RICHARD EPSTEIN: Leading From Behind In Syria? We are ruled by The Hindmost.
Archive for 2013
June 4, 2013
MEGAN MCARDLE: The Economic History Of Stereotypes. “I mean, while I haven’t done a survey, I’m sure that most black people love fried chicken, because everyone loves fried chicken except vegetarians and women from New York who have convinced themselves that they don’t like anything with more than 15 calories. Fried chicken is sublimely delicious when done right, and even when it’s done wrong, it’s not bad. How did people get the idea that loving tender, crispy fried chicken was some strange thing that only racial minorities do? . . . Until World War II, chicken was not cheap; it was more expensive than beef. Of course, we don’t have good price data for the pre-Civil War south, but given the relative scarcity of meat in 19th century diets, I’m pretty skeptical that plantation owners were giving their slaves a lot of chicken.”
DER SPIEGEL: Revolt in Turkey: Erdogan’s Grip on Power Is Rapidly Weakening. One can hope.
Related: Claire Berlinski: Erdoğan Over the Edge. “The Turkish prime minister may have miscalculated with his brutal crackdown.” Read the whole thing.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: The Absolute Worst States For Job-Hunting Legal Grads. “By now, even law schools themselves acknowledge that they’ve been churning out too many graduates for too few available jobs. Less widely appreciated, however, is that the lawyer glut appears to be much more severe in some parts of the country than in others. There’s nowhere in the United States that new JD’s have it especially good; but, man, are there spots where they have it especially bad.”
IT’S LIKE THE NAACP IS JUST A BUNCH OF DEMOCRATIC TOOLS OR SOMETHING: 150 People Arrested In NAACP Protest Against NC Republicans. I wonder if the IRS has evaluated their tax-exempt status? . . .
TRANSPARENCY: Associated Press: Secret mails of top Obama appointees remain a mystery. Plus, a press shakedown scandal?
PROF. JACOBSON: The myth of Andrew Breitbart’s “deceptively edited” Shirley Sherrod tape lives on at Slate.com. “I debunked the claim with a frame-by-frame analysis showing that each of the elements which critics claimed were missing from the tape actually were in the tape, Repeat after me: ‘The Shirley Sherrod tape was not misleading’.”
Sorry comrade, but what you’re offering is mere bourgeois truth, concerned with tedious facts. The higher truth is “revolutionary truth,” which is any narrative that advances the revolution.
AT AMAZON, TV Deal Of The Week: Little House On The Prairie, 60% off.
Also, today only: Bosch 12-Volt Drill/Driver Kit with 2 L-BOXX Cases, $92.99 (53% off). Love my Bosch drill.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN FOR TODAY: Protecting Children From The Religious Fanatics Running Schools.
AND TRUE TO FORM, THAT’S NOT REALLY NEWS EITHER: MSNBC President: We’re Not Really A News Channel.
THE NEXT OBAMA SCANDAL? The Obama Administration’s Disastrous Muslim “Outreach” Program. “Often, the White House and FBI have granted access and worked with those who were simultaneously being investigated on serious charges of terrorism. The whole ‘outreach’ program has been a farce and it would be charitable to describe it as incompetent on the part of the Obama Administration.”
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Immigration bill lacks the 60 Senate votes needed to pass. “The immigration reform bill headed to the Senate floor lacks the 60 votes it needs to advance and will likely have to be partially rewritten to win congressional approval, proponents of the bill said. Democratic and Republican sources working to build support for the bill agreed that garnering the necessary GOP votes would require amending the legislation to strengthen its border security components. Additionally, there are senators on both sides of the aisle who don’t support the current measure because of provisions other than border security who also must be appeased.”
Polls show it’s a low priority to most Americans.
ANN ALTHOUSE: George Packer’s Unfair Attack on Andrew Breitbart. Well, Andrew’s been dead over a year. So I guess Packer feels safe now. The “deceptively edited video” claim is false, of course.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, PLUTOCRATS WOULD BE SETTING ENERGY POLICY. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Billionaire activist to target Obama supporters in anti-Keystone effort.
THE HILL: GOP threatens IRS purse strings.
GOP appropriators on Monday said they would use the IRS’s purse strings to get answers about how and why it targeted conservative groups.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said his panel may impose conditions on IRS funding, calling the targeting tantamount to a political enemies list that harkens back to “a dark page in our past.”
Other Republicans on the panel wondered how Congress, in the words of Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.), “should spend one more dime” on the agency without having more answers on how the tax agency is currently operating.
“We will not rest until this is done,” Rogers told Danny Werfel, the acting IRS chief, at an Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Monday.
“And I don’t need to remind you or anybody else that the power of the purse rests with the Congress, and we’re prepared to use that purse to get to the truth.”
Zero out their conference budget. That seems to be the thing they value most.
IF YOU WANT TO RAISE MEN WITHOUT CHESTS, YOU HAVE TO START EARLY: Hero Teen Punished by School for Stopping Knife-Wielding Bully. This sort of behavior by “educators” needs to be stigmatized and punished, with names named. But bear in mind that “Sir John A. Macdonald junior high school does not ‘condone heroics,'” and that its principal’s name is Michael Bester, from whom we can be fairly certain to expect nothing in the least bit heroic, ever.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Obama waging psychological warfare on Americans?
FROM THE ASIL: International Law In Brief.
June 3, 2013
WELL, REALLY, WHY SHOULD THEY? New IRS head says taxpayers no longer trust agency.
AT AMAZON, Digital Deals.
RACISM AND TURF WARS AT ROXBURY COMMUNITY COLLEGE:
Kambon now spearheads a group called “Friends of Roxbury Community College.” The group has written an outrageous letter to Governor Deval Patrick. Kambon is incensed because the newly appointed chairman of the board of RCC, Gerald Chertavian, is white. This, to Kambon and company, is an outrage. . . .
Chertavian is a great choice to head the board. After a successful career on Wall Street, he began a highly regarded job training program for young people of color who struggled in traditional educational settings — exactly the constituency RCC serves. He is strategic, thoughtful, and the most unassuming zillionaire I’ve ever met.
It’s tempting to dismiss Kambon’s ravings as empty demagoguery. Yet in this case his view probably does resonate with a segment of the community. But that segment cannot be allowed to stop the school from reforming its culture and its mission. . . . And this is really about turf. The RCC administration — most of which remains in place — has failed at virtually every aspect of running a college. But none of that ever outraged Kambon and his followers — not a graduation rate in the low single digits, not the financial aid problems, not the unreported campus crimes, not the attempt to keep quiet a student’s report of sexual assault by a professor. No protests, no letters to the governor, about any of that.
No, the real focus of their outrage is that this white guy might not view the incompetents who turned RCC into an educational and bureaucratic mess as untouchable.
And what’s really outrageous is that this isn’t even surprising.