked to contribute,” he said, “some said yes and some said no.” He added, “No arm was twisted.”

The episode adds to growing questions about the practice of “bundling” donations, in which ambitious fund-raisers collect money from friends, colleagues and sometimes employees to send to a campaign. Every major presidential campaign now relies on the practice to raise large sums. It is an especially important strategy for Mrs. Clinton. She has formed a group of “HillRaisers” who get special recognition for sweeping in more than $100,000 for her campaign. . . .

One person at the event was a Washington-area investor who was considering putting some money in one of Mr. Danielczyk’s ventures. The investor, a registered Republican, said he was invited by Mr. Danielczyk and a colleague who were wooing him to invest at least $125,000 in one of their companies.

The investor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says he didn’t donate any money to Mrs. Clinton. Campaign-finance records show that the investor contributed $4,600 on March 30 to Mrs. Clinton. The reason for the discrepancy isn’t clear.

Read the whole thing. We’d be better off with unlimited individual donations, so that people wouldn’t be encouraged to engage in these kinds of hsunanigans.

THE COURT HAS MOVED RIGHT SINCE I980. SO WHAT?

Seriously: why on earth would the definition of a “conservative” court in 1980 be some sort of lodestar by which all future courts should be judged. By the standards of 1880, the current court would be a bunch of wild-eyed socialist libertine radicals bent on undermining everything that made America great. Does that entitle me to re-nominate Oliver Wendell Holmes, or his modern day equivalent?

Cass Sunstein (who graduated from law school in 1978) seems to be under the delusion that the conditions of his youth are the golden mean by which all future events are to be judged and found wanting. I mean, we all feel the same way, but most of us don’t expect anyone younger to take us seriously when we drone on about how much better The Pogues were than any of this modern noise. . . .

The court is to the right of the average law professor, not to mention the average Cass Sunstein. But that’s because the average law professor is to the left of the average American, and any reasonably democratic system is going to produce a Supreme Court whose mean opinion hews more closely to that of the voters than to that of any larger group from which the appointees are drawn.

It’s better that we don’t let law professors pick Supreme Court justices.

COMMENTARIES ON the Gallic War.

COLLEGES failing history?