RANKING LAW SCHOOLS by graduates in BigLaw jobs.
Archive for 2014
February 24, 2014
SO THIS IS ALL JUST A DEVILISHLY CLEVER PLAN TO DISARM THE HIPPIES, THEN: Got a state medical marijuana card? You’ve just given the government an excuse to come for your guns.
FIND OUT WHAT HE WAS DRINKING, AND GIVE IT TO TODAY’S POLITICIANS: George Washington: Boozehound.
Indeed, we still have available the list of beverages served at a 1787 farewell party in Philadelphia for George Washington just days before the framers signed off on the Constitution. According to the bill preserved from the evening, the 55 attendees drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight of whiskey, 22 of porter, eight of hard cider, 12 of beer, and seven bowls of alcoholic punch.
That’s more than two bottles of fruit of the vine, plus a number of shots and a lot of punch and beer, for every delegate. That seems humanly impossible to modern Americans. But, you see, across the country during the Colonial era, the average American consumed many times as much beverage alcohol as contemporary Americans do. Getting drunk—but not losing control—was simply socially accepted.
This was whitewashed by the Temperance Movement, which like the other progressive movements that followed could not succeed without lies.
I WRITE IN POPULAR MECHANICS: Don’t Get Too Comfortable—Nationwide License Plate Tracking Will Be Back.
ED DRISCOLL INTERVIEWS Aaron Clarey about Clarey’s new book, Bachelor Pad Economics.
BETTER LIVING through barbecue.
YOUR WHOLE LIFE IS BUILT ON A LIE: Hall & Oates’ ‘Rich Girl’ wasn’t about a girl after all.
SLATE: Poll: A Possible Democratic Disaster in Texas (and Better News for the Right). “Wendy Davis may find herself sharing a ballot with a Lyndon LaRouche Democrat.”
ROGER KIMBALL: The Human Face Of ObamaCare. “The story Stephen Blackwood tells is like something out of Kafka—or, perhaps a closer analogy, like something out of a totalitarian satrap, for there is nothing fictional about this nightmare. The mind-numbing bureaucracy. The stunning incompetence. The casual, unthinking brutality. It’s all there, coming to a shattered life near you. One day Mrs. Blackwood had the health insurance plan she had paid for for two decades. Then, ‘because our lawmakers and president thought they could do better, she had nothing.’ Nothing. Nada. Nichts. Rien.”
RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON BRITAIN’S FLOODING: “The floods were apparently not only inevitable, but foreseeable. The chief problem to preventing them lay in a policy which maintained that active flood control was bad. Nature treats humans as part of the natural world but environmentalists treat nature as part of the political world. Many a misunderstanding arises therefrom. Alas the rains and the seasons refuse to read Labor Party and Green Left manifestos and the results are often inconvenient. And so the floods came.”
BRYAN PRESTON THINKS THAT I should replace Piers Morgan. Well, okay, but I think my InstaVision audience may be larger than Piers’s was.
IN THE MAIL: From Mark Rippetoe & Andy Baker, Practical Programming for Strength Training.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 291.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Teens defend ‘fail factory’ school in error-filled letters.
Earlier this month, The Post exposed a scheme at Manhattan’s Murry Bergtraum HS for Business Careers in which failing students could get full credit without attending class, but instead watch video lessons and take tests online. One social-studies teacher had a roster of 475 students in all grades and subjects.
Red-faced administrators encouraged a student letter-writing campaign to attack The Post and defend its “blended learning” program. Eighteen kids e-mailed to argue that their alma mater got a bad rap.
Almost every letter was filled with spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. A junior wrote: “What do you get of giving false accusations im one of the students that has blended learning I had a course of English and I passed and and it helped a lot you’re a reported your support to get truth information other than starting rumors . . .”
Another wrote: “To deeply criticize a program that has helped many students especially seniors to graduate I should not see no complaints.”
One student said the online system beats the classroom because “you can digest in the information at your own paste.”
“Us as New York City Students deserve respect and encouragement,” one letter read. “We are the future of New York City and for some students, The future of the country.”
Ouch. Follow the link for some more examples.
TESTABLE PREDICTIONS: Farmers’ Almanac More Reliable Than Warming Climate Models. I seem to remember someone saying a few years ago that “climate change” was going to make the Farmers’ Almanac methodology obsolete.
AT AMAZON, St. Patrick’s Day Deals.
Also, coupons galore in Coffee, Tea & Beverages.
Plus, today only: 72% Off the Waste King Knight Garbage Disposal.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: License Plates, Newsrooms, and Guns: Three Examples of Americans Rising Up Against Government. This one’s in today’s print edition, too. Mail a copy to your congressman!
IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Christine O’Donnell Still Looking for Answers from the IRS.
ANDREW KLAVAN: Purity or Strategy: The Debate We Need To Have.
Just to let you know where I stand emotionally, here’s a true story. The first time I made a speech before a Tea Party crowd, I felt as if I were floating two feet off the ground. I respected, admired and agreed with the Tea Partiers so completely, that my heart rose up and I began to believe that despite the Obama debacle, the country would ultimately be fine. As I was leaving the rally, I got a call from a friend asking me to come by for a drink with a couple of the highest ranking Republicans in Washington. It was me and them, having a glass together, eye to eye. By the time I left that gathering, I was so depressed by the establishment GOP’s blindness and philosophical corruption I could barely see straight. I phoned Andrew Breitbart for moral support. “I’ve just had a drink with [blank] and [blank],” I began. And he responded immediately, “Are they ***holes or what?”
All my sympathies, in other words, are with the tea party. And I would truly love to see the RINO’s skewered on their own horns.
And yet… In general, Tea Party candidates tend to do well in congressional races where small, homogenous districts are in play. In Senate races where you need votes across an entire state, a primary victory for someone like Christine O’Donnell or Todd Akin may briefly fill the conservative heart with joy, but the loss of a Senate seat that could have been won is simply too high a price to pay for that momentary triumph.
We need to talk this out with good sense and without pompous ranting. Politics is the art of the possible. Writing belligerently purist articles, blog posts or comments is relatively easy. Winning elections is hard. Barack Obama is one of the most destructive presidents this country has ever seen, but a talented politician. If stopping him in his tracks requires stomaching some RINO’s here and there, it seems a no brainer: It must be done.
Yeah, I agree. Also, a GOP-controlled Senate is necessary to block potentially horrible Supreme Court nominees. To get there requires that Tea Party activists sometimes grit their teeth. But it also requires establishment GOP types to treat the Tea Party base with respect, because when they don’t, you get 2012. This will be a test of maturity all around.
MICHAEL TOTTEN ON CUBA: “It’s no mystery why so many want out. Cuba’s human rights record is by far the most dismal in the Western Hemisphere, and as a predictable consequence has triggered one of the largest refugee crises in the hemisphere. I can think of nothing positive to say about Fulgencio Batista, the tyrant who preceded Castro, but at least he didn’t drive people en masse into the sea. Faint praise, to be sure, but I can’t say even that much about Castro’s.” Actually, “he wasn’t Castro,” is pretty high comparative praise.
Now if we can just do the same for Venezuela.