IF FACEBOOK MADE A PHONE, would you buy it? No. It would probably randomly call people on my contacts list to tell them what I’m doing.

WELL, THIS IS AN EMBARRASSMENT FOR THE LOCAL BENCH AND BAR: Flawed handling of torture-slaying cases raises questions about rest of judge’s docket. “Blackwood said a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe of Baumgartner revealed the former judge confessed to a doctor in 2008 that he was a pill addict and had been committing crimes almost daily until that investigation forced him off the bench earlier this year.” Is it really possible that nobody knew about this before?

UPDATE: A lawyer/reader emails: “Knew? Yes. Willing to say something? No. He’s Baumgartner. No one wants to take on a judge, generally. Co-workers fear being fired. Lawyers fear retribution.”

You’d think someone could have at least tipped off an investigative reporter or something.

ANOTHER UPDATE: So I wonder. In the Henry Granju case, the Knox County law enforcement apparatus seemed extremely uninterested in doing any digging. Now we find out about Judge Baumgartner’s prescription drug issues at about the same time, and I wonder: Were they uninterested in doing digging in Henry’s case because they feared they’d find a connection to Baumgartner? The circles of prescription-drug addicts and peddlers in Knox County aren’t that big, so it wouldn’t be shocking to worry about that. Perhaps we’ll find out.

CHANGE: Obama, Congress restore U.S. horse-slaughter industry.

PJTV: Victor Davis Hanson on Immigration, Multiculturalism and Amnesty.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Congressional Insider Trading: Will Someone Please Guard the Damn Guardians? “Perhaps it’s a drafting error. Unfortunately, when it comes to policing their own ethics, all of Congress’s errors seem to run in the same direction.”

It’s like they’re just trying to give the appearance of propriety.

TEN NEW PLUG-IN CARS for 2012.

JOHN PAUL CASSIL: The Recession And The Menacing Higher Education Bubble.

APPLE: Nobody Ever Went Broke With Money In The Bank.

DRIVING the new Porsche 911.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on Toys & Games. Also on Video Games.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Illegal immigration: Are Obama deportations truly aimed at ‘criminals’? “US says it deported a record 216,000 ‘criminal aliens’ in fiscal 2011, but immigration court statistics show a drop in criminal deportation proceedings from the Bush years. How do those square?”

REPORT: Singularity Summit 2011, Part I.

YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH, but not a right to respect.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Dwindling Power Of A College Degree. “Until the early 1970s, less than 11 percent of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them could get a decent job. Today nearly a third have college degrees, and a higher percentage of them graduated from nonelite schools. A bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability. To get a good job, you have to have some special skill — charm, by the way, counts — that employers value. But there’s also a pretty good chance that by some point in the next few years, your boss will find that some new technology or some worker overseas can replace you.”

Of course, one reason why a bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability is that a bachelor’s degree has gotten much easier to get, as part of a conscious strategy of giving everyone the markers of intelligence and capability. Remember Reynolds’ Law:

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.

It bears repeating. Meanwhile, on my earlier posts about vocational training reader Bob Crosley writes:

Can’t talk about promoting vocational training and skilled trades without talking about Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe and his web site to promote vocational work.

Also, check out this YouTube video of a speech he made talking about working with your hands and vocational work.

And the book “Shop Class as Soul Craft” is about leaving the corporate world behind and the unique satisfaction you can get from working with your hands.

It’s a great book. As he says when he went from running a think tank to repairing motorcycles: “In the corporate world, everyone second guesses what you do. But a motorcycle either runs, or doesn’t run. You either fixed it, or you didn’t.”

It’s a bit of a passion of mine, and I work hard to make sure my sons grow up respecting those that work with their hands.

Yeah. To be fair, my grandpa was happy to get out of the service station where he started as a teenager and become an oil company exec, which he did in spite of barely having a high-school diploma. But he never looked down on the people who worked with their hands. Somehow, as Jay Leno points out, we got a different attitude somewhere.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME anybody saw Jon Corzine?

UPDATE: Reader Dwayne Warren writes: “Maybe he’s guest-hosting at MSNBC.” Heh.

FASTER, PLEASE: SCIPIO Trial Shows Cardiac Stem Cell Benefits for Heart Failure Patients. “Heart failure patients with a previous myocardial infarction showed an average of 12 percent improvement one year following an investigative treatment that infused them with their own stem cells. The results triple the 4 percent improvement average the researchers projected for the Phase I trial. Results of the trial have been published in The Lancet and concurrently presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Orlando, Fla. They are the first report of administering subjects’ own cardiac stem cells in humans. Previous studies have used stem cells harvested from bone marrow.”

I’m surprised this hasn’t gotten more attention.

YOUR BRAIN KNOWS A LOT MORE THAN YOU REALIZE. “Only a tiny fraction of the brain is dedicated to conscious behavior. The rest works feverishly behind the scenes regulating everything from breathing to mate selection. In fact, neuroscientist David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine argues that the unconscious workings of the brain are so crucial to everyday functioning that their influence often trumps conscious thought.”

YALE LAW STUDENTS PLANNING TO PROTEST CLARENCE THOMAS? “It’s not even clear what the basis for the protests would be. Ancient allegations by Anita Hill? Justice Thomas’s jurisprudence, which happens to be conservative? Hardly compelling stuff. This might explain why Justice Thomas is welcomed, not protested, when he visits other law schools. One would expect his alma mater to treat him at least as well as similarly situated institutions.” I blame racism.

FROM HOWARD LOVY, Nanotechnology news bites.

STANDING UP AGAINST BIGOTRY: Legendary investor to Obama: Is all this class warfare rhetoric really necessary? “Like many others, I hoped that your election would bring a salutary change of direction to the country, despite what more than a few feared was an overly aggressive social agenda. And I cannot credibly blame you for the economic mess that you inherited, even if the policy response on your watch has been profligate and largely ineffectual. . . . But what I can justifiably hold you accountable for is you and your minions’ role in setting the tenor of the rancorous debate now roiling us that smacks of what so many have characterized as “class warfare”. Whether this reflects your principled belief that the eternal divide between the haves and have-nots is at the root of all the evils that afflict our society or just a cynical, populist appeal to his base by a president struggling in the polls is of little importance.”

WHEN ILLITERATE YAHOO STATE LEGISLATORS attack.

UPDATE: “My Governor’s a Jedi.”

NO WONDER THEY’VE BEEN RUNNING SCARED: FBI Criminal Informant Complicit in Brian Terry’s Death.

HMM: Unearthed: Gingrich Makes the Case for GSE’s on Freddie Mac’s Web Site in 2007/2008. Key line: “This is not a point of view one normally associates with conservatives.”

READER DAVID BRIGHT asks me to plug this novel by a nephew. Merry Christmas, nephew!