LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: IOWA LAW REVIEW SYMPOSIUM: The Future of Legal Education.
Archive for 2011
November 3, 2011
FORD FOCUS ELECTRIC PRICED AT UNDER $40,000. Okay, five bucks under.
PROFESSOR JACOBSON TO POLITICO: Show Us Your Sources Or Shut Up! With a RatherGate reference. He’s absolutely right that you can’t trust MSM on political scandals involving Republicans. Or, as the John Edwards affair demonstrates, Democrats.
UPDATE: More specifics in this PJ Media report, though I’d still like to see names named, even from people I trust.
ANOTHER UPDATE: And, apparently, I was right to want more specifics. See the correction.
NOW LAUNCHED: Libertarianism.org.
CONDI RICE WRITES ON managing our relationship with India.
IN THE MAIL: From Catherine Crier, Patriot Acts: What Americans Must Do to Save the Republic.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Trip to the Grocery Store Costs You More. “As if Americans haven’t noticed, their trip to the grocery store over the past couple of years has cost them more. How much more? Between 12-20% depending on what you purchase.”
UPDATE: Reader Ken Alwes writes: “It’s a good thing that the cost of food and energy are excluded from the government’s formula for tracking inflation, otherwise we might be experiencing an inflationary cycle. That formula makes sense, really. I don’t know anyone who buys food or energy.”
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Comprehensive EuroFail. “Having spent months warning readers about the incompetence of Europe’s political leadership and the incoherence of its institutional structures, I thought I had seen the worst. But for even this hardened and cynical observer who has had years of watching European ineptitude the last 24 hours have been a revelation: the Europeans are totally at sea. . . . Europe’s institutions cannot cope. Decades of building intricate rules and complicated institutions have failed to create an institutional architecture than can resolve basic disputes.”
They have mastered the art of ineptocracy, which brings with it the inevitable fruit. We, alas, have eagerly been following in their footsteps, especially over the past two or three years.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Colleges Ignore Disclosure Rules. “Many colleges and universities blatantly ignore a federal requirement to disclose Pell Grant students’ graduation rates, and many institutions loosely follow other disclosure laws, giving prospective students confusing and often meaningless information.”
MODERN RELATIONSHIPS: “Why Does He Prefer Porn Over Me?” I dunno. Obviously the porn is doing something for him that you’re not. But the basic rule of journalism is that if women look at porn it’s either (1) liberating; or (2) evidence of male inadequacy; or (3) both. Men are not given the benefit of similar positive spin.
HAPPY VETERAN’S DAY: “Gunsmith Bob builds a hell of a good 1911. There aren’t many 1911s that are match-tight, shoot into an inch or less at 25 yards, and can still be taken right out of the box and run through a 2-day, thousand-round class without cleaning.” And I know Gunsmith Bob, and he’s a cool guy.
FOR NEW LAW STUDENTS: From Barry Friedman and John Goldberg, Open Book: Succeeding on Exams From the First Day of Law School. There’s also a website.
SO RETURN THE FAVOR: Looks Like Congress Has Declared War On The Internet.
ISLAMISTS: French Magazine Publishes Cartoon Of Mohammed, Gets Firebombed.
Here’s the cartoon. It’s important that such actions lead to the “offending” speech being seen by more people, rather than fewer. Incentives matter.
DONALD DOUGLAS: Beating Righthaven.
LEGISLATION: The bill Frank Luntz calls “legislative perfection.”
FAST & FURIOUS IN KNOXVILLE? More here.
UPDATE: Poll: Voters Viewing Occupy Wall Street Unfavorably. “The poll, released today, show 30 percent of voters surveyed view the movement favorably, 39 percent unfavorably, with an additional 30 percent not hearing enough to have an opinion.” To be fair, they’re not polling that much worse than Obama. And they’re way more popular than Congress. But then again, they’re just crapping on a few police cars and public parks, not the whole country . . . .
ANOTHER UPDATE: Occupy Oakland seizes port, launches homemade bombs at police. Plus, low-expectations: “Before the building takeover shortly before midnight Wednesday, Quan said she was happy the crowd — which police estimate hit 7,000 people at one point — protested all day with only a small amount of destruction and violence.”
Plus, a truck driver on the scene comments on the victims of the port shutdown:
“These people are out here trying to make a living. I get paid per run, I don’t get paid by the hour,” he said. “My personal opinion? The 1 percent down here is protesting, the 99 percent is down here working.”
Non-workers putting workers out of work in the name of workers. That’s how it usually works. On the other hand, my sympathy for Oakland longshoremen is limited.
RETIRING SEN. JAMES WEBB (D-VA) GOES OUT SWINGING — AT OBAMA: “He suggests the administration is not being ‘serious’ and believes the White House seems to have “misquoted” Warren Buffett in some of its proposals. Webb won’t even say whether he’d stump next year for Obama in Virginia, a state critical to the president’s reelection hopes. And he expressed frustration that Senate Democratic leaders continue to bring pieces of the president’s plan forward even though they know full well the proposals will fail.”
LARRY ELDER ON PRESS BIAS AND the differential treatment of Republican vs. Democratic sex scandals. “Black conservatives — along with white male Christian conservatives and child molesters — remain one of the few groups to which the usual rules of civility and restraint do not apply. . . . Yes, the media do indeed put front-runners — all of whom willingly enter the political fray — under an intense microscope. And properly so. But not all microscopes are created equal.”
Mickey Kaus adds a twist.