HOW THE ROBERT FROST ESTATE uses copyright to crush use of “Stopping By Woods.” In a now-rare Virginia Postrel blog-post.

FOR RICKY GERVAIS, a Twitter self-beclowning incident.

MORE PEOPLE WHO DON’T LIKE FREE SPEECH: British Press Report Brings Out the Speech Nannies. You can bet that these people have something to hide — or anticipate having something to hide in the near future.

The “good” people, the “helping” people, the “nurturing” people and the idealists are usually the ones eager to punish people who say hurtful things. The left recognizes this when Andrew Sullivan’s dreaded “Christianists” try to stop the teaching of evolution on the grounds that it is false and destructive. But when the left’s most cherished ideas are rudely and nastily challenged, the hammer comes down.

“Nice” people who want to limit your freedom of speech so that only “nice” ideas will be expressed are some of the most horribly misguided and dangerous people around. They must be relentlessly mocked and resisted so that human freedom can survive.

They are not nice people, and they do not mean well. They are bad people, cynically trying to secure their own power against challenge. And, most of all, they are the very thing they affect to despise most: Hypocrites.

And may I say that the exaggerated outrage over the “phone hacking” scandal is particularly hypocritical given the culture of pervasive surveillance of citizens that the British government — ahead even of our own — has established over the past decade or two. Those criticizing the press here are in no position to complain about invasions of privacy.

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THE NEXT BIG THING: CoEd Fraternities And Sororities.

If women live in a fraternity, is it still a fraternity? Can a sorority house men?

Most people would probably say no. At least, not by today’s standards.

But officials at Trinity College in Connecticut aren’t thinking about today’s standards. They’re thinking about the standards of 2023. That’s why they’re requiring Greek life to go coed.

It’s part of a strategic plan to improve the sense of community and image of the college, where students tend to run in cliques, retention rates have declined slightly, and social culture has grown out of proportion to academic life, said Frederick Alford, dean of students.

It’s sounding more and more like the world of Fred Saberhagen’s 1985 political-correctness dystopia in Love Conquers All. But the world’s looking like that a lot — at least when it’s not looking like Fallen Angels.

FAILING UPWARD: Investor’s Business Daily: For Susan Rice, Benghazi Was Kenya 1998 Deja Vu.

A mission was attacked after warnings, Americans were killed after security requests were denied, and a diplomat went on TV to explain it all — our current U.N. ambassador, after embassy bombings in 1998.

‘What troubles me so much is the Benghazi attack in many ways echoes the attacks on both embassies in 1998, when Susan Rice was head of the African region for our State Department,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Wednesday after two hours with our U.N. ambassador. “In both cases, the ambassador begged for additional security.”

In both cases, Susan Rice was involved more than she would like to admit.

And had press cover. So be sure to read the whole thing.

A “MODERATE” AND “PRAGMATIC” DICTATOR: Rand Simberg: President Morsi and the “non-ideological” Muslim Brotherhood.

ROGER KIMBALL: Why Kafka Would Like FEMA.

AT TAX-PROF, a roundup of responses to Case Western law dean Lawrence Mitchell’s oped arguing that law school is still a good deal.

THIS IS NICE: ALS Patient Is Living His Second Miracle: Follow-up stem-cell operation has more amazing results. Faster, please.

PATTERICO: Why does Brett Kimberlin think it might incriminate him to answer a question about what he knows about SWATting?

Related: Brett Kimberlin’s paperwork trail.

THIS IS INTERESTING: Baltimore Activist and Blogger Arrested, Streams SWAT Team Standoff Online.

SHOCKER: Small Business Owners Lose Confidence After Election. “According to a Gallup poll, American small-business owners became extremely pessimistic about their future prospects following the presidential election. After hitting a nadir in mid-2010, optimism had been growing steadily over the past two years. But in the last month, that positive trend has reversed.”

Hey, they’re small. They’re not stupid.

ERIC CANTOR DENOUNCES the Imperial Presidency. And the ensuing economic depression caused by “regime uncertainty.”

When “laws” are created without going through Congress; when laws are selectively executed; when an administration intervenes into the normal judicial process and diminishes an individual’s property rights; and when the normal regulatory process is circumvented, the rule of law is eroded.

All of this increases uncertainty. Individuals, families, and businesses now not only face uncertainty with respect to the policy decisions made by government, but they face uncertainty as to how those decisions will even be made, Numerous economic studies and surveys indicate that uncertainty itself (which is certainly increased with the breakdown in the rule of law) also hinders economic growth.

While Administrations of both political parties have been known to test the bounds of the limits of their power, the breadth of the breakdown in the rule of law in recent years has reached new levels.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Related:

Yet the State, despite its failures, is consistently given a benefit of the doubt that no one would extend to actors and firms in the private sector. For instance, educational outcomes remain dismal despite vastly increased expenditures and far lower class sizes than in the past. Had the private sector presided over such a disaster, we would never hear the end of all the denunciations of the malefactors of great wealth who are keeping our children ignorant. When the government sector performs so poorly, there is silence. Silence, that is, interrupted by demands that the State be given still more resources.

Indeed.

FUTURE TALK: Literacy In The Age of Google.

GEORGE WILL has a column on Greg Lukianoff’s new book about the campus assault on free speech. But he also touches on yet another reason why the Higher Education Bubble may be bursting:

Such coercion is a natural augmentation of censorship. Next comes mob rule. Last year, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the vice provost for diversity and climate — really; you can’t make this stuff up — encouraged students to disrupt a news conference by a speaker opposed to racial preferences. They did, which the vice provost called “awesome.” This is the climate on an especially liberal campus that celebrates “diversity” in everything but thought.

“What happens on campus,” Lukianoff says, “doesn’t stay on campus” because censorship has “downstream effects.” He quotes a sociologist whose data he says demonstrate that “those with the highest levels of education have the lowest exposure to people with conflicting points of view.” This encourages “the human tendency to live within our own echo chambers.” Parents’ tuition dollars and student indebtedness pay for this. Good grief.

Yes, good grief.

NILE GARDINER: 45 percent of US Democrats favour socialism. Fortunately most Americans still believe in capitalism.

WEBB WILDER: Human Cannonball. “It’s a llttle risky, but I’m my own boss.”

Original version here.

All right folks, just make yourselves at home. Have a sno-cone and enjoy the show.

DAN MITCHELL: The Sadistic Brutality of England’s Government-Run Healthcare.

Governments exist, historically, for only one reason: Because they’re really, really good at killing people. So “sadistic brutality” shouldn’t come as a complete surprise.

TOM BLUMER: Remembering Some of Those Who Said the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt Wasn’t a Threat to Democracy.

ONE GENERATION GOT OLD, One Generation Got Sold. “This 50-something, white, conservative Republican wishes to thank America’s youth for sacrificing their financial futures and standard of living so that boomers, such as my wife and I, can look forward to a long and comfy retirement, which we could easily have afforded on our own. Now we have the youth as our guarantors and providers of a little something extra. . . . With the president’s electoral crushing of Mitt Romney, my overriding sense of morality and guilt have vanished. Thank you, kids!”

Is this the world that we created?

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THE PHANTASMAGORIC Matt Drudge.

“SMART DIPLOMACY” UPDATE: Investor’s Business Daily: Egypt Is Collapsing Thanks To Obama Foreign Policy.