OUCH: New RNC ad: How many rounds did you golf while the oil was leaking, champ? “A snappy montage illustrating Obama’s ‘bloodless quality’ and ’emotional detachment’ from the spill, as rabidly right-wing NYT columnist Maureen Dowd put it this morning.”
He may be bloodless, but they smell blood. The extended Carville sound bite is just knife-twisting, though.
The Democrats’ latest “extenders” bill didn’t just come up short, it failed spectacularly in the Senate, losing by a vote of 45-52 with 12 Democrat defectors. The bill would have extended unemployment benefits, again delayed Medicare cuts, and added $80 billion to the deficit.
Witness the speedy redemption of Sen. Jim Bunning.
Is it just me, or does The Bunning Redemption sound like a Robert Ludlum title?
GOING GLOBAL: International protest groups take up ‘Tea Party’ flag in Moscow, Tel Aviv and the Hague. “As Tea Party protests pop up in places like Moscow, Tel Aviv and the Hague, Americans may question whether the Tea Party platform can cross international and cultural borders. For activists outside the U.S., the answer is a resounding ‘yes.'”
CAR DISGUST: The 1977-1980 Lincoln Versailles.
SIGN OF THE TIMES: Knoxville City Council approves backyard chickens. “Stephen Smith, a nonpracticing veterinarian, said backyard hens will ‘decrease the (city’s) environmental footprint.'” I wonder how many chickens he’s kept?
ERIC SCHEIE: As a Norwegian-American, I’m Feeling Offended.
MORE ACADEMIC VIOLENCE: Amy Bishop charged with murder for 1986 shooting of her brother. Some background here.
ILYA SOMIN THINKS A CLARENCE THOMAS PRESIDENTIAL RUN WOULD BE A BAD IDEA. Well, did anyone really take the proposal seriously? I mean it was fun, but who gives up a Supreme Court seat to run for President? Not Clarence Thomas, I’m pretty sure.
On the other hand, where does it say Thomas would have to give up his seat to run?
OBVIOUSLY, IT WAS AN ALIEN PROBE: Astronomers Wonder What Just Whizzed by Earth. Probably connected with that alien base on Saturn. I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.
THE IMMUNE SYSTEM and insomnia.
MARKDOWNS ON flashlights and lanterns. As much as our power’s been out, I should stock up on these. Or just put in a generator. Jeez.
BRIAN TAMANAHA: Wake Up, Fellow Law Professors, to the Casualties of Our Enterprise.
It’s grim reading. The observations are raw, bitter, and filled with despair. It is easier to avert our eyes and carry on with our pursuits. But please, take a few moments and force yourself to look at Third Tier Reality, Esq. Never, Exposing the Law School Scam, Jobless Juris Doctor, Temporary Attorney: The Sweatshop Edition, and linked sites. Read the posts and the comments. These sites are proliferating, with thousands of hits.
Look past the occasional vulgarity and disgusting pictures. Don’t dismiss the posters as whiners. To a person they accept responsibility for their poor decisions. But they make a strong case that something is deeply wrong with law schools.
Their complaint is that non-elite law schools are selling a fraudulent bill of goods. Law schools advertise deceptively high rates of employment and misleading income figures. Many graduates can’t get jobs. Many graduates end up as temp attorneys working for $15 to $20 dollars an hour on two week gigs, with no benefits. The luckier graduates land jobs in government or small firms for maybe $45,000, with limited prospects for improvement. A handful of lottery winners score big firm jobs.
And for the opportunity to enter a saturated legal market with long odds against them, the tens of thousands newly minted lawyers who graduate each year from non-elite schools will have paid around $150,000 in tuition and living expenses, and given up three years of income.
Just casualties of the recession? Or more signs of a bursting bubble? The only positive angle I can contribute is this: With a college degree now functioning, essentially, the way a high-school diploma used to, a law degree is the closest graduate equivalent to the traditional liberal-arts B.A. The biggest problem, though, is the staggering expense. Not all law schools are that expensive, but even state schools are pricey now, and for out-of-staters may cost as much as private schools. If I were looking at law school today I absolutely wouldn’t go into debt except for an absolute top school — like Yale, Stanford, Harvard. And even then I’d be wary. The debt is too enormous, and the prospects too uncertain — not only because of the economy, but because of the uncertain future even of big law firms.
Meanwhile, I have a structural solution: Make institutions of higher education partially liable when students are unable to pay student loans. A really strict system would make the school a co-signer, but making it even 5 or 10% liable for missed payments would really change the dynamic. Give schools some skin in the game. . . .
DEATH ON CHIPMAN STREET: The Knoxville News-Sentinel video crew wins an Edward R. Murrow Award for this documentary about the Christian / Newsom murders.
DAN MITCHELL COMPILES The Moocher Index.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE SUN? “What’s special about this latest dip is that the sun is having trouble starting the next solar cycle. The sun began to calm down in late 2007, so no one expected many sunspots in 2008. But computer models predicted that when the spots did return, they would do so in force. Hathaway was reported as thinking the next solar cycle would be a ‘doozy’: more sunspots, more solar storms and more energy blasted into space. Others predicted that it would be the most active solar cycle on record. The trouble was, no one told the sun. . . . Even with the solar cycle finally under way again, the number of sunspots has so far been well below expectations. Something appears to have changed inside the sun, something the models did not predict. But what?”
WILLIAM JACOBSON: Greg Sargent Targets Sharron Angle, Hits WaPo.
WELL, GOOD: Plans to secure the power grid from terrorists, solar storms. My power grid can’t even handle regular storms, lately.
MICHAEL YON: Gobar Gas.
IN THE MAIL: From Thomas Bruscino, A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get Along. Looks very interesting.
BYRON YORK: If we can put a man on the moon, Mr. President, then why can’t we stop the leak? Because the Apollo program was based on a “can do” mentality, and the current administration is based on a “can talk” mentality.
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