NEW DEFINITIONS of violence and civilization. “Violence. A word Ms Gopal uses no fewer than nine times. Fiscal responsibility, albeit belated, is violence, see? Reducing the national debt is violence. Extending credit for tuition fees is violence. Attempting to contain the growth of the state – enlarged by around 30% under New Labour – that’s violence too. Audacious, isn’t it? Ms Gopal, who ‘teaches in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge,’ has casually redefined violence to include practically anything to which she takes political exception.” Well, if that’s the definition, put me down as pro-violence. A lot of other people may feel the same way, but beware of definitional creep, which is already showing up in the comments. . . .

UPDATE: I like this from the comments:

Georg’s Law: As any Liberal drifts closer to idiocy, their language drifts closer to a Monty Python skit.

DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system. ARTHUR: Shut up!

Heh. Though Ms. Gopal seems more a fascist apologist than a traditional liberal. Plus, on a more serious note:

There is a very dangerous subtext to defining budget cuts as “violence.”

In almost all moral systems, it is permissible to use violence in response to violence. Therefore, if you define non-violent action as violence, then you create a moral justification for using violence in response to non-violent actions. By equating non-violent budgeting disagreements with overt acts of violence, [Gopal] is creating a rationale for killing people just because they disagree with her on minor political issues.

This is the primary rationale used by violently oppressive and mass murdering regimes. They justify police states and mass killings by equating non-violent opposition or even failure to overtly and publicly disagree with a physical attack on the whole of society.

Of course, her belief that disagreeing with her is a transgression deserving of a violent response, is really just a statement of her own narcissism and hubris. She thinks herself so fantastically intelligent, moral and infallible that her word alone defines the greater good to such an extent that frustrating her will is a crime punishable by death.

She should hope that such an attitude does not spread too far.

TIM PAWLENTY: Shut Down Washington’s Open Bar.

IN FORBES: Abolish the TSA.

IT’S LIKE WE’RE LIVING THROUGH SOME HIDEOUS 1970s RERUN: Cops Powerless To Stop Squeegee Guys.

THIS CNBC ITEM ASKS, Where Would You Cut: Social Security, Medicare or Defense? This is actually a false choice, as addressing the deficit will require cutting everywhere. Expect to hear more such false choices over the next few months.

C-SPAN WRITES JOHN BOEHNER TO ASK THAT HOUSE FLOOR DEBATES BE COVERED BY C-SPAN CAMERAS. Here’s the letter (PDF). They email: “As you might know, House floor debates are currently televised by cameras owned, operated, and controlled by the House. Reaction shots and wide shots of the chamber are not permitted under House rules. C-SPAN, as well as other media outlets, must use the floor feed provided by the House in its coverage. Congressional policy does allow for C-SPAN’s coverage of other Congressional events, such as committee hearings, press conferences, speeches, and the like, to be produced by its own cameras. C-SPAN argues that allowing its cameras to be installed in the House chamber would give the public a more complete and transparent view of Congressional debates. If granted permission to install cameras, C-SPAN proposes to make its feed available to accredited media and stream it live on its web site.”

WHAT HATH PUBLIC-HEALTH HYSTERIA WROUGHT? Middle class children suffering rickets. “Middle class children in the south of England are suffering from the ’17th century disease’ rickets as parents cover them in sunscreen and limit time outside in the sunshine, a leading doctor has warned.”

Sure, they’ll go crazy following the sunshine warnings — and then they’ll skip the vaccinations. Vitamin D good. Whooping cough bad. How hard is that, anyway?

MIKE MALONE: “Here’s why Cisco Systems’ bad financial news last week should (maybe) scare the hell out of you.”

PENSION DISASTER UPDATE: Md. facing $33 billion pension gap, analysts say.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Obama Fabulists.

During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama was billed as a cool rationalist — a sober and judicious intellectual so unlike the inattentive and twangy “smoke ’em out” George W. Bush, so rational in contrast to the herky-jerky and frenetic John McCain. Like Senator Kerry, our professor president now laments Americans’ descent into emotion. “Facts and science and argument does [sic] not,” our president moans, “seem to be winning the day.”

The largely academic intellectuals whom Obama brought into his administration promised to bring their erudition and logic both to reading public opinion and to providing commensurate winning solutions. Sympathetic liberal pundits also cited their own empirical thinking as proof of a scientific method that they find sorely lacking in the gush and rancor of talk radio, the Tea Party, and Fox News. But in its first 21 months, this administration has serially proved inept at analyzing public opinion, and seems instead governed by predetermined ideology that trumps basic empiricism.

Indeed.

DAVID POST: “Congress is set to once again consider the Sen Leahy’s Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeit Act, a truly awful bill . . . The bill would allow the Attorney General to institute an in rem action against the domain name of any Internet site “dedicated to infringing activities” — defined to include any site that “engages in” copyright or trademark-infringing activities where those activities, “taken together,” are “central to the activity” of the site. The court would then be authorized to issue injunctions — not against the offending website, but against “the domain name” itself — ordering the domain name registrar where the target site’s domain name was registered, and the domain name registry responsible for maintaining the authoritative database of names for the target site’s top-level domain, to “lock out” the domain name (and therefore prevent access to the site through use of the domain name).”

If I have to choose between getting rid of copyright and getting rid of free speech, I’ll say goodbye to copyright. The folks at Big Content, and their shills like Leahy, seem to want to make me choose.

GAWKER: White House Staffers Got A Bigger Raise Than You Did Last Year.