FAKE THREATS? Strong Circumstantial Evidence That Brett Kimberlin Is Astroturfing the Alleged “Threats” Against Him and His Allies.
Related: Kimberlin, Rauhauser, SWATting, And Some Further Thoughts On Free Speech.
And Stacy McCain remains relentless.
UPDATE: Just call me “Exhibit E!” Note the fiercely threatening expression.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Speedway Bomber and political activist Brett Kimberlin launches lawfare terrorism against bloggers.
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Health, Fitness & Dieting.
THE PROBLEM WITH PROTON PUMP INHIBITORS. “While using the drugs for short periods may not be problematic, they tend to breed dependency, experts say, leading patients to take them for far longer than the recommended 8 to 12 weeks; some stay on them for life. . . . But many leading gastroenterologists are convinced that the benefits of the drugs outweigh their risks. They say the drugs prevent serious complications of GERD, like esophageal and stomach ulcers and peptic strictures, which occur when inflammations causes the lower end of the esophagus to narrow.”
UTAH: David Kirkham emails: “Today is the Utah primary. My sister got two, yes two, absentee ballots in the mail with DIFFERENT voter ballot numbers and bar codes. I couldn’t believe it so I went to her house saw it for myself. We called our State Senator, Curt Bramble, to alert him of the problem. He is a bulldog. He has been growling at the County Clerk’s office all day. So far they have admitted to 12 duplicate ballots (disturbingly, no one but my sister has come forward yet). We are all for increased voter participation, but I think we need to look carefully into voting by mail to make sure elections are fair, open, and transparent. Lest anyone think this isn’t a big deal, my sister lost her race for city council by 5 votes.”
Well, it could just be a glitch, but when the establishment has closed ranks this way, irregularities do seem suspicious.
WHICH IS WHY I FIND THE LEFTY-PUNDIT CLAIM THAT SUCH A RULING WOULD DELEGITIMIZE THE COURT RISIBLE: NBC/WSJ poll: More would be pleased if health law ruled unconstitutional.
The bodies that should be “delegitimized” by ObamaCare are the Executive and the Legislative, who rammed it through using shady procedures in the teeth of popular opposition. How come those pundits aren’t addressing that?
I was going to write a piece entitled A Living Constitution for the 21st Century. Lane’s column says what I was going to say, which means, I guess, that now I don’t have to write it.
CALCULATED: The Annual Cost of Charging Your iPad.
CHINA’S BLOGGERS PUSH FOR CHANGE, one click at a time. “These blogger-activists are far from revolutionary. Like the incoming leaders , many of them are children of Communist Party officials. They are patriots who love China, but want its institutions to work better and on behalf of the people. They take on corrupt corporations as much as the government. They are just as concerned about kidnapped children and AIDS victims as voting rights and free elections. The best known among them, like scholar Yu Jianrong, whose microblog tries to connect begging street children with their parents, have more than a million followers. And they must contend with ever-changing censorship rules. Many of the most popular microbloggers have had their accounts temporarily suspended or shut down entirely, after the government launched a crackdown this year on Internet ‘rumors,’ following aggressive reporting on the case of ousted Politburo member Bo Xilai. They also risk death threats and harassment to raise civic awareness, bring powerful people to book and give a voice to the voiceless.”
LET’S GET TANKED: Small-town Cops Pile Up On Useless Military Gear.
Small police departments across America are collecting battlefield-grade arsenals thanks to a program that allows them to get their hands on military surplus equipment – amphibious tanks, night-vision goggles, and even barber chairs or underwear – at virtually no cost, except for shipment and maintenance.
Over the last five years, the top 10 beneficiaries of this “Department of Defense Excess Property Program” included small agencies such as the Fairmount Police Department. It serves 7,000 people in northern Georgia and received 17,145 items from the military. The cops in Issaquah, Washington, a town of 30,000 people, acquired more than 37,000 pieces of gear.
In 2011 alone, more than 700,000 items were transferred to police departments for a total value of $500 million. This year, as of May 15, police departments already acquired almost $400 million worth of stuff. Last year’s record would have certainly been shattered if the Arizona Republic hadn’t revealed in early May that a local police department used the program to stockpile equipment – and then sold the gear to others, something that is strictly forbidden. Three weeks after the revelation, the Pentagon decided to partly suspend distribution of surplus material until all agencies could put together an up-to-date inventory of all the stuff they got through the years. A second effort, which gives federal grants to police departments to purchase equipment, is still ongoing, however. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, since 9/11, the grants have totaled $34 billion.
The country’s in the very best of hands. I have some related thoughts here.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Planning My Lesbian-Jewish Wedding. “When we became full-fledged members of our synagogue and reserved the chapel for our wedding it dawned on me: I have no idea what a lesbian Jewish wedding would look like. . . . I’m more drawn to a tea-length dress with minimal poof, while Chriss wouldn’t mind a floor-length gown with a train.”
YOU DON’T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO SEE WHICH WAY THE WIND IS BLOWING: Claire McCaskill Will Not Attend Democratic National Convention.
ANN ALTHOUSE: Let’s take a closer look at Jonathan Turley’s reaction to the internet’s response to his Court packing plan. “I am passionate and serious about calling bullshit on law professors. And I’m doing it again.”
I made a concrete proposal for reform, and Turley didn’t mention it. I’m hurt. Obviously, I should have been less civil. But it was inspired by this from Adrian Vermeule.
UPDATE: Reader Dan Harlan writes: “While I like your plan for Supreme Court reform, I have to ask a question. Why should any justices be law school graduates? One of the principles of our government is civilian control of the military, with the President as Commander-in-Chief. Why should any of the people who decide what the law means be lawyers? But then I’m also in favor of banning lawyers from Congress, too. Maybe then we would get laws that normal people can actually understand.”
Well, possibly. Ever attended a condo board meeting?
Meanwhile, Charlie Martin emails about an earlier Turley embarrassment.
MAYBE THIS IS WHY THEY DIDN’T CHARGE HIM? George Zimmerman Passed Police Lie Detector Test The Day After Trayvon Martin Killing. “Investigators concluded that he ‘has told substantially the complete truth in regards to this examination.'”
U.VA. UPDATE: University of Virginia Reinstates President. Well, that was an odd interlude. But as Mead notes below, the realities haven’t changed.
More here.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Support Your Man.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: University of Virginia: Only The Beginning.
As the NYT article points out, universities all over the country are facing a world of rapid change. This is going to be hard to face. Universities are structured to adapt slowly—if at all. Typically, university presidents have only limited controls, while faculties have a lot of power to resist. Management is usually decentralized, with different schools and departments governed under different rules and accountable to different constituencies. The fiscal arrangements of most universities are both byzantine and opaque; it can be very hard for administrators to understand or properly and fairly value the true cost and contributions of different parts of the institution.
The structural problem our universities face is this: confronted with the need for sweeping, rapid changes, administrators and boards have two options — and they are both bad. One option is to press ahead to make rapid changes. This risks — and in many (perhaps most) cases will cause — enormous upheavals; star professors will flounce off. Alumni will be offended. Waves of horrible publicity will besmirch the university’s name.
Option two: you can try to make your reforms consensual — watering down, delaying, carefully respecting existing interests and pecking orders. If you do this, you will have a peaceful, happy campus . . . until the money runs out.
Say, did I mention that The Higher Education Bubble is out on Kindle today?
UPDATE: An interesting colloquy on for-profits, non-profits, and gainful employment. “Why would you exclude gainful employment from the evaluation of not-for-profit institutions, which is what the President did?”
ANOTHER UPDATE: From Mead’s comments: “The irony of all this is that Helen Dragas was appointed by Democratic Governor Tim Kaine. She is, or was, a highly respected business woman who many felt had a shot at being Virginia’s first female governor. Another Dem tripped up by the slaves of the blue model.”
LEGAL EDUCATION UDPATE: At Arizona State, A Residency Program For Lawyers. “Arizona State University plans to launch a nonprofit teaching law firm next summer to hire some of its recent graduates and provide on-the-job training – a move the law school’s dean said is motivated by a desire to serve students, not to boost the employment data frequently used in law school rankings.” It’s a good idea, though it’ll affect the rankings, too.
Perhaps, as Brian Tamanaha suggests, this sort of thing can be substituted for the third year instead of being set up post-graduation.
Related: ABA Employment Data Will Fundamentally Reshape Legal Education. “The lifeblood of the entire legal education establishment, including elite law schools, is federal student loans. Our students get the same generous terms as graduates of medical and dental schools, who are not struggling to make six figure incomes. The graphs above suggest that a large proportion of our students will be on Income-Based Repayment (IBR), which is — functionally — insurance in the event a high income fails to materialize in the years following graduation. The downside risk of that insurance — lack of repayment of expected principal and interest — is borne by U.S. taxpayers.” It’s no picnic for the borrower, either, though.
DON’T BE SILLY, IT WAS THE PRODUCT OF A DESIGNER: The Evolution Of The Convertible.
POT, KETTLE: Rose Garden Obama slams Romney for not answering media questions. “President Barack Obama’s campaign issued an attack video Friday ripping Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for evading the media’s immigration-related questions. The video was released even though immigration activists are still seeking answers about the president’s June 15 proclamation in the White House’s Rose Garden, where the president pointedly declined to answer The Daily Caller’s questions about how the policy impacts American workers.”
Related: Atty. Gen. Eric Holder Dodges Fast-and-Furious Question In Boston.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: You know who could never “have it all?” Men.
RELATIONSHIPS: Advice from a Man on His 30th Wedding Anniversary.
THE PROBLEM WITH PIPELINES: “North America has a long history of oil production and processing. Decades of producing oil and consuming lots of petroleum products have left the continent with a pretty good system of pipelines and refineries… but pipelines are annoyingly stagnant things that tend to stay where you build them. And it turns out that the pipelines of yesterday are in the wrong places to serve the oil fields and refineries of today.”
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