Archive for 2010

WHY ARE HIGHER ED COSTS SO HIGH? Retired, then rehired: How college workers use loophole to boost pay. “Greg Royer ranks among the state’s top-paid employees, with a salary of $304,000. But that’s just part of his income. For nearly seven years, he’s also collected an annual pension of $105,000. Royer, the vice president for business and finance at Washington State University, tops a long list of college administrative staff members who’ve been able to boost their incomes by up to 60 percent by exploiting a loophole in state retirement laws.”

Note that he’s an administrator . . . .

TOM SMITH: “This is really bad. I know it’s a cliche by now, but if anything remotely like this had happened in the Bush administration, every legal worthy you can think of would be on about it, and rightly, until no one could stand it anymore.”

I guess the lesson is, if you want scrutiny of Executive Branch actions, vote Republican. . . .

CHICAGO COP likes the McDonald decision, mocks Daley Administration. “Give it up Shanks – we can’t protect everyone all the time and you are actively seeking to create more casualties as the city spirals into Detroit II. Give law abiding citizens a fair chance to defend themselves, their loved ones and their property.”

RANDY BARNETT: “Today, the Privileges or Immunities Clause has risen from the grave. Only a plurality was willing to use the Due Process Clause to apply an individual right to the states. The crucial fifth vote was provided by Justice Thomas’ extensive fifty-six-page originalist opinion that rested solely on the Privileges or Immunities Clause. Neither Justice Alito for the plurality, nor Justices Stevens or Breyer in dissent, even attempted to impeach Justice Thomas’ analysis, which now stands uncontradicted in the Supreme Court Reports. Decades of academic research that has lead to a remarkable consensus among constitutional scholars that The Slaughter-House Cases was wrongly decided have now been vindicated. Only a remarkably tepid and barely defended assertion of stare decisis by Justice Alito now stands in the way of a complete restoration of the ‘lost’ Privileges or Immunities Clause at the heart of Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

NOT QUITE CRICKET: OUCH.

NOTE TO DAVID FRUM: Google doesn’t own BlogAds. But I’m sure Henry Copeland would entertain a sufficiently generous offer.

THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.