ELIE MYSTAL: Student Loan Debt: What’s The Worst That Could Happen? “Whatever. My hopes for paying it off or owning property pretty much rest on my ability to hit the lotto. Most likely, I’ll die still owing money for law school. And that will be the story of me.”
More from Megan McArdle: “Trying to stay judgement-proof for 60 years is likely to be more miserable than repaying your loans.”
RECOVERY SUMMER II: Dow falls below 12k; stocks head for 6th down week.
PROFESSOR JACOBSON: Commence Operation Counterweight.
SARAH HOYT on fear of flying.
REPORT: Personal electronic devices really can interfere with airplane electronics. There are still doubters, though. I’d say that given the near-certainty that somebody will always forget to turn off a cellphone in flight, the aircraft electronics need to be designed with that in mind.
AT AMAZON, sales and specials on groceries.
CHINA: U.S. is already defaulting.
CHANGE: “Falling real estate prices are eating away at home equity. The percentage of their homes that Americans own is near its lowest point since World War II, the Federal Reserve said Thursday. The average homeowner now has 38 percent equity, down from 61 percent a decade ago.”
GENOME PROJECTS GETTING BIGGER. A lot bigger.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “One German organic farm has killed twice as many people as the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Gulf Oil spill combined.” Reaction: “Crickets.” I say, ban organic foods. We can’t know if they’re safe!
TO HELP US GET PAST WEINERGATE, instead of MoveOn, there’s SitOn.org.
WHEN WORDS LOSE THEIR MEANING: Justices Say Fleeing Police By Car Is A “Violent Felony.” It’s one thing to say that a particular episode might be dangerous enough to approximate violence, but the notion that fleeing is inherently violent strikes me as bizarre. Note the Scalia dissent.
WHY MEN send pictures of their penises.
PETER SUDERMAN: Senate Democrats United In Opposition to Fixing Medicaid.
TOUGH LOVE: Gates to NATO: America is getting sick of fighting for you people who won’t defend yourselves. Plus, from the comments: “When you coddle and shelter kids, do you get good teenagers or spoiled punks? What about when you coddle and shelter sovereign states for decades?”
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Inspector General report rips NRC chair as abusive, misleading, and political.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Kenneth Anderson: Is Higher Education Debt, Or Equity? We could make it more equity-like simply by putting educational institutions on the hook for some percentage of unpaid student loans.
UPDATE: In response to an earlier post, reader John Fast writes: “The answer is not to fight the strict rules on for-profit education, but to demand that the same rules apply to non-profit education as well.”
VIRGINIA POSTREL ON THE LIGHT BULB BAN: “Even if you care nothing about individual freedom or aesthetic pleasure, this ham-handed approach wouldn’t pass muster in a classroom at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. As pollution control, it’s horribly inefficient.”
Plus this: “The bulb ban makes sense only one of two ways: either as an expression of cultural sanctimony, with a little technophile thrown in for added glamour, or as a roundabout way to transfer wealth from the general public to the few businesses with the know-how to produce the light bulbs consumers don’t really want to buy. Or, of course, as both.”
UPDATE: Reader Ric Phil Manhard writes: “The first order of business after the ban takes effect is a full, independent bulb audit of all Congressional offices, and for good measure, the homes of all members of Congress and their staffs. Penalties for possession and use of outlaw bulbs should be severe, possibly including jail time. After all, they are killing the planet, right? What penalty could be too much for such a heinous crime?’
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Rick Wolf emails: “Glenn, how long before the Obama administration starts handing out light bulb waivers to favored constituents?”
MORE: Sorry, that’s Phil Manhard, not Ric.
HEY, WAIT A MINUTE: “Affordable Housing” Means Your House Is Worth Less. “Sure, increased mortgage rates can be quite the deterrent to homebuyers, especially first-time homebuyers. But so can high housing prices.”
STEVE CHAPMAN: The Persecution Of John Edwards. What Edwards did probably shouldn’t be a felony, but on the other hand, Edwards was a major champion of campaign-finance law, so it kind of serves him right. And maybe campaign contributors ought to be able to sue candidates who actively conceal major disqualifications, and who use campaign funds for personal purposes. It’s a species of fraud, right?
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
