CLAIM: Taxing Gyms And Yoga Studios Is Good For Consumers. When you tax something, you get less of it. Looking around, I don’t think we need less fitness. But this piece has an answer for that, and it comes from Matt Yglesias.
Archive for 2014
June 22, 2014
BILL WHITTLE: Afterburner: Le Deluge – Obama is Quickly Becoming Louis XV.
This piece by Mark Levin from just before the 2008 election seems prescient now.
UPDATE: Related: George F. Will: Stopping A Lawless President.
IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Tax Analysts: The Coverup Is Usually Worse Than The Crime.
Related: Investor’s Business Daily: Trail Of Lost Emails May Lead To White House.
ASSOCIATED PRESS: You know our story about Irish babies buried in a septic tank by an unfeeling moralist church? Yeah, well, that was all crap.
DUBLIN (AP) — In stories published June 3 and June 8 about young children buried in unmarked graves after dying at a former Irish orphanage for the children of unwed mothers, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that the children had not received Roman Catholic baptisms; documents show that many children at the orphanage were baptized. The AP also incorrectly reported that Catholic teaching at the time was to deny baptism and Christian burial to the children of unwed mothers; although that may have occurred in practice at times it was not church teaching. In addition, in the June 3 story, the AP quoted a researcher who said she believed that most of the remains of children who died there were interred in a disused septic tank; the researcher has since clarified that without excavation and forensic analysis it is impossible to know how many sets of remains the tank contains, if any. The June 3 story also contained an incorrect reference to the year that the orphanage opened; it was 1925, not 1926.
Other than that, as James Taranto likes to say, the story was accurate. Well, possibly.
UM: The IRS Had a Contract With an Email Backup Company.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said it can’t provide emails sent between 2009 and 2011 that were requested by congressional investigators because of hard drive crashes.
The agency said that emails stored on dead drives were lost forever because its email backup tapes were recycled every six months, and employees were responsible for keeping their own long-term archives.
The IRS had a contract with email backup service vendor Sonasoft starting in 2005, according to FedSpending.org, which lists the contract as being for “automatic data processing services.” Sonasoft’s motto is “email archiving done right,” and the company lists the IRS as a customer.
In 2009, Sonasoft even sent out a Tweet advertising its work for the IRS.
Perhaps they should receive a subpoena. The IRS is still on Sonasoft’s customer list.
HMM: Dinesh D’Souza’s ‘America’ banished from New York Times best seller list. You know, a few years ago I would have doubted a report like this. But with so much book-cooking going on these days, it’s hard to be sure.
TRUESBURY: It’s what Doonesbury would be like today, if it were honest. This is devastating parody at multiple levels. . . .
PETER LLOYD: Why anonymity for men accused of rape is imperative.
After five weeks of public humiliation, finger-pointing and gender bias – both on campus and in the media – police confirmed that he won’t face a single charge over two unfounded rape allegations.
Not one. Nothing. Nadda.
But, like countless men all over the world – including Paul Weller, Amy Winehouse’s ex-boyfriend Reg Traviss, Nigel Evans MP, William Roache and Craig Charles – Sullivan’s life has already been affected by a system that considers men’s innocence a bonus, not a baseline.
What a joke.
In a damning example of everyday sexism, Sarah Pine, President for Women at Oxford University Student Union, spearheaded a character assassination against the innocent 21 year-old, before the accusations against him had time to be considered.
She devised a boycott of speakers scheduled to appear at the Union and called for Sullivan to resign. Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble, Norman Finkelstein and – rather worryingly – David Mepham, UK Director of Human Rights Watch, both jumped on board the hysteria train, parping their horns along the tracks of misandry and make-believe.
Jennifer Perry, CEO of the Digital Trust and author of the UK guidelines on digital risks, resisted – and later spoke of how she felt ‘threatened’ and ‘intimidated’ by Pine’s gender-driven agenda.
So much for innocent until proven guilty. . . . Is this modern feminism? I can’t help think it’s less third wave, more Third Reich.
Related: 40M Settlement Reached In Central Park Rape Case.
The five black and Hispanic defendants were found guilty as teenagers in 1990 in the attack on a white woman — an investment banker — who had gone for a run in the park.
They served six to 13 years in prison before their convictions were thrown out in 2002 because of evidence that someone else, acting alone, committed the crime. The five sued police and prosecutors for $250 million.
And, of course, the guilty party went unpunished.
WAPO: CNN’s Town Hall: Clinton-Friendly. “To add ‘energy’ to its show (attended by the Erik Wemple Blog), CNN deployed an enthusiastic stage director who coached the audience to applaud at various points throughout the broadcast.”
When the Washington Post thinks you’re too much in-the-tank for Hillary. . . .
REMINDER: In 2009, Barack Obama “Joked” About Having the IRS Audit His Enemies. I guess it was less a joke than one of those “dog whistles” we’re always hearing about.
RATS ON THE WEST SIDE, BEDBUGS UPTOWN: There Are Twice As Many Rats As People In New York City.
June 21, 2014
OUCH.
Thanks, @BarackObama, for causing her to lose her cardiologist. Her name is Norah, not that you care. pic.twitter.com/Yk6DgyFSiC
— Holly Fisher (@HollyRFisher) June 19, 2014
SARAH HOYT AND CHARLIE MARTIN: The Publishing Business Is In Crisis.
CREATE, RECORD AND PERFORM WITH YOUR IPHONE OR IPAD with tools from the iOS Music Store. Some cool stuff here.
Plus, trade in your books, games & media in 3 easy steps.
And remember: InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you do your shopping through the Amazon links on this page, including the “Shop Amazon” tab at the top or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you support this blog at no cost to yourself. Just click on the Amazon link, then shop as usual. I very much appreciate it when you do.
MODERN FEMINISM: Apparently, it’s about men bashing other men for being men, in pieces edited by men. “Solution: Female Power. Hillary Clinton stands ready to restructure the old stratifications. This woman has amazing experience, including that time she sent a rape victim ‘through hell.'”
From the comments: “In Hillary Clinton’s America, child rapists are entitled to a vigorous defense and straight white men in college are subject to guilty without a trial.”
THE FRENEMY OF MY FRENEMY IS, ER, . . . Inside the jealous feud between the Obamas and ‘Hildebeest’ Clintons.
I love this: “And so Bill continued to talk about Hillary’s qualifications . . . and the coming campaign in 2016. But Barack didn’t bite. He changed the subject several times. Then suddenly, Barack said something that took Bill by complete surprise. He said, ‘You know, Michelle would make a great presidential candidate, too.’”
HELPING FRAIL OLDSTERS BECOME LESS FRAIL, with weight training. Trading your walker in for a cane. I could see this as a big business.
AT AMAZON, deals on Bosch Tools.
HARVEY MANSFIELD ON “Rape Culture” At Harvard.
SUBSTANTIALLY BETTER THAN OBAMA’S: Gallup: George W. Bush’s Favorability Rating at 53 Percent. Well, Obama’s making everybody look better in retrospect. Even Jimmy Carter.
ARIANNA RICHARDS, WHO PLAYED “LEX” IN JURASSIC PARK, is now a professional artist. And a good one.
EFF hopes that opening one’s Wi-Fi network will, in the long run, make it more difficult to tie an IP address to an individual.
“From a legal perspective, we have been trying to tackle this idea that law enforcement and certain bad plaintiffs have been pushing, that your IP address is tied to your identity. Your identity is not your IP address. You shouldn’t be targeted by a copyright troll just because they know your IP address,” said Kamdar.
This isn’t an abstract problem, either. Consider the case of the Californian who, after allowing a friend access to his home Wi-Fi network, found his home turned inside-out by police officers asking tough questions about child pornography. The man later learned that his houseguest had downloaded illicit materials, thus subjecting the homeowner to police interrogation. Should a critical mass begin to open private networks to strangers, the practice of correlating individuals with IP addresses would prove increasingly difficult and therefore might be reduced.
Yeah, I used to keep an open wifi connection out of public-spiritedness, until I noticed people parking in the street in front of my house to use it. Then I worried about just such a situation, so I quit. I agree with the EFF here, but I wonder how many people will adopt.
UGH: Anthrax Scare Is Latest CDC Lab Security Lapse. “At least three different incidents between 2007 and 2012 also called into question the CDC’s laboratory safety and security systems, which are designed to keep dangerous pathogens like smallpox, monkey pox and SARS from escaping into the general population.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: More evidence that “college” isn’t a generic product.
Graduating into a recession is unlucky. The bad luck haunts young people for years, studies have shown, affecting their salaries, employment prospects and even their health and happiness.
But recessions don’t treat all college graduates equally. Those who major in subjects that command higher salaries, like engineering and finance, increase their earnings advantage when they graduate into a recession. And those who major in subjects that lead to lower-paying jobs, like philosophy and music, are even more disadvantaged than in normal economic times.
Do tell.