WHY NOT? Rollerskating Over Forty.

FOOTBALL GREAT TURNED ACTOR ALEX KARRAS, DEAD AT 77.

A LIBERAL CRITIQUE OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION:   Richard Kahlenberg has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, evaluating the insanity of today’s affirmative action efforts by universities and colleges.  Kahlenberg writes:

Given the evidence for the success of race-neutral alternatives, it’s difficult not to suspect that university officials who defend racial preferences are really after what Stephen Carter has called “racial justice on the cheap.” Racial preferences mostly benefit fairly privileged students of color; 86% of African-Americans at selective colleges were middle or upper class, according to Derek Bok and William Bowen in their book “The Shape of the River.”

There’s more. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s amicus brief in the Fisher case conceded that if it adopted a top 10% plan in North Carolina, racial diversity would increase somewhat. But the university complained that by admitting the top 10% of students from low-income high schools, the average combined SAT score would fall from 1317 to 1262. Is avoiding a possible slip in the annual US News & World Report rankings a strong enough reason to resort to racial preference in admissions?

Bottom line:  Race conscious policies consciously discriminate against non-minorities based on their race (regardless of their income), disproportionately help out upper income minorities, and do little/nothing to help lower income minorities– all in the name of achieving “diversity” while simultaneously keeping SAT scores up.   “Equal” protection of the laws?  Give me a break.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: In a live chat, Prudie advises a woman who must pretend to be her dead roommate’s fiancée.

FAILURE, COMPOUNDED BY LIES: Brutal Ad Hits White House On Libya Timeline Contradictions.

THE FIRST HALF OF THE SUPREME COURT ORAL ARGUMENT IN FISHER V. UT, reported at SCOTUSblog: “The liberals were plainly supportive of the Texas [affirmative action] plan and concerned about the possibility of overruling Grutter.  The conservatives were largely silent.” Presumably, the liberals will quiet down and the conservatives will get noisy as the pro-affirmative action lawyers step up for the second half. Stay tuned.

STILL ON TOP: NFIB v. Sebelius: Five Takes, coauthored with Brannon Denning, is still #1 on the SSRN Top Downloads List.

IN THE NAME OF “DIVERSITY? :  The Supreme Court today hears oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas, another affirmative action case.  At issue: Whether a public university can supplement a race-neutral admissions program (taking the top 10% of high school graduates) with a race-conscious one, when the race-neutral program already yields minority enrollment of over  50 percent?  In other words, is it consonant with the concept of “equal protection” to have a race-conscious policy in the name of achieving “diversity,” when diversity is already clearly achieved?  As the editors of the Wall Street Journal put it,

By 2010, more than half of all UT students were one ethnic minority or another—yet the school continues to claim that it must discriminate on the basis of race to achieve diversity and “critical mass.” How can a minority feel “isolated,” according to the Grutter standard, if half of the student body is minority?

Good question.

HARVEST THE WIND: ‘Soviet-style’ wind farm subsidies to face the axe

BIG BIRD, SMALL PRESIDENT:  The title of this excellent Wall Street Journal editorial says it all.

PETER SCHWEIZER RESPONDS to the Obama Campaign’s efforts to defend its dubious credit-card donation practices.

LIVE ON C-SPAN: Congressional Hearings on the Libya Debacle.

STEPHEN GREEN POLL DANCES:  How Do You Spell Relief? O-I-H-O  (Please note POLL — I don’t want his wife to kill me.)

FAILURE, COMPOUNDED BY A COVERUP: MEDC Removes Video of Obama, Top Dems Praising Failed Battery Company.

OP-ED: Guy who gets a lot of money from PBS thinks PBS should get a lot of money from taxpayers.

NO BIAS WHATSOEVER THERE: President Barack Obama was a guest at wedding of the moderator of the VP debate. (via Drudge.)

CONTEMPORARIES TALKED ABOUT IT: Did Shakespeare have syphilis?  There is a contemporary poem called William His Avisa, which was supposed to be about someone giving Shakespeare the pox.  That is, if you assume Shakespeare was the bard of Avon.  Me?  I’m an unrepentant Stratfordian.  Unredeemed too.

HENRY MILLER: Obama’s Death By Unemployment. “Everything you wanted to know about killing jobs, but were too afraid to ask.”

BUSTED: New O’Keefe video: Obama campaign staffer caught helping activist vote twice.

UPDATE: More from J. Christian Adams: Latest O’Keefe Video Shows Obama Campaign Voter Fraud.

DESPITE AN ENGINE PROBLEM, SpaceX Dragon Capsule Successfully Hooks Up With Space Station.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Big Bird, Small President. “At least he’s finally discovered a second-term agenda.”

UPDATE: Confirmed: Big Bird ad a flop across the entire political spectrum. “Put this another way. When your campaign strategy loses Matt Lauer, Chris Matthews Bob Shrum, and earns four Pinocchios from the Washington Post, where exactly does that leave you? In a fine, feathered mess, that’s where.”

“I TOLD YOU THAT VIDEO STORY WOULDN’T WORK!” Obama meets with Hillary at the White House as damaging Libya attack details emerge.

UPDATE: State Dept.: No Mob In Benghazi; Whistleblower: We Begged For Help. “This new admission contradicts the administration’s previous position that the embassy was subjected to a peaceful protest that was ‘hijacked by extremists.’ Obama administration officials were maintaining this claim nearly a week after the attack, although it was known within 24 hours that the attack was a pre-meditated act of war.” With damning Susan Rice video at the link.

Plus: “Meanwhile, ABC’s Jake Tapper reports that the former top security official at the embassy says Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s bureaucracy rejected his requests, over most of this year, to beef up security at the site in response to credible threats of a terrorist attack.”

Also: Barack Obama’s is no Reality-Based Government.

UPDATE: State Department: We didn’t say all that stuff we said about Benghazi. Perhaps SNL will do a skit with Emily Litella as Hillary Clinton.

MORE: Reuters: State never responded to two requests for more security in Benghazi.

Remember when they told us an Obama Administration would be so much more competent than that dumb cowboy Bush?

A COUNTRY ON THE SKIDS: Striking Miners, Plummeting Currency: Few Good Options for South Africa.

For political economists, Africa wonks, and geopoliticians, this is bad news. Just as the fabulous mineral wealth in South Africa’s mines serves as an engine for the whole economy, labor relations between miners and the mining companies reflect many of the forces that threaten to rip South Africa’s precious democratic experiment to bits.

We’ve written about these problems before. For now at least, the government doesn’t seem to have an answer. The government desperately needs to keep mine profits high so that it can cream off a lot of tax revenue while keeping investors happy.

That basically means squeezing the mine workers in order to transfer some of the wealth they produce to programs that would ostensibly benefit the majority of South Africans who still live mostly outside the formal sector and the modern economy. (We say “ostensibly” because a certain amount of corruption and inefficiency plagues the South African government machine.)

But the miners are well organized and have a history of militancy dating back to the struggle against apartheid and beyond. The miners want the government to squeeze the foreigners and investors more and the workers less—even nationalizing the mines outright.

There are three problems with that politically attractive course. The first problem is that, if the government really did nationalize the mines, it would have to either expropriate them without giving their owners fair compensation, or it would have to pony up and pay a hefty price. The first alternative would thoroughly mess up South Africa’s relationship to the global economy and expose its nationalized companies to all kinds of legal actions around the world. The second would saddle the country with immense debt that would take years to pay off and consume all or even more than all of the hoped-for new revenue.

I’m not optimistic about South Africa’s future. It has a political class so bad that it makes ours look good.

I NEED TO TELL YOU THAT I’VE CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT ONE THING BUT NOT ANOTHER. In case you’re keeping track of the occasional Althouse post here on Instapundit, I feel compelled to tell you that there are 2 things I’ve talked about here that I’ve reconsidered in the last 24 hours. First, unlike seemingly everybody else, I did not think Obama did such a bad job at the debate. So I rewatched the debate, and I stand by my original observation (and I think I know why Obama’s supporters decided to adopt the strange talking point that their guy was terrible).

Second, I deplored the resurrection of the 2007 video of Obama stirring up racial grievances. Yesterday, I read this Thomas Sowell column highlighting a specific, glaring lie, and I completely changed my mind. I still think The Daily Caller presented the material poorly, but I think what Obama did, what Sowell explains, does deserve our attention now. As I say at my home blog: “Obama lied, blatantly and for the purpose of making black people feel discriminated against. That’s evil.”