DEMOCRATS’ “CONTROVERSIAL COMMENTS” ON RAPE cause anti-gun bill to be defeated.
Plus, dumb comments not about rape: Selling a gun-control bill with excessive honesty: “I make no assertion that this bill will either increase or reduce violent crime. That is not the premise of this bill.” In all honesty, it’s not the premise of gun control in general. The crime stuff is just to fool the rubes, who seem to be harder to fool, on this subject at least, lately.
FASTER, PLEASE: Researchers find molecular switch to make old brains young again. “As we enter adulthood, our brains become more stable and rigid when compared to that of an adolescent. This is partially due to the triggering of a single gene that slows the rapid change in synaptic connections between neurons, thereby suppressing the high levels of plasticity of an adolescent brain. By monitoring the synapses of living mice for a period of months, the Yale researchers were able to identify the Nogo Receptor 1 gene as the key genetic switch responsible for brain maturation. They found that mice without this gene retained juvenile levels of brain plasticity throughout adulthood and by blocking the function of this gene in old mice, the researchers were able to reset the old brain to adolescent levels of plasticity. This allowed adult mice lacking the Nogo Receptor to recover from brain injury as quickly as adolescent mice, and also saw them master new, complex motor tasks faster than adult mice with the receptor.”
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Are Christians Guilty Until Proven Innocent? Only in an original-sin sort of way. Er, and in the media, of course.
WELL, HE HAS GONE PRETTY MUCH FULL CRAZY-GRANDPA ON THIS ONE: McCain Undermines His Own Cause. I really think he’s just frustrated about being upstaged.
UPDATE: “While the old guard of the Republican Party was out playing footsie with the president, the new kids in town were talking to the American people about liberty.” There’s no shame in conducting budget negotiations. What’s shameful is the narcissism behind the attacks on other people who are also doing things that need to be done.
Plus, from the comments: “For the better part of 20 years now, every time McCain pushes the Republican-bashing button, he gets a food pellet from the press corps. At this point he probably couldn’t stop if he wanted to.”
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, FATCATS WOULD GET RICH OFF OF STOCKS WHILE RECORD NUMBERS OF AMERICANS WERE WITHOUT WORK. And they were right! “The number of Americans designated as ‘not in the labor force’ in February was 89,304,000, a record high, up from 89,008,000 in January, according to the Department of Labor. This means that the number of Americans not in the labor force increased 296,000 between January and February.”
ROGER KIMBALL: Martinis: The Original Understanding. I’m not much of a martini-drinker, but when I do I prefer a traditional, not-too-dry version with an olive, with a 4.5:1 ration of gin to vermouth. Though I won’t complain if it comes with more than one olive. I like olives.
WHAT MCCAIN AND GRAHAM MISS: Rob Lowe on Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster: ‘Real life #WestWing episode.’
IN THE MAIL: The Ten Commandments of Propaganda.
MICKEY KAUS: 50 Shades Of Blue: “The Meadian movement would realize that among the most difficult remaining problems facing liberalism are those created by the mechanisms of liberalism itself: New Deal unionism, the civil service, corporatism, legalistic procedures and proliferating rights–designed to insure exquisite fairness in individual cases–that eventually build up like plaque and produce sclerosis in the larger society.”
Speaking of which, read this post. Also this one.
DENIAL AIN’T JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT — IT’S ALSO A CHANNEL ON BASIC CABLE: Rachel Maddow Doesn’t Want to Believe Ron Wyden Helped Rand Paul’s Filibuster.
ON THE UPSIDE, NOT MANY GUN RIGHTS FOLKS PAY MUCH ATTENTION TO THE MEDIA ANYMORE: National Shooting Sports Foundation Warns of Media Plan to Divide, Conquer Gun Rights Groups.
LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: 80 Percent Of Recent NYC High School Graduates Cannot Read.
Nearly 80 percent of New York City high school graduates need to relearn basic skills before they can enter the City University’s community college system. . . .
Officials told CBS 2′s Kramer that nearly 80 percent of those who graduate from city high schools arrived at City University’s community college system without having mastered the skills to do college-level work.
In sheer numbers it means that nearly 11,000 kids who got diplomas from city high schools needed remedial courses to re-learn the basics.
As I note in The K-12 Implosion, this is why so many parents are pulling their kids out of large urban school districts. Leaving your kid in schools like this is practically parental malpractice.
Meanwhile, maybe Mike Bloomberg should be addressing problems like this, instead of Big Gulps and women with too many condoms. You know?
LEAN IN, and drop a name. Bah. People have been doing this in the asterisk-footnotes of law review articles for years.
AT AMAZON, up to 60% off on Home Audio.
Also, today only: Over 40% Off a VTech Sit-to-Stand Learning Walker.
UNEMPLOYMENT “TUMBLES” TO 7.7%. Happy days are here again!
UPDATE: In February Multiple Jobholders Rose By A Record, As Full-Timers Dropped, Part-Timers Increased. ” One wonders: how many actual people got new jobs, as opposed to how many qualified single individuals ended up getting more than one job in February in order to boost that much needed weekly income to sustainable levels.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: So, basically, the more likely you are to have voted for Obama, the more likely you are to still be unemployed:
WHITES: 6.8%…
BLACKS: 13.8%…
HISPANICS: 9.6%…
TEENAGERS: 25.1%…
Hmm.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Tell Obama To Put Up Or Shut Up On The Budget.
BEING BREITBART: DaTechGuy: Bring It On!
STEPHEN KRUISER: Tweets Of The Day-McCain And Graham Clown Car Edition.
DOMESTIC ENERGY BOOM HAPPENING IN SPITE OF, NOT BECAUSE OF, ADMINISTRATION POLICIES:
The study by the nonpartisan CRS concluded that while overall United States oil-and-gas production has increased since 2007, it has declined considerably on federal lands.
The findings play into GOP arguments that the domestic U.S. energy boom has occurred in spite of Obama. They have urged the White House to loosen restrictions on energy drilling in hopes of driving economic activity, generating federal revenues and creating jobs.
“Where the states have been in charge, we have seen energy development boom in a safe and responsible way, but under federal control we have seen a sharp decline in production. A web of red tape and a backlog of delayed permits are blocking important energy production opportunities on federal lands,” Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, said in a Tuesday statement.
The energy boom could save Obama’s presidency. But I don’t think he realizes that.
JAMES TARANTO ON RAND PAUL’S FILIBUSTER:
Whatever you think of the point he was trying to make–and in our case, that’s not much–there’s no denying that Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster yesterday was quite a piece of political theater. . . .
One thing the filibuster accomplished was to underscore the hypocrisy and opportunism of supposedly antiwar liberals. “Where are all the Democrats?” asked the Puffington Host. The Washington Post counts seven senators who “joined in his symbolic effort”: Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Marco Rubio of Florida, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Ron Wyden of Oregon. Wyden is the only Democrat in the group. . . .
“Paul’s resolution said it was the sense of the Senate that ‘the use of drones to execute or target American citizens on American soil who pose no imminent threat clearly violates Constitutional rights’ of due process,” reports the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney.
That strikes us as sufficiently qualified to be both unobjectionable and consistent with the Obama administration’s position, as explained in a letter to Paul from Attorney General Eric Holder. So why did the Democrats object to the resolution? We suppose because they thought it was a trap. Paul put them on the defensive by setting up the filibuster as a confrontation over policy with the administration. Signing on to the resolution would make Durbin & Co. appear to be siding against the White House. But it was a trap anyway, since blocking the resolution exposed their hypocrisy. Paul’s tactic here was worthy of Saul Alinsky.
More of this, please. Meanwhile, they told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, we’d have an antiterror policy that John Yoo would be pleased to defend. And they were right!
SHOCKING NEW DISCOVERY: We Have A Serious Long-Term Unemployment Problem.
THEY GROW UP SO FAST: Twitchy Is Now One Year Old.
CHILD ABUSE: No luck for sixth-graders pleading for WH tour.
Iowa sixth graders begging for their tour of the White House to be rescheduled are out of luck.
Beginning Saturday, all public tours of the White House are canceled, a move administration officials said was necessary after $85 billion in across-the-board budget cuts kicked in March 1. Republicans counter that the move was made to maximize public frustration with the cuts.
In response, students from St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Waverly, Iowa made a video in which they held signs reading, “The White House is our house; please let us visit.” The video went viral Thursday but the White House says the Iowa students, along with all others scheduled for tours after Friday, won’t be accommodated.
Sounds like budgetary hostage-taking to me.
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