LEGAL PROFESSION UPDATE: Straight Talk on the Woes of BigLaw.

HOW THE LIBYA DEBACLE played on the Sunday shows. “In the end, however, the facts really do matter, and they do come out. Now President Obama, with his reelection at risk, will need to face the voters and his opponent, answer some questions that should have been asked long ago and decide on the official White House story: Did it intentionally sweep bad news under the rug or is this one of the least competent and least well-organized administrations in history? You’re right — these are not mutually exclusive.” Video at the link.

Related: Obama Libya Story Changes, Subtly.

GEORGE LEEF ON THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE: Advocates of limited government can turn pending changes in higher education to their advantage.

The consensus was that the impending disruption in higher education—the bursting of the bubble and subsequent changes in the way students learn—should indeed create opportunities for education to advance liberty.

My argument was that it will do so because the old model of higher education was (and is) heavily stacked in favor of the proponents of collectivism, but future education will not be. To a large extent, our higher education system has been colonized by faculty and administrators who are sympathetic to the expansion of government and unsympathetic to laissez-faire. College students were (and are) much more likely to hear from Marxists than from conservatives or libertarians.

In that old model, a student faced the “bundle” problem. Once the student chose a school, he or she had to choose from the courses and majors offered there. It was as if when you walked into a grocery store, you were allowed to buy either Bag A or Bag B, when both bags contained many items you’d never want to buy individually.

When I was an undergraduate, for example, the only macroeconomics course was taught by a dyed-in-the-wool Keynesian who was absolutely certain that federal authorities could manage the economy to give us high GDP and low unemployment. There was no alternative to that misinformation-laden course, except taking a different major.

Consumers don’t like having to buy bundles, whether it’s food, cable-TV, or education. They would much rather shop for the best and buy only what they want. New developments in education are making that increasingly possible.

Students will be drawn more toward schools that permit them to shop around for the best courses and transferring those credits from other schools rather than requiring them to take their entire bundles. Perhaps in time the very concept of a college degree will change, as students assemble online portfolios of their learning and accomplishments (certificates, badges, and other indicators of capability) to show the world.

In that new educational environment, the old constraints such as accreditation and transferability will matter less and less. None of the huge number of students who signed up for Sebastian Thrun’s initial Udacity course on artificial intelligence cared in the least that Udacity is not accredited. Thrun’s reputation was all that mattered.

With students shopping around for educational products that are high in quality as well as interesting, the market will be open. The old course offerings with their mild-to-severe leftist orientation will have to compete with courses that are balanced or take an intelligent pro-liberty view.

One hopes. I doubt that the old guard will give up without a fight, however.

CONN CARROLL: Romney’s Best Ad Yet. “Mitt Romney’s campaign wasted little time in capitalizing on Joe Biden’s maniacal performance in last Thursday’s vice presidential debate, creating a new television ad that starkly contrasts Paul Ryan’s calm and confident position on taxes with Biden’s Jokeresque performance.” The big news is that it just came out and it’s got nearly 100,000 views already.

HAPPY 35^th BIRTHDAY, ATARI 2600!

LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE:  Exam schools.

When my kids were going through K-12, I found “gifted” meant mostly “will do what the teacher wants.”  Real gifted kids, with the scores to prove it, were more often than not treated as “behavior problems” even if perfectly respectful and controlled.  I’m not surprised “exam schools” are showing up to meet the need, but my bet is they too will get watered down, because let’s face it, if you cater to the top 2% your client base won’t be very large and not all of those people can afford expensive private schools.  (In my experience, in fact, most of the poorer parents took at its face value the teacher’s assessment that their kid was a “bad seed.”)  There has to be a better way to educate our young in the age of computers.

VIDEO: Stephen Harper: Canadian PM Tells It Like It Is on Iran, Unlike Obama. “This is how a defender of liberal democracy sounds.”

MERE SCRATCH, WILL BUFF RIGHT OFF: US Navy cruiser collides with nuclear submarine.

CHANGE: You’ve Heard of Urban Coyotes. Urban Bears Could Be Next. Historically, like grass growing in the streets, the return of dangerous wild animals to cities has been seen as a sign of civilizational collapse. Now it’s treated as a kind of progress.

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Books.

LOOKING FOR WAR ON TERROR NEWS? Check out Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg.

THE DOCTOR MADE ME DO IT (AND THAT’S OKAY):  A woman who had a consensual, extramarital affair with her family doctor–while under treatment for anxiety and depression–sued him for medical malpractice.  Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court (rightly, in my opinion) ruled in favor of the doctor, refusing to find that voluntary sexual relations with a patient under mental health treatment is per se negligent. 

THE BENGHAZI BLAME GAME: Fresh Scapegoats.

How is the Obama White House going to fit the entire State Department and the intelligence community under the bus?

Last month’s Benghazi fiasco saw four Americans — including our ambassador to Libya — murdered by elements of al Qaeda in a military-style assault timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of 9/11.

The weeks afterward saw the administration blaming a video that, even the White House now admits, had nothing to do with it. And the months before the attack saw Washington adamantly reducing security in Benghazi — despite pleas for reinforcements from the folks on the ground. Yet President Obama’s top spokesman — and Vice President Joe Biden, in last week’s debate — have been busy pointing fingers of blame at State and the IC.

It won’t work. Neither Foggy Bottom nor the intel community’s legion of spooks, analysts and secret-keepers is likely to go quietly.

Indeed, State has already started the pushback. It has pointedly released the transcript of an Oct. 9 media briefing in which Brad Klapper of the Associated Press asks what “led officials to believe for the first several days that this was prompted by protests against the video?”

Someone described only as “Senior State Department Official Two” answers, “That is a question you would have to ask others. That was not our conclusion.”

Read the whole thing.

CONSCIOUSNESS SCANNER OFFERS HOPE TO VEGETATIVE PATIENTS:  A special scanner developed in Canada is helping doctors more accurately diagnose patients believed to be completely vegetative (and thus, lacking in all consciousness).  The machine is able to show that some such patients are, in fact, conscious, but unable to respond in any way.  This is similar to functional MRI imaging used by Dr. Adrian Owen at Cambridge University, which has shown similar amazing results.

Bottom line?  What we know about the brain is presently very limited.  Some percentage patients believed to be “vegetative” are, in fact, conscious.  Evolving scientific understanding of brain injury should lead to greater recognition of disability rights and reticence to “pull the plug” too quickly.

#GREENFAIL: Green stimulus profiteer comes under IRS scrutiny.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON THE FOLLY OF PEACE MOVEMENTS: “The modern peace movement is almost 200 years old; its origins can be traced to the period that followed the devastating wars of the Napoleonic era in Europe. In those two centuries, peace movements have had little discernible impact on world events, and what effect they have had has often been bad: the European peace and disarmament movement of the 1930s, for example, greatly facilitated Hitler’s plans for a war of revenge. For all the good they have done, those well-intentioned souls who have sought to achieve world peace through the organization of committees, the signing of petitions, the holding of rallies, and the promotion of international treaties might just as well have stayed home.” But it makes some people feel good about themselves, and the people involved can be useful in others’ schemes.

JOHN TIERNEY: Sky Diving, At Mach 1.24.

CAN A MESSY BEDROOM really kill your sex drive?

SNAKES, SNAILS & SEX TOYS:  Apparently hotel guests are leaving behind a bizarre and growing array of items.

MORE BENGHAZI FALLOUT, this time via the London Telegraph: “British firm secured Benghazi consulate contract with little experience. A small British firm based in south Wales had secured a contract to provide security for American diplomatic facilities in Benghazi despite having only a few months experience in the country.”

LESSONS ON SUCCESS from psychopaths.

NOT PAYING HER FAIR SHARE: Elizabeth Warren obtained federal fee waivers despite high 6-figure income and 8-figure net worth.

SANDUSKY ON THE THAMES:  The New York Times reports, “Silence on Abuse Reports Plunges BBC Into Scandal:”

As host of the television programs “Jim’ll Fix It” and “Top of the Pops,” Jimmy Savile was one of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s best-known figures in a four-decade career spanning the 1960s to the mid-1990s. But now he is the subject of numerous posthumous investigations into whether he sexually abused perhaps dozens of underage girls, some of them on BBC property.

The scandal has engulfed the corporation, which failed to investigate rumors or take seriously accusations about his behavior at the time. Perhaps even more damningly, it canceled a segment about the allegations that was scheduled to be broadcast last December on “Newsnight,” an influential evening current-affairs program.

About the same time, the corporation broadcast three tributes to Mr. Savile, who died last year at 84.

(more…)

BYRON YORK: GOP hopes soar as Romney rolls in Ohio.

LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The AP Scam. “Fraudulent schemes come in all shapes and sizes. To work, they typically wear a patina of respectability. That’s the case with Advanced Placement courses, one of the great frauds currently perpetrated on American high-school students. That’s a pretty strong claim, right? You bet. But why not be straightforward when discussing a scam the scale and audacity of which would raise Bernie Madoff’s eyebrows? . . . It’s clear the College Board has the mentality of a voracious corporation, charging $89 a shot for an exam to millions of students who have no business taking it.”

There’s nothing inherently moral about a non-profit. It just means the stakeholders get paid in less transparent ways.