ANDY FREEBERG: Gallery: Russia’s Lady Museum Guards.
Archive for 2012
December 28, 2012
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Deborah Jones Merritt: Should Law School Deans be Disbarred for Misleading Prospective Students? “The people making the representations were professionals with advanced degrees, who had inside knowledge of the legal industry. Most of the people receiving the representations were college students with relatively little knowledge of either law schools or law practice. … It’s time to reclaim our integrity by acknowledging just how wrong all of this was.”
NINE INNOVATIONS in disaster relief.
HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? AFRICA IN CRISIS: U.S. Abandons Embassy, France Won’t Intervene. “The last time the U.S. abandoned an embassy? Syria.”
According to a State Department spokesperson, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was unable to comment, because “she fell and twisted her cankle.”
UPDATE: Related: NPR Covering For Hillary on Benghazi. In a story by Michelle Kelemen, with an assist from Aaron David Miller, vice president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why You Shouldn’t Stalk Your Ex Online.
END OF YEAR DEALS: Up to 50% Off In Kitchen, Home & Garden.
THE UPSIDE OF NEUROTICISM: Better health? “According to a new study from the University of Rochester Medical Center, self-described neurotics who also have high levels of conscientiousness (for instance, those who are organized, plan ahead, and are extremely self-controlled) experience lower levels of Interleukin 6 (IL-6), a biomarker for inflammation and chronic disease. In addition to lower levels of IL-6, self-described neurotics also have lower body-mass index scores and fewer diagnosed chronic health conditions.”
CHART: College Textbook Inflation.
UPDATE: Reader Dave Ivers emails:
I’ve almost quit using my favorite textbooks due to price increases. Most of our students come from mid to low income families. The texts I assigned 10 years ago are now 4 times as expensive, and there’s hardly any difference in content or physical product. I’m moving to online stuff. A friend is writing his own ‘text’ and putting on the internal web at his school, a chapter at a time.
Yes, I’m working toward something similar in Constitutional Law.
IS THIS A GOOD IDEA? Your Smartphone Will Replace Your Car Keys by 2015.
HOW’S THAT GUN-CONTROL STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA, RAHM? Chicago Reaches 500 Homicides For This Year.
LAWPROF ANN ALTHOUSE schools Howard Kurtz on law — and logic. I hate to pick on Kurtz, who’s a nice enough guy, but his defense of Gregory has been absurd. And, I have to say, since leaving the Washington Post for the Daily Beast, he seems to have become more of a cheerleader for the press than a critic.
Plus, from Althouse in the comments: “I suppose, under Kurtz’s theory, if you shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die, you didn’t commit murder, but only watching dying.”
And, from another commenter: “This logic was performed by a professional journalist on a closed mind and should not be tried at home.”
WANT TO PROTECT YOUR LIVER THIS NEW YEAR’S EVE? Try asparagus!
IN THE MAIL: From D.S. Cahr, The Secret Root.
ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC: Rep. Steny Hoyer says House GOP are like child hostage-takers threatening to shoot.
I WAS GOING TO WRITE SOMETHING MORE ABOUT DAVID GREGORY AND HIS MEDIA DEFENDERS LIKE HOWARD KURTZ, but David French has it covered:
Thank you, David Gregory.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then your stunt is worth a thousand op-eds. In less than one minute of screen time, you demonstrated several things:
First, even “banned” magazines are ridiculously easy to acquire. How long did it take your producers to find that magazine? Five minutes? Ten minutes? There are millions upon millions of these cheap and easy-to-manufacture items in circulation, and “banning” them will have exactly the effects you so brilliantly demonstrated on national television.
Second, labyrinthine gun-control restrictions serve mainly to instantly (and often inadvertently) convert otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals. It’s a media-created myth that guns are largely unregulated in the United States. In fact, they’re so heavily and complexly regulated that it’s difficult for citizens to track jurisdictional differences or even sometimes to understand the laws in their own jurisdictions.
Third, strict-liability gun offenses breed disrespect for the law. I tend to agree with your friends in the mainstream media — prosecuting you for holding an empty magazine in your hand would be a travesty of justice. You weren’t going to hurt anyone, you were merely using a prop for an argument, and — after all — the magazine was simply an inert hunk of metal. But the law is the law, and I’m sure you’ll agree that you should be treated exactly the same as any other (previously) law-abiding citizen caught with a similar item.
Was Washington D.C. made more dangerous because you held that magazine? Of course not. Would your prosecution deter a single “real” criminal? Of course not. In fact, it would be a silly farce. But does the law deter responsible citizens and make them less likely to defend themselves adequately? Yes. And that’s the real travesty.
I should add that these laws are complicated and strict-liability precisely to provide an in terrorem disincentive for people to own guns at all. As I suggest in my Second Amendment Penumbras article, such an in terrorem purpose is not constitutionally legitimate now that gun ownership has been recognized as a constitutional right, and even burdens that might, in themselves, pass constitutional muster should fail if they’re part of a scheme — as they are — to chill people’s exercise of their constitutional rights.
But I’m not sure how much rational argument works on these people. So as a backup, here’s some more mockery:
BACKBONE: Senate Republicans refuse to confirm Kerry until Hillary testifies about Benghazi. According to a State Department spokesperson, such testimony is doubtful as Secretary of State Clinton is suffering from “really bad canker sores.”
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Is The EPA’s Lisa Jackson Trying To Dodge A Federal Probe? “EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced Thursday she’s leaving her post. Is she getting out just ahead of an investigation into the illegal use of private emails for official government business?”
AT AMAZON, Year-End Deal: Up To 60% Off On Pet Supplies.
Also, today only: Up to 60% Off Select Crucial and Lexar Memory. Flash cards, USB drives, and solid state drives.
MAKING THE RUBBLE BOUNCE: Log Cabin Republicans release ad attacking possible Hagel nomination.
You know, somebody — Dave Weigel or Matt Yglesias, I think — was tweeting the other day that the GOP was doing worse post-election than in 2008. Well maybe; at this point, after all, Bush was still in the White House. But Obama is definitely doing worse than in 2008. First the Susan Rice debacle, then the departure of scandal-plagued EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and now the stalled Hagel nomination. Definitely not as well as in 2008.
MICHIGAN: Gov. Rick Snyder Takes On Unions Again. “Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder kicked up a storm by signing legislation this month that turned the former Big Labor stronghold into a right-to-work state. So what does he do as an encore? Sign a new municipal emergency manager bill that undos the one modest victory that state unions could claim in the November election – repealing the old municipal emergency manager law.”
GUN BANS AND MANDATORY REGISTRATION OF EXISTING WEAPONS: Feinstein’s Assault-Weapons Proposal. In the unlikely event that such a proposal passed, it would meet with massive civil disobedience. As it should.
I recommend contacting your Senators, with particular emphasis toward those on Moe Lane’s list of vulnerable Senate Democrats for 2014. The last Assault Weapons Ban cost the Democrats the Congress. Feinstein doesn’t care, because her seat is safe. Others are likely to feel differently.