SOME THOUGHTS ON THE GEORGE ZIMMERMAN CASE. My thoughts: It was all about boosting black turnout for 2012.
Archive for 2013
June 20, 2013
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Unpaid Internship? Some Colleges Pick Up the Tab.
June 19, 2013
SPENGLER: Syria and Egypt Can’t Be Fixed.
WHILE PEOPLE WORRY ABOUT TECHNOLOGY KILLING JOBS, REGULATION IS THE BIG KILLER: Department of Labor vs. me: My business is being stifled by outmoded dictates from a world I never lived in.
WE’RE ALL MAD MEN NOW: Mickey Kaus: Let’s Make Some Campaign Ads.
IF CHRIS MATTHEWS IS COMPLAINING THAT the sun “ruined” Obama’s Berlin speech by obscuring his teleprompter with glare, my guess is it didn’t go well.
WHERE THOSE PLEDGE-WEEK CONTRIBUTIONS GO: NPR Shows Off Palatial New Facility. “Eager to show off the new facility, the organization offered a tour to members of the media Tuesday morning, starting with breakfast from their in-house chefs.”
UPDATE: Reader Peter Shipman writes: “Check the note at the end of the NPR story posted 9 p.m. Wednesday: DC gave NPR a 20-year tax break to stay in the District. Similar to NY Times behavior?” But I’m sure they wouldn’t consider this to be “corporate welfare,” even though they’re a corporation, and . . .
MICHAEL HASTINGS’ LAST ARTICLE: Why Democrats Love To Spy On Americans.
YOU WONDER HOW MANY OF THESE NEVER GET CAUGHT: Sara Ylen’s False Rape Report Caught By Doctor, Leading To Charges: Police.
A Michigan woman accused of faking a sexual assault was ordered to stand trial on charges of making a false report of rape and tampering with evidence Tuesday after a doctor said her purported bruises faded after he wiped them with gauze.
Sara Ylen accused two men of sexual assault at her Lexington home last September, saying she was taking a nap when she was bound and raped. But authorities say the attack didn’t happen.
Ylen is also accused of lying about having cancer in a separate case in Sanilac County. She’s charged with fraud for allegedly tricking an insurance company and sympathetic supporters. A probable cause hearing is set for July 9.
Good grief.
AT AMAZON, Digital Deals Galore.
WELCOME TO THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: FBI Chief: Surveillance Drones Used in U.S.
DAVID FRENCH: IRS Abuse — More Widespread than the Media Comprehend. Or are willing to admit, anyway.
FIRST WE LEARN THAT GOVERNMENT LAWYERS OVERWHELMINGLY VOTE DEMOCRAT. NOW THIS: Govt. Attorney Accused In DC Home Invasion Commits Suicide.
Mannina, 58, was arrested last week in connection with a violent home invasion at the residence of one of his coworkers.
He was “found unresponsive on the bunk in his cell by facility security staff” around 3:45 a.m. Tuesday, D.C. police said. Police said in an official release that the cause of death is under investigation.
Mannina had been in custody since Thursday following a June 5 incident at his coworker’s home on Chesapeake Street NW.
According to charging documents, the victim told detectives she was expecting Mannina to visit her that morning and she let him into her home.
She said he briefly walked back out to his car to get his camera to “take photographs of her cat,” but he returned with a red gym bag and used a stun gun on her while her back was turned.
He then allegedly struck her in the face several times, used pepper spray on her, ripped clothing off and handcuffed her hands behind her back. Police said he also attempted to sexually assault her.
The woman said he eventually let her go, and she led him out of the home and drove herself to a hospital. She had been beaten so badly that a plate had to be surgically implanted in her face, The Washington Post reported.
If he were a Tea Partier, the press would make him a symbol of the entire movement.
CHANGE: Some Berliners less enamored with Obama than in 2008. Some Americans, too.
CLIVE THOMPSON: We Need a Fixer (Not Just a Maker) Movement.
Madison Sheffield cracks open a toaster oven, jams her hand inside, then turns on the power. It looks like she’s about to electrocute herself, but she seems unfazed. “Thermostat or heating element?” Sheffield mutters, yanking on wires and poking around with a multimeter.
“Why isn’t this working?” She isn’t the only one in this crowded room trying to get busted hardware working. A few feet away, a trio of people are elbow-deep in a vintage VCR, and there’s another team performing surgery on a lava lamp. It’s a typical meeting of the Fixer’s Collective, an ad hoc group of tinkerers in Brooklyn. Once a month, in an art gallery, they offer to repair anything neighbors can carry. People troop in with PCs, lamps, appliances — piles of stuff we typically pitch in the garbage at the first hint of trouble. As I watch for three hours, the fixers get everything up and running (except the lava lamp).
The spectacle of dead goods coming back to life isn’t just useful — for the locals, it’s transformative. “I was a totally different person after they fixed my laptop,” says Nicole DeLuca, a filmmaker who had her MacBook repaired last year. “It made me realize I didn’t need to buy new every time something breaks.”
Interesting.
WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE ALWAYS GROSSLY OBESE, LIKE THOMAS NAST’S PLUTOCRATS? Chicago Teachers Union Boss Blames Racist “Rich White People” For Chicago’s School Woes…
ROGER SIMON: Living in Fear: Welcome to Fascist America. “Back in the ’80s when, on a couple of occasions, I visited the Soviet Union, I always wondered what was it really like to live in that godforsaken place. But it didn’t much matter. For all the creepy spying that was going on, I realized I’d be out of there in a week or two. Now I know what it was like. It’s come home.”
Do not take counsel of your fears.
STANDING UP TO THE GOVERNMENT now treated as “harassment.” This seems to be a trend.
BEING A FRIEND to a friend who is sick.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Guys worry about sex on the first date too.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Job market for Humanities majors is inhumane.
A DEGREE OF PERFECTION THAT GOES BEYOND WHAT ONE NORMALLY EXPECTS OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES: The F.B.I. Deemed Agents Faultless in 150 Shootings. “After contradictory stories emerged about an F.B.I. agent’s killing last month of a Chechen man in Orlando, Fla., who was being questioned over ties to the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, the bureau reassured the public that it would clear up the murky episode. . . . But if such internal investigations are time-tested, their outcomes are also predictable: from 1993 to early 2011, F.B.I. agents fatally shot about 70 ‘subjects’ and wounded about 80 others — and every one of those episodes was deemed justified, according to interviews and internal F.B.I. records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.”
Plus: “In most of the shootings, the F.B.I.’s internal investigation was the only official inquiry.”
BALANCE OF TRADE: “The US is a world leader in sperm exports primarily because sperm banks in the U.S. are run on a for-profit basis. As a result, US sperm is reckoned to be of high quality particularly because the US version comes with a background on the vitals of the donor.”