SO I WAS JUST ON DATECHGUY’S RADIO SHOW and it was fun, and he had plenty of ads. But I noticed that they were mostly local. He’s on a 50,000-watt radio station that reaches well into New Hampshire, and I would have expected more political ads. Maybe it’s just too early — but if you’re doing radio ad buys for the New Hampshire primaries, you might want to give him a look.

WASHINGTON POST: Aspects of Gingrich divorce story distorted.

While the thrust of the story about his first divorce is not in dispute — Gingrich’s first wife, Jackie Battley, has said previously that the couple discussed their divorce while she was in the hospital in 1980 — other aspects of it appear to have been distorted through constant retelling.

Most significantly, Battley wasn’t dying at the time of the hospital visit; she is alive today. Nor was the divorce discussion in the hospital ‘a surprise’ to Battley, as many accounts have contended. Battley, not Gingrich, had requested a divorce months earlier, according to Jackie Gingrich Cushman, the couple’s second daughter. Further, Gingrich did not serve his wife with divorce papers on the day of his visit (unlike a subpoena, divorce papers aren’t typically “served”).

Interesting that the press is moving to clear this up now.

SHOWING THEIR USUAL SHREWD BUSINESS JUDGMENT: RIAA Thinking Of Backing Righthaven.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Potemkin Village: Ezra Levant took an infrared camera down to Occupy Toronto and discovered nearly all the tents are empty. Why should it be a surprise that a movement made up of people who want to be given things without working can’t seem to keep people on the job?

SYRIA: Is Assad toast? “In the past, a more vigorous Syrian regime would have lashed out against its critics and rivals by unleashing its terrorist assets. But to date, Hezbollah has kept its head down, balancing its support of Damascus with the recognition that the regional Sunni majority has come to detest a regime that has so far slaughtered upward of 3,500 people, most of them Sunni. Hamas is doing its best to distance itself from Assad and is looking to relocate—maybe to Qatar, or even to Islamist-friendly Tunisia.” What? Islamist-friendly Tunisia? I thought Tunisia was full of hope and change.

SAYUNCLE reviews shooting bags.

I’LL BE ON DATECHGUY’S RADIO SHOW in just a few minutes. You can listen online here. Plus — follow the first link for details — if you’re in the area you can join his one-year anniversary afterparty.

AT AMAZON, pre-Black Friday markdowns in Electronics.

GREASING THE SOLAR SKIDS: “So it turns out that Solyndra may be just the tip of the iceberg that is the Obama administration’s politically charged energy-loan scandal.”

#OCCUPYHOLLYWOOD: MORE ON THE “STOP ONLINE PIRACY ACT,” which is in fact an Internet censorship act.

Reader Mike Lee writes:

This is the biggest power grab by Hollywood since DMCA.

Lamar Smith, Republican from Texas is one of the sponsors.

He refuses all feedback on his web site unless you put in a Zip+4 from his district.

Here’s a Zip+4 in Lamar Smith’s district:

78028-

Contact link for Lamar:

http://lamarsmith.house.gov/Contact/

Please publish. We must let this guy know that he should never weigh in on a tech issue again no matter how much money he gets from Hollywood.

Yeah, I was pretty hard on him earlier and I see no reason to feel differently. This is a power-grab by Hollywood — and it’s a sellout by Lamar Smith, who took a lot of Hollywood money. Is it too late for a primary challenge?

UPDATE: Reader James Ruhland writes: “It’s not too late for a Primary Challenge. Prospective challengers in Lamar! Smith’s district can look here for the rules.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Removed the Zip+4 because it identifies an individual address.

JERRY POURNELLE: Health Insurance And The Newt Bond.

HMM: Armed Services Dem views Libya as model for future missions. “The U.S.- and NATO-led intervention in Libya’s civil war provides a blueprint for future uses of American military force, the top House Armed Services Committee Democrat said Friday. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) on Friday called the operation, which led to the ouster and death of Moammar Gadhafi, ‘the biggest’ American foreign policy success during his eight terms in Congress.”

Meanwhile, back in Libya: “While the representatives of the Zawiya rebels and the Wershifanna on the NTC can agree on a peace deal, they are having a hard time selling it to the young guys out on the coast road who have been shooting at each other. . . . The NTC has announced that it will disarm (or at least disband) the dozens of rebel militias and create security forces (police and military). But actually doing this is complicated by the tribal militias and growing number of ‘payback’ attacks on real or imagined Kaddafi supporters. Restoring law and order is going to be very difficult, especially since Kaddafi maintained order largely with secret police and deals with tribal leaders.”

SO A 16 GB FLASH CARD FOR $15.99 is a pretty good deal. But I remember how much a 16GB hard drive used to cost, and then it seems like a ridiculously unbelievable deal. If only everything got better and cheaper they way electronics do. . . . .

UPDATE: A reader emails: “The things that don’t are usually heavily regulated by the government. Coincidence?” Probably not. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Joe Carl White emails: “I remember buying a 16 *KB* memory module for my Sinclair ZX81 in high school for more (even unadjusted for inflation). That wouldn’t be enough to hold two copies of your logo.” Heh.

LIFEHACKER: This Is How You Should Cook Your Turkey Next Thursday (Or You Could Waste Hours of Your Life).

ARE THE RECALLS HURTING WISCONSIN’S ECONOMY?

BRIAN TAMANAHA: More Ominous Signs of the Coming Crunch for Law Schools.

In June I wrote a post about the coming crunch for law schools, which asserted that law schools should anticipate a significant decline in the number of applicants in coming years. This will be especially problematic because law schools have substantially increased the size of their faculties in the past decade, making it hard to trim expenses to meet a decline in revenues. As the number of applicants falls, a significant proportion of law schools will experience a drop in the quality of students or a fall in revenue, and many will suffer both simultaneously.

Three recent signs indicate that this will happen more quickly and to a greater degree than I suggested in the post. The first indication is the disclosure that every student in the 2011 entering class of Illinois law school, including students admitted off the wait list, received tuition discounts. When everyone gets a scholarship, that constitutes a de facto tuition reduction, an indication that a law school is having trouble filling its seats at the list price. Given that Illinois is an excellent law school, it is likely that other schools are in the same position.

The second sign is more serious. The October 2011 LSAT, which is the highest volume test for people considering law school, had 16.9% fewer takers than the previous year. It was the lowest number of people to sit for the October exam in a decade. And it was the fifth straight LSAT administered to show a substantial decline from the same test the year before.

Read the whole thing. Is legal education a leading indicator for the higher education bubble’s collapse?

AMAZON LOSING MONEY ON KINDLE FIRE: Yeah, but I imagine they make it back in Kindle book sales.

HACKERS: Foreign hackers targeted U.S. water plant in apparent malicious cyber attack, expert says. “Foreign hackers caused a pump at an Illinois water plant to fail last week, according to a preliminary state report. Experts said the cyber-attack, if confirmed, would be the first known to have damaged one of the systems that supply Americans with water, electricity and other essentials of modern life.”

WELL, THERE’S A CONFIDENCE-BUILDER: Friday Night Irony: According To The Fed, Just Over One More Year Of ZIRP Will Lead To 38.36% Annual Inflation.

SOUNDS LIKE A 1986 RERUN MIGHT WORK: Poll: Voters Want Taxes Simpler but Not Flat. “A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows that 77% think it’s at least somewhat important to replace the entire federal tax code with something simpler. Only 17% say it’s not important, while five percent (5%) are not sure. Those figures include 44% who say it’s Very Important and just four percent (4%) who say it’s Not at All Important.”

FRANK J. FLEMING still kicking Bill Maher’s ass.

QUESTION: Is Marriage Losing Importance Around the World?

REPORT: Hybrids Safer Than Conventional Cars.

IF YOU’VE ALREADY BOUGHT THROUGH THE AMAZON LINKS ON THIS PAGE, thanks very much! If not, please consider doing your holiday shopping that way. You’ll support this blog without it costing you a penny. Thanks!

CATHY YOUNG: The Politics Of Sexual Assault: Why is the federal government pushing to reduce the due process rights of college students?

Nearly two years ago, in February 2010, University of North Dakota student Caleb Warner was thrown out of school with a three-year ban on reapplying after a campus disciplinary panel found he had violated criminal laws by sexually assaulting a fellow student. In fact, Warner was never actually charged with a crime in the justice system—but his accuser, Jessica Murray, was. In May of the same year, the Grand Forks, North Dakota police department formally charged her with filling a false report after concluding its investigation. (Murray now resides in California and has never appeared in court to answer the charge.) Yet Warner remained banned from campus until last month, when he was finally reinstated after the indefatigable FIRE—the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education — interceded to publicize his plight.

Now, some in Washington are pushing for measures that would create more such travesties.

Red meat for misandrists.